Anne Arundel County v. Board of Education

Hammond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. We are here concerned, in deciding appeals in three cases of the September Term, 1967, with skirmishes in a running battle between Anne Arundel County and the Board of Education of Anne Arundel County over the power of the County to control expenditures of the Board and the limits of that power. Argued together were Number 186, filed in the Circuit Court on July 26, 1966, a mandamus action by the Board against officials of the County to compel payment by the County to the Board of rent for quarters leased by the Board to house the Superintendent of Schools and his official family (a mandatory item in the opinion of the Board and a discretionary item in ⁵¹⁶ the opinion of the County), in which Judge Melvin issued the writ, and No. 31, filed in the Circuit Court on August 31, 1966, by the County against the Board for a decree declaring the County’s power to deny the rent for the premises leased by the Board for the staff of the Superintendent, in which Judge Evans sustained the Board’s demurrer on the ground that the County Lad no standing to sue. Argued immediately thereafter was No. .278, a suit by the County against the Board for an injunction restraining the Board from spending in excess of $440,000, the -amount appropriated and allocated by the County for a capital improvement of a school project, the “Nike Site School Project” (the Board, it was alleged, had removed $29,000 from the County appropriation for the “Area Secondary School — 1969” ■ and added that amount to the $440,000 it intended to expend for the “Nike Site School Project”), in which Judge Macgill 'held that neither Anne Arundel County nor its controller had -standing to maintain the action for an injunction and dismissed the bill.

I — Number 186 We think that the mandamus action was correctly decided by Judge Melvin and find it appropriate to rely on his opinion -«therein, as follows: “By its amended petition the Board of Education prays that a Writ of Mandamus issue directing the defendants (Anne Arundel County, Maryland; the Controller of Anne Arundel County, Maryland; and the County Council of Anne Arundel County, Maryland) to ‘(a) pay over to the Plaintiff the sum of $54,000 for rent of administration building annex illegally deleted from the school budget and (b) to in■crease the tax levy rate in Anne Arundel County to insure the financing of the same if necessary.’ “The evidence shows that this sum was included by ■the plaintiff in its school budget for the fiscal year 1966-67 for the purpose of paying a year’s rent on an ‘administration building annex’ leased by the plaintiff. The lease agreement provides that the building is ‘to Le used for office purposes for the lessee.’ ⁵¹⁷ “The Board’s school budget, filed as an exhibit with the amended petition, explains the need for the office space in these words : ‘Administration Building Annexes — The administrative and supervisory staffs of the Board of Education increase proportionately as more and more children are enrolled in the county’s schools. The present administration building, used thirty years ago as a high school, has long been inadequate. Several years ago, it became necessary to rent additional space on West Street, and at Legion Avenue to provide facilities adequate to house the Department of Special Services, and the Department of Instruction.

This year, arrangements have been completed to lease a single building sufficiently large to house these two departments, and to relieve somewhat, the crowded conditions that continue to exist in the administration building on Green Street. The Director of Construction and the Supervisors of Maintenance and Operation will continue to maintain offices in the building once known as the Pasadena Elementary School.’ “On March 1, 1966, pursuant to § 68 and 68A of Article 77 of the Maryland Code (1965 Replacement Volume) the Board submitted its budget to the County Executive who failed to include the $54,000 rent money for the administration annex in the proposed county budget which he submitted to the County Council. On May 16, 1966, before the passage of the budget ordinance, the Board, by its President, wrote to the County Council requesting that the $54,000 denied by the County Executive be restored. The Council did not do so, and no funds were appropriated by the county for the requested rent. “The Board’s position in this dispute is that the County Council is under a mandatory duty to provide the rent requested.

The Council’s position is that it is a matter entirely within the Council’s discretion whether or not to do so. ⁵¹⁸ “In support of its position the Board cites § 160 of Article 77 of the Maryland Code (1965 Replacement Volume) which reads as follows: ‘The county board of education shall provide the office of the county superintendent of schools with ample, convenient, and comfortable quarters, and with adequate clerical equipment; and the county superintendent of schools and his professional assistants shall be provided with such means of transportation as are necessary for the effective and efficient performance of their official duties. They shall be reimbursed for all actual and necessary traveling and other expenses and disbursements incurred or made by them in the performance of their official duties, and no part of the traveling or personal expenses of the county superintendent and his professional assistants incurred in the performance of their official duties shall be included in or counted as a part of their annual salary. ‘The board of county commissioners of each county shall not deny any part of the amount requested for any one school year by the county board of education to be raised by local taxation in order to carry out the provisions of this section.’ (Emphasis supplied.) “The Board contends that in leasing the administration building annex it was carrying out its legal duty to provide the ‘office of the county superintendent of schools with ample, convenient, and comfortable quarters, and with adequate clerical equipment/ and that having done so the Council cannot legally deny any part of the amounts requested to pay the rent therefor. The defendants contend that the above-quoted Section 160 does not apply to them at all, but that even if it does apply, the requirement to provide ‘quarters’ for the ‘office of the county superintendent’ simply means that ‘the man who is county superintendent shall be provided with quarters befitting the importance of his post,’ and that since space for the superintendent’s per ⁵¹⁹ sonal office and that of his administrative assistant and one assistant superintendent, with their clerical help, a conference room and lavatories, are already provided elswehere, there is no duty upon the Board to provide more space and consequently no duty upon the Council to provide funds for the additional space. I cannot agree that, within the context of this section, the term ‘office of the superintendent’ is so limited. “Section 159 1 of the Maryland Code, supra, imposes upon the county superintendent responsibility for the ‘administration of the office of the county superintendent of schools.’ (Emphasis supplied.) By law, the county superintendent is the executive officer, the secretary and treasurer of the county board of education.

It is on his advice that the educational policies of the county are determined (§53 and § 54). Through him ‘and his professional assistants’ the county board of education exercises ‘control and supervision over the public school system of the county’ (§ 55). (Emphasis supplied.) It would unduly prolong this opinion to enumerate all the detailed duties and responsibilities of the superintendent which are set forth throughout Article 77. Suffice it to say that they are many and varied and as stated by the Court of Appeals in Bd. of Ed. v. Montgomery County, 237 Md. 191, ‘show the important role the superintendent plays in carrying out the general policies of the State Board of Education.’ “In Bd. of Ed. v. Montgomery County, supra, the Court of Appeals said that Article 77 is ‘part of a carefully conceived legislative structure in which the respective powers and limitations of local school boards, the State Board of Education and county governments are delineated and balanced.’ In that case the Court, after referring to the important role of the county superintendent, held that the professional and clerical as ⁵²⁰ sistants deemed necessary by him, subject to the approval of the Board, are a vital part of the over-all educational policy of the State Board, and under the law the number of such assistants ‘is to be fixed by the Board and is not subject to curtailment by the Council.’ Thus the number of professional and clerical assistants which the superintendent and the Board deem necessary to enable the superintendent to properly carry out the administrative duties ‘of the office of the county superintendent of schools’ is a matter over which the County Council has no control.

As said by the Court, ‘It was for the Legislature to determine in what respects to give final decision as to financial needs to the educational expertise of the Board and when the general appropriating function of the Council was to govern.’ “It is the opinion of this court that, like the sections construed by the Court of Appeals in Bd. of Ed. v. Montgomery County, supra, Section 160 is also part of the ‘carefully conceived legislative structure’ referred to in that case, and that the duty imposed upon the Board .by that section to ‘provide the office of the county superintendent of schools with ample, convenient and comfortable quarters’ includes the duty to provide ‘ample, convenient and comfortable’ office space [‘quarters’] not only for the superintendent himself but for the personnel appointed by the Board to assist him in carrying out the duties of his office. “In this court’s view, if the legislature had intended that the Board’s only duty under Section 160 was to provide the county superintendent with an ‘ample, convenient and comfortable office, with adequate clerical equipment,’ it would have said so in just those terms. The defendants, nevertheless, argue that within the context of Section 160, ‘the office of the county superintendent of schools’ should be construed to mean ‘the county superintendent of schools.’ So construed, Section 160 would read as follows: ‘The county board of education shall provide the county superintendent of ⁵²¹ schools with ample, convenient, and comfortable quarters, and with adequate clerical equipment ;***.’ In this context the word ‘quarters’ could well mean ‘living accommodations.’ See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Needless to say, no one has yet suggested that Section 160 requires the Board to provide the superintendent with such an emolument. “The preceding section, Section 159, imposes upon the county superintendent the duty to ‘nominate, for appointment by the county board of education, all the professional, clerical, statistical and stenographic assistants of the office [of the county superintendent of schools]/ (Emphasis supplied.) This clearly shows the legislature contemplated that the office of the county superintendent of schools would include more than the person who holds the position of county superintendent. Indeed, the defendants virtually concede this to be so when they suggest in their brief that ‘quarters’ for the ‘office’ should be construed to include office space for the superintendent, an administrative assistant and one assistant superintendent, ‘together with an appropriate number of secretaries or stenographers.’ “The difficulty with the defendants’ argument in this regard is that the evidence shows that the ‘assistants of the office’ number many times the number suggested by them.

It is also to be noted that there is no evidence that the ‘quarters’ provided by the Board in the administration annex building are anything more or less than ‘ample, convenient and comfortable’ as required by Section 160, or that they are being used by anyone who is not assisting the county superintendent in carrying out the manifold duties required of him by law. This being so the County Council is specifically required by the terms of the section to furnish the necessary funds to pay for the quarters so provided. “But as mentioned above, the defendants contend that Section 160 does not control the issue presented ⁵²² by this case. Instead, they say, Section 68A controls. This section, passed at the 1965 Session of the General Assembly, reads as follows: ‘In Anne Arundel County, the following provisions shall apply notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this article.

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