Puddester v. Felton

CATHELL, Judge. There are times when tenacity is a virtue. This is not one of those times. Reginald M. Felton, Dr. Alan Cheung, Blair G. Ewing, Beatrice B. Gordon, Ana Sol Gutierrez, Nancy J. King, Mona M. Signer, and George H. Margolies, appellees, who, according to appellants, are individuals who also comprise the Montgomery County Board of Education and its staff director, filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, against Frederick W. Puddester, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Budget & Management, and the Central Collection Unit, appellants.

The present appellees seek the same relief in respect to a certain sum in controversy as has been previously rejected by this Court in State v. Board of Education of Montgomery County, 346 Md. 633 , 697 A.2d 1334 (1997). ³³⁸ We need not take the time to describe the procedural posture of the present case. The procedural posture is not relevant to our determination, in that no cause of action exists in the first instance. Neither will we take the time to state once again the factual basis for this dispute. We have already done so.

The facts are as given in our prior decision, supra. Nor shall we explain for the third time the statutory scheme and the relationships between the State and counties at issue here. We have done that twice before. 1 In both respects, once should have been enough. 2 Presumably, it is the parties’ perception, or at least their stated position, that our prior opinions were based completely and solely on the presence in those cases of an inferior unit of state government, a county Board of Education, that was seeking to recover against a superior governmental entity, the State, under a statute that limited remedies. If that is the perception of appellees, and appellees’ employer, they are mistaken.

This case is not, and never has been, about standing. The primary holding of those cases, which we thought we had explained in the second case, was that under those circumstances there was, and under the present circumstances there is, no cause of action in the first instánce no matter whether the complaining party is a Board of Education, its constituent individuals, or county taxpayers. We said distinctly in Board of Education of Montgomery County, 346 Md. at 640, 644 , 697 A.2d at 1337, 1339-40 , that: [T]he remedy provided for in former Art. 73B, § 39(e), covered the dispute, that the statutory remedy was intended to be the exclusive remedy, and that “the General Assembly ³³⁹ obviously intended that there be no judicial review of the § 39(e) administrative decision.” and Neither [Criminal Injuries Compensation Board v.] Gould, [ 273 Md. 486 , 331 A.2d 55 (1975),] nor any of the cases cited in Gould , held that the General Assembly, in providing for an administrative resolution of intra-governmental disputes such as are involved in the present case, could not validly preclude ordinary judicial review of the final administrative decision. We explained the distinction as to disputes between governmental entities by describing the character of the monies involved: “Washington County is an integral part of the