Local officials are asking the state to review a formula that would force the county to increase its funding to the Worcester County Health Department by $6 million.
Worcester County Government Center in Snow Hill
File photo
By Charlene Sharpe, Associate Editor
Local officials are asking the state to review a formula that would force the county to increase its funding to the Worcester County Health Department by $6 million.
The Worcester County Commissioners are supporting Health Officer Becky Jones as she asks Maryland Department of Health officials to review the local contribution required by the Core Funding program. If a change isn’t made, Worcester County will have to increase its Core Funding to the health department from $5 million to $11 million.
“We would like to be held harmless and have a continuation of what was agreed upon for this year,” Jones said.
Jones met with the commissioners earlier this month to update them on her efforts to find out more about the match required for the Core Funding program. She said she was asking for their approval to request that the state review the current match required. She said she was grateful for the Core Funding the health department received but that she was concerned about the required local match, as Worcester County is now expected to increase its match from nearly $5.1 million in Fiscal Year 2024 to a little more than $11 million in fiscal 2025. She said she’d searched the Code of Maryland Regulations to see how the match amount was determined.
“It’s pretty clear in [the code] how they determine funding for Core,” she said. “The match, however, we’ve had difficulty finding in regulation.”
She said Worcester County currently provided the second highest match amount in the state, behind only Prince George’s County. She said the only reference to the match she’d been able to find was a sentence in a 1996 presentation that indicated the match was tied to a county’s mean property value.
“Is property value really the best representation of our county as a whole or are there other metrics that should be looked at to define and determine what each individual county should be responsible for for their match?” she said. “These are questions we have posed to the state.”
She said in absence of a defined match formula, her department was asking the state to hold the county harmless for the proposed increased and to give Worcester a continuation of the agreed upon fiscal 2024 match.
The commissioners voted unanimously to support Jones in her efforts to maintain the fiscal 2024 match level.
“I think it should be noted you have taken the lead statewide on this much to the consternation of some of your colleagues across the state,” Commissioner Chip Bertino said. “It’s very much appreciated here at home.”