BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WBFF) \u2014 Some community members in Baltimore County are calling for more transparency after concerns related to the Rocky Point Golf Course Clubhouse renovation have surfaced.<\/p>\n
“What we really have here is an issue of checks and balances, separation of power in a county budget process,” said Fred Homan, a former Baltimore County Administrator.<\/p>\n
The Rocky Point project includes renovations to the clubhouse to create a new grill room, outdoor patio seating and a banquet space. Last year in the budget message, County Council Chair Mike Ertel said the Council unanimously voted to cut $6.6 million from the Capital budget – a reduction related to the planned renovation. At the time, County Council members had concerns about tax dollars being spent on the project, saying it should be funded by the County Revenue Authority instead.<\/p>\n
“Especially when the Council \u2013 the legislative body that generally must approve County contracts, grants, and other fiscal spending \u2013 was given no oversight role in the previous Administration\u2019s unilateral approval of the funding,” Councilman Ertel said in the budget address.<\/p>\n
The funding that was cut came from the General Government Capital Improvement Fund Appropriation, not a specific line item related to the renovations.<\/p>\n
However, while Councilman Ertel, and community members like Homan argue the funding for this project was not properly approved by the County Council, and say it was the result of decisions made by then County Executive Johnny Olszewski, County officials dispute those claims, saying the County Council did approve the funds for the project in the FY 2025 budget.<\/p>\n
According to a Baltimore County spokesperson, “Baltimore County has paid approximately $2.4 million of the previously authorized $6.6 million project out of the capital budget for funds dedicated to the revenue authority.” County officials pointed to a line item in the budget titled Revenue Authority Capital Projects and Maintenance.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for now Representative Olszewski said, “The county council approved every budget submitted by Congressman Olszewski during his time as County Executive.”<\/p>\n
The back and forth continued Monday night, with Ertel saying, “The Council did not previously approve the Rocky Point project. So what was in the budget was from 2018 through 2025, there was some line item in the Budget for 5th District parking garages and then later there were words added to the end,” Ertel said. “The exact term escapes me, but basically it was collaborative 5th district parking garages and collaborative efforts.”<\/p>\n
“And we found out that the Rocky Point Golf Course was part of the money that was being allocated. And that’s when we said, we don’t want money, public money, taxpayer money going towards… It’s a public golf course, but there’s a revenue authority that generates revenue. And our thought was, if the golf courses generate revenue, why isn’t the revenue authority paying for a clubhouse. Why are the taxpayers?” Ertel added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WBFF) \u2014 Some community members in Baltimore County are calling for more transparency after concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-679342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}