Kopp warns of deferred maintenance crisis for Md. facilities

ANNAPOLIS — Maryland officials could face a multibillion-dollar crisis when it comes to maintaining its buildings and other facilities.

That’s the concern raised Wednesday by Treasurer Nancy Kopp during a meeting of the Board of Public Works. Kopp said the total of deferred maintenance requests is as much as $3.5 billion.

“At some point this state is going to have to look at the crumbling infrastructure,” said Kopp. You never hear the term infrastructure without the adjective ‘crumbling’ these days, and the deferred maintenance across the state in both schools and the state. It’s something we’re going to have to deal with.”

Kopp made her comments following Comptroller Peter Franchot’s response to criticisms by Baltimore City Schools officials that blamed the Board of Public Works for deferral of critical projects.

“Now that takes some major league fact changing,” Franchot said. “Fire safety, rooms leaking, all because this board held back $5 million in funds to force them to put in air conditioning.”

In 2016, the three-person board, led by Gov. Larry Hogan and Franchot, voted to withhold $5 million from the city and $10 million from Baltimore County as part of a demand that the two jurisdictions complete the installation of air conditioning in all classrooms. The board restored the money to both jurisdictions nine months later after both presented plans to the board — promises Hogan and Franchot now say have not been kept.

Hogan, as governor, has pushed to control bond spending, citing growing repayment costs as a result of state borrowing under then-Gov. Martin O’Malley during the recession.

“City maintenance was not helped by cutting $5 million, but I understand the intent to have all the rooms with room air conditioners,” said Kopp. “I think it’s very important to note that we are purposely holding our debt down, and work on both the state buildings and the local schools is being slowed down.”

Kopp said every state agency as well as the university system and state highways have concerns. She said she hoped a new computerized catalogue of needs being created by the Department of General Services “will bring all the agencies together, so at last we can have a picture of what we’re really facing.”

Currently, the Department of General Services is in its first year of using a new cloud-based system to manage and track maintenance issues at 54 state-owned office buildings.

Nick Cavey, a spokesman for the department, said the system is similar to those used in the building management industry.

“With the information gathered along the way, users can run reports to spot trends and patterns in building maintenance.  These patterns can, in turn, be analyzed to identify future maintenance needs and ultimately help reduce emergencies,” said Cavey. “The system will become more useful over time as it accumulates more actual maintenance data.”

Under Hogan, Maryland has spent about $1 billion on bond-funded projects each year. About one-third of that goes to state aid for school construction and renovation requests. School systems are now required to have maintenance plans as a result of state mandates.

Kopp called the infrastructure concerns “a serious problem.”

“We are all concerned about maintenance of the school buildings, obviously, around the state, including the city, and of our state buildings,” said Kopp. “I understand from (the Department of Budget and Management that requests from state facilities is $3.5 billion, most of which is for deferred maintenance.”

“Obviously there’s not enough money to go around,” she said.