However, how he gets us there is...interesting. It starts with the comment that the Office of Management and Budget has allowed the city to take 3%. This is true. They would also, one presumes, allow the city to take 1% or anything in between.
The schools have cited M.G.L. ch. 44 sec. 53A regarding the acceptance of grant funds by municipalities and school committees. Allocation of grants (aka: how they're spent) is governed by the city council for municipal funds, by the school committee for school funds. Solicitor Moore argues (in his final paragraph):
Section 53A does not govern the allocation of costs against federal grants. That subject, as discussed above, is governed by federal law and is made a part of every federal grant accepted.This would be fine, except A) there is no federal law above cited (there's a budget circular, as I mentioned, which just accepts things as they are on the ground, making no arguments one way or the other), and B) the opening lines of M.G.L. ch.44 sec.53A read:
An officer or department of any city or town, or of any regional school or other district, may accept grants or gifts of funds from the federal government and from a charitable foundation, a private corporation, or an individual, or from the commonwealth, a county or municipality or an agency thereof...One assumes that there's an attempting being made here to split the specific allocation of fees off from the general allocation. That sure doesn't seem to be what the Mass General Law actually says, though.
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I would fight it. "in the case of any grant or gift given for educational purposes may expend said funds for the purposes of such grant or gift with the approval of the school committee." Later in there it says, " the treasurer, upon the request of the school committee, shall pay from the General Fund of such municipality compensation for services rendered and goods supplied to such federal grant programs, such payments to be made no later than ten days after the rendition of such services or the supplying of such goods."
So what does that mean? The School Committee is the governing authority for how the grant should be expended. The municipal government does not have authority to confiscate a portion of the grant money. I don't see anything in there that says the School Committee can't choose to pay administrative costs with grant money, but many grants specifically spell out what activities can and can't be funded. At any rate the money can only be expended at the approval of the School Committee. Fight it.
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