Preserving and Accessing Maryland's History
Testimony  before the Subcommittee on Public Safety and Administration
of the Appropriations Committee
 Maryland House of Delegates

by Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse, Jr., State Archivist
February 3, 2000

 on the Proposed Budget for the Maryland State Archives for FY 2001








Madam Chairman, Members of the Committee:

My name is Ed Papenfuse, Archivist of the State of Maryland.  With me this afternoon is Chris Allan, Deputy Archivist.

There are three issues addressed by Mr. Fischer in his budget analysis that I would like to respond to in some detail, but first I would like to express our appreciation to him for a most thorough and expert analysis in which we concur in all but two points.

We agree that our vision statement needs to be more concise and explicit and will make every effort next year to meet his concerns. We have been so much engaged in seeking non-General Fund support for our legal mandates that we have failed to be clear in explaining the central mission of an Archives which is to preserve and explain the value of  the records entrusted to our care by law.  Indeed the hardest task before us as professionals is finding the most cost-effective ways to enhance the public's understanding of the value of those records.  Generally we always lack funding for proper appraisal, description and preservation of records we identify as having permanent value, which brings me to the two points of disagreement that we have with the analysis.

We would like to request that the Committee not concur in the reduction of $20,000 in contractual monies.  We do understand that that amount is based upon our difficulties last year in hiring programming and technical staff, but what is requested this year is for intern staff for which we will have no difficulty in recruiting and for which we will need the money at the very beginning of the fiscal year.  That $20,000 is for staff to work on Maryland Legal History On Line and the records preservation initiatives in the budget (the Martenet and Phillips collections) which should be in place and working on July 1, 2000, assuming the funding is left in the budget.

We would also like to respectfully request that the whole matter of the Archives paying rent for space used to generate income for its legally mandated functions be tabled and the whole amount removed from the budget for FY2001, until the questions raised by Mr. Fischer are addressed by the Department of Budget and Management, the Department of General Services, and the Archives' counsel.  The law permitting us to raise money for legally mandated functions does not appear to permit the use of such funds for building maintenance, and it also appears that the legislative intent of the law appropriating funds for a separately maintained Archives building was for General Funds to be used for maintenance.  After requests to appropriate personnel, we finally were able to obtain a copy, this morning, of the Space Management policy upon which the assessment was based.  Apart from the legal issue of required notice upon occupancy (we began occupying our building in 1986 and received no such notice) and, apart from the question of whether it was ever intended that the Archives should charge itself rent for income producing activities, the application as presented in the budget before you of the formula stated in the manual appears to be in error.   The formula is "net square feet occupied [by non-general fund income producing programs] x Rental Rate [said to be $11.99 per square foot] times [the] % of Federal, Special or other non-General Funds = total rent."   By that formula we have 2,235 sf allocated to income producing programs and 29% of our total appropriation is from Special Funds.   That means that if the formula is applied to the Archives the most we should be appropriating from Special Funds to pay rent is no more than $7,771.31.  [2,235 x $11.99 x .29%].    If it is decided that rent should be paid for space used for revenue generating projects at the Archives, we would also like to request that language be inserted in the appropriation bill that requires such monies to be applied to maintenance on the Hall of Records building exclusively.

With regard to the ways in which we are adding value to our understanding of Maryland history by preserving and describing records within the context of our pioneering efforts to bring reliable information to the public through our world wide web site, we have brought along some examples and handouts which I would like to refer to informally and then make ourselves available for any questions you may have.