JAY – A legal opinion received by the School Committee backs the panel’s right to buy software, if money for it was in a general school budget article that was approved by voters.

The committee had asked its attorney if selectmen could refuse to sign a warrant authorizing disbursement of funds to pay for the software. The money is in the school budget.

The legal opinion wasn’t needed Monday because a survey of select board members found a majority consensus approved paying for the software.

Prior to the June budget vote and after selectmen received a legal opinion, selectmen asked the school committee to remove the money budgeted to provide payroll and accounts payable services and a school software program since the school department is a town department.

After discussion between town officials and school officials, school committee members say they deleted $48,500 from the budget that would have covered SAD 36 personnel. But they left the money in to enter into a three-year lease-purchase to buy the software package that would allow the department to submit financial reports more efficiently to the state.

For this year, it was agreed, town finance personnel would continue to provide the payroll and payable services with the only cost being for the actual paper checks and stamps.

Selectmen told school committee members Thursday they thought the software was eliminated from the budget, pending whether or not Jay schools would consolidate with Livermore and Livermore Falls.

Though selectmen objected to the purchase Thursday, school committee members voted to approve the lease-purchase agreement.

School committee members attended Monday’s selectmen’s meeting to see if the board would sign the warrant to pay for the software prior to purchase.

A copy of the school committee’s legal opinion was given to Town Manager Ruth Marden Monday night but she hadn’t had a chance to read it thoroughly by Tuesday morning and she intended to send it to the town attorney.

The opinion the school committee sought from Brann & Isaacson states that the Maine Municipal Association’s Municipal Officers Manual specifically addresses the authority of municipal officers to refuse to sign a disbursement warrant for school expenditures.

“The MMA Manual states that, as the municipality’s chief executive officers, ‘the municipal officers have the authority to question and refuse to authorize any municipal school disbursement, which was not authorized by the town meeting,'” attorney Daniel Stockford wrote.

“When general school budget articles are approved, however, municipal officers have an obligation to sign a disbursement warrant authorizing disbursement for items that are within the scope of the approved budget: ‘Since most school budgets simply use basic statutory articles, it would not be legal for the municipal officers to refuse to authorize a disbursement on the basis that the voters hadn’t approved the expenditure.”

In this case, the voters approved the budget that the school committee proposed, and the budgeted amounts included funds for purchase of the new software, Stockford wrote.

“In these circumstances, the Board of Selectmen does not have legal authority to refuse to authorize disbursement of the budgeted and approved funds,” he stated.

Stockford also included the relevant language from Chapter 5 of the MMA Municipal Officers Manual: “The law also states, that for municipal schools, the municipal officers must review and approve all school disbursements, just as they would review the warrant for other municipal expenditures, even though the school committee has already approved and signed them.”

Generally, their focus is on whether the disbursement will cause an overdraft.

“The municipal officers could incur personal financial liability for a school overdraft, just as they could for an overdraft from a different budget line item,” according to Stockford.

If the municipal officers no longer want to be involved in the approval of school disbursement warrants, they may approve a policy to that effect.