Maryland’s highest court ruled Tuesday that Montgomery officials had the authority to use taxpayer money and employees on county time to campaign for passage of a 2012 ballot proposition that limited certain collective-bargaining rights for police.

The decision by the Court of Appeals of Maryland upholds a 2015 ruling by the Court of Special Appeals that County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and public information director Patrick Lacefield did not violate Maryland election law by waging a campaign in favor of the proposition, known as Question B.

In a 39-page decision, the Court of Appeals said the campaign activities “were an authorized and proper manifestation of legitimate government speech.”

Leggett authorized Lacefield to spend up to $200,000 on mailings, bus ads, bumper stickers and other outreach to voters. County employees campaigned during work hours, according to testimony in Montgomery Circuit Court. Voters approved Question B — upholding the elimination of certain collective bargaining — by nearly 60 to 40 percent.

[County rolls back police union bargaining rights]

The proposition asked voters to eliminate a provision of county law that allowed the police union to raise issues at the bargaining table that went beyond the usual scope of salary, pension and working conditions. It permitted discussion of the effects that a range of administrative decisions might have on officers. Such “effects bargaining,” over issues such as an email system for officers, hampered the county’s ability to manage the department, officials contended. No other county employee union was allowed to pursue effects bargaining.

In 2011, after the County Council passed a bill striking effects bargaining from the books, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35 (FOP) gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the 2012 ballot.

The FOP filed suit after the 2012 election, asserting that Leggett and Lacefield abused their power. Circuit Court Judge Ronald B. Rubin agreed that the two officials had overstepped the boundary separating “communications that inform, and communications that proselytize and try to influence the outcome of an election contest.”

In his decision, Rubin noted that county-operated Ride On buses carried ads saying, “Who Do YOU Think Should Run the County Police?”

But Rubin rebuffed the union’s bid to hold Leggett and Lacefield personally liable for damages, ruling that they were entitled to “qualified immunity” because they acted in good faith on the advice of county and state attorneys.

[Court: MoCo lawful in limiting police bargaining]

The county and FOP both appealed aspects of the ruling, which was overturned by the Court of Special Appeals last year. It said that Rubin overlooked recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that ruled it is within a government’s speech rights to campaign as the county did.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the appeals court agreed, but it cautioned that these speech rights are not unconditional. Ballot measures that don’t have a direct bearing on “the operations or programs of county government in any material way” or that deal with “disputed principles of social policy” could not be the subjects of county-funded campaigns, it said.

“That kind of advocacy, we agree, is not a proper function of government and is not within the permissible ambit of government speech,” the court said.

An FOP spokesman, asked for comment, said the union was reviewing the decision.