Why did the tower at a Class D airport not set me up with flight following on the ground? On a trip I had a few days ago I had contacted the ground controller at Santa Fe Municipal (KSAF), a Class D airport, to arrange for a VFR departure to the southwest and requested VFR flight following.  The ground controller said he couldn't arrange flight following and that I had to arrange that with Albuquerque Center while in the air.  I was taught (and encouraged) that you could get flight following while on the ground at a towered airport.  The tower was not busy at the time as I was the only plane talking to them and the airport has its own radar which I know the controllers can see in the tower.  In fact I had forgot to reset the transponder to 1200 and they called me out on that after I took off.  Is there any particular reason why they could not set up flight following for me on the ground?

EDIT:  The FAA has a program where they can contract out a control tower at an airport to a private company.  I just looked at this FAA website and Santa Fe is listed as a contract tower.  Could this be the reason why the tower could not arrange VFR flight following?
Some towers have a data terminal that allows them to create and update flight plans*; these are typically the ones busy enough to have a separate Clearance Delivery frequency, but you'll find exceptions both ways.

Other towers do not and would have to call a facility that does, which takes that controller away from actually controlling traffic; these towers tend to be the ones with less traffic and lower staffing (maybe only one person on duty), so they're usually not going to do that for VFR requests.

However, all Approach and Center facilities have the ability to create and update flight plans* at every radar position, so it's usually no problem for them to set you up once you're airborne and talking to them directly.

(* VFR Flight Plans are not accessible by US ATC; when you get Flight Following, it is actually put in the computer as an IFR flight plan with a VFR altitude.)