Putting Maryland?s fiscal house in order will have to wait was the message from the General Assembly on Monday, as lawmakers approved a final version of the $30 billion state budget, with a limited number of trims from Gov. Martin O?Malley?s proposed increases.
To balance the budget, O?Malley plans to spend much of the state?s rainy day fund to pay for increases for education and health care, but there will be no reserve funds to tap next year when a structural deficit of at least $1.5 billion is projected.
“Time is a luxury we will not have next year,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Norman Conway, D-Wicomico, told his colleagues. “Finding solutions cannot wait till next January. We must start working on our fiscal problem this interim.”
Predictions were as dire from Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chairman Ulysses Currie, D-Prince George?s. “Revenues continue to soften,” Currie told the Senate. “The hardest work remains ahead of us.”
“This fiscal crisis is real,” Senate President Thomas Mike Miller said, predicting that next year?s budget would include tax increases, slot machine revenues and budget cuts. “We cannot wait till next session,” Miller said, repeating his plea for a special session this fall to raise taxes. If that doesn?t happen, budget cuts and tax hike proposals would “suck the air out of everything else” in the regular session beginning in January.
Miller said residents would “rather have some tax increases” when they hear the kind of budget cuts that will be needed. He did not blame O?Malley for not taking action. “He wanted to keep his campaign promises,” Miller said, and focus on making government more efficient.
“I wouldn?t doubt that we have a $2 billion problem” next year, said Sen. Lowell Stoltzfus, one of seven GOP senators to vote against the budget. “We know that sales tax revenues are down,” which The Examiner reported on Saturday.
“We didn?t do our job,” Stoltzfus said. “We should have done more cutting.”
The Senate and House both rejected Republican efforts to trim this year?s budget increase by delaying implementation of close to $600 million in additional spending for K-12 education.
