Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley had Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch over for breakfast last week, trying to reconcile a deep rift between the two veteran Democratic legislative leaders. O’Malley wants them to agree to not one but two special sessions to address taxes and gambling — the same issues that caused the regular session to end in chaos on April 9. But Maryland taxpayers should pray that O’Malley’s awkward attempt at detente does not succeed.
Even one special session would be a waste of tax dollars. The $35.4 billion fiscal 2013 budget that passed by default while Miller and Busch were duking it out contains a $700 million increase in state spending. As Del. Herb McMillan, R-Annapolis, points out, this “doomsday” budget does not raid the Program Open Space, Bay Restoration or Transportation trust funds. It reduces Maryland’s structural budget deficit by 51 percent by balancing revenue with general fund expenditures for the first time in years. Even without a special session, spending for K-12 education will increase by $199 million next year and higher education will get $82.4 million more.
The only thing the so-called “doomsday” budget cuts back on is O’Malley’s increasingly unaffordable and unsustainable wish list. This is why the governor wants to drag feuding legislators back to Annapolis twice — so they can pass tax increases that didn’t make it through in the regular session. By decoupling his tax increases from the more controversial National Harbor gambling question, O’Malley hopes he can ram them through, then let Miller and Busch butt heads again over gambling at a second special session later this summer.
Democratic legislators were shaken to the core when political novice John Delaney, running on a platform of fiscal conservatism, upset Senate Majority Leader Rob Garagiola in a closed Democratic primary for Congress, in a district Miller had personally gerrymandered for his Senate colleague. Meanwhile, county officials fear O’Malley will use a special session to offload responsibility for teachers pensions into their laps.
Maryland already has a balanced budget that is grounded in fiscal realities. O’Malley should drop his cynical effort to engineer two unnecessary special sessions just so he can raise taxes on hardworking Marylanders.
