The $348 million in cuts to the current state budget, approved by the Board of Public Works on Wednesday, is only the beginning.
State agencies have been asked to “give us another round of 3 percent reductions,” Budget Secretary Eloise Foster said.
And three-quarters of the budget cuts — about $234 million — will carry over into fiscal 2010, reducing a potential $1 billion deficit, she said.
“The actions today will bring us down to $735 million,” Foster said, though legislative analysts have pegged the shortfall at $300 million more than that amount.
Still on the chopping block are six-day furloughs for state workers that still must be discussed with unions representing the employees, said Gov. Martin O’Malley, Public Works Board member.
“There’s going to be a greater need for services and fewer employees,” said Pat Moran, state director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“We hope private contractors are held to the same scrutiny” as state workers.
Reductions in health and human services hurt enough that people with disabilities, as well as members of other nonprofits, demonstrated outside the Legislative Services Building in Annapolis where the cuts were to be made.
O’Malley talked to the demonstrators before the meeting.
“Sometimes in the journey of progress, it’s three steps up and one step back,” O’Malley said.
“Bear with us. We’re going to try to get through this with as little pain as possible all around. We’re going to be doing better than we have in the past.”
The demonstrators were opposing cuts in reimbursement to providers of services to people with developmental disabilities and community health services.
The reductions will affect people, such as Matthew Plantz, of Howard County, who is aided with his multiple disabilities by ARC, which provides services for people with disabilities.
“We’re already in a field that doesn’t pay very well,” Plantz said.
The reductions amount to balancing the budget “on the backs of people with disabilities,” he said.
“It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not good.”
O’Malley said later that despite cuts to providers, including nursing homes and hospitals, their reimbursement is still increasing this year by $47 million, a 7 percent increase.
Part of the reality of the economic downtown that is reducing state revenues and forcing budget cuts is “more and more of our neighbors are going to be [in] need of our safety net,” O’Malley said.
Neil Bergsman, director of the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute, which tracks the state budget for nonprofits, said, “By and large, the governor did a good job of trying to maintain the safety net.”
For instance, O’Malley did not cut substance abuse programs that had been targeted on the original list submitted to him, Bergsman said.
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