Gov. Martin O’Malley is proposing cuts of more than $45 million in state aid to the Maryland suburbs as he slashes a total of $736 million to help balance the state’s budget.
He would cut $22.5 million in aid to Montgomery County and $22.7 million to Prince George’s County. The bulk of the cuts, about $30 million between both counties, would be for road maintenance. The rest of the cuts would go toward health and police services, and community college funding.
The governor also wants to shut down state government for five days and lay off 205 state employees, out of about 67,000.
“These are difficult times, and we have to make the decisions necessary in order to protect our priorities,” O’Malley said at a news conference Tuesday.
Service
Montgomery
Prince George’s
Road maintenance
$13.7 million
$16.4 million
Police aid
$5.3 million
$2.5 million
Local health
$1.6 million
$2.7 million
Community colleges
$1.9 million
$1.2 million
He is expected to present his cuts Wednesday to the Board of Public Works, which has to approve them. The board, made up of O’Malley, Comptroller Peter Franchot and state Treasurer Nancy Kopp, approved his first round of spending reductions, about $280 million, last month.
Overall, O’Malley is proposing $210 million in cuts to local governments. Baltimore City and Baltimore County, both of which receive a large proportion of state aid, are in line for some of the biggest cuts, at $35 million for the city and $23 million for the county.
The governor did not make cuts to state “disparity grants,” which are distributed to poorer counties, saying the move would have disproportionately affected the state’s poor.
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said he thought the governor had been fair in his distribution of cuts, and added that the county was in a “relatively reasonable” position to cope.
“It still hurts,” Leggett told The Examiner. “We are in a very tight position to absorb cuts.”
As an example, Leggett said the county may have to close public access to some police stations at night — an idea he floated earlier this year but the County Council rejected — to handle the $5.3 million reduction in state police aid.
Leggett said it was still too early to say whether the proposed state cuts would lead to furloughs or more layoffs of county employees. He told the County Council last month that those measures may be necessary to cope with the reduction in state aid and a projected $370 million budget gap.
O’Malley’s proposed cuts includes furloughs of up to 10 days for thousands of state employees. The furloughs would save $75 million and prevent 1,500 layoffs, the governor’s office said.
He said the state would continue to look at ways to trim state government, as the state faces a $1 billion budget shortfall during the next fiscal year.
