Comptroller Peter Franchot grilled Gov. Martin?s O?Malley?s budget secretary for more than an hour at the Board of Public Works meeting over $75 million in budget cuts the governor proposed and Franchot eventually approved.
Franchot said Wednesday that he hadn?t seen the detailed cuts in state agencies until just before the meeting began.
“How can we do anything other than be a rubber stamp?” said Franchot, who serves with State Treasurer Nancy Kopp on the powerful board the governor chairs.
The General Assembly told O?Malley to make $50 million in budget cuts as part of its deal to repeal the new sales tax on computer services.
Franchot said only three or four of the budget reductions were actually “real cuts” in spending.
O?Malley took particular umbrage when Franchot said most of the cuts were “innocuous.”
“That?s not true,” O?Malley shot back, calling the cuts “painful.”
The governor said he had reduced spending $1.8 billion during his 16 months in office. In the latest round of cuts, only 11 state jobs ? out of about 45,000 ? were eliminated. Most of the 700 jobs already cut were vacant positions.
Kopp said the cuts were occurring in such a way that the public didn?t notice what public services were being cut and what agencies were understaffed.
“My neighbors and I don?t see it very clearly,” Kopp said.
Franchot particularly was critical of a $2.5 million cut in state aid to private colleges and universities, while $4.5 million in reductions for state universities was made up by other funding sources. Private colleges in Maryland will get $56 million in the coming year, half of it going for need-based aid to Maryland residents.
O?Malley has funded a tuition freeze at state universities for three years, but tuitions at private colleges have increased 5 percent to 6 percent a year, said Tina Bjarekull, president of the Maryland Independent Colleges and Universities Association.
Franchot also objected to a $6.1 million cut to level fund cancer research and tobacco cessation programs paid out of the Cigarette Restitution Fund.
