Gov. Martin O’Malley on Tuesday ordered 67,000 Maryland state employees to take unpaid leave in the next six months as a budget crisis worsened.
The $34 million the state will keep in its coffers from the move will do little, though, to stanch the fiscal hemorrhaging in Annapolis.
Maryland’s revenue board officially forecast that the state would receive $415 million less this fiscal year than predicted just three months ago, and fiscal 2010 revenues were predicted to be basically flat next year, rising just .5 percent. The revenue board is predicting the slowest growth in personal income since 1954.
Because of these dire forecasts — which could produce a deficit next year of $1.9 billion if mandated programs are not trimmed back — the state Spending Affordability Committee on Tuesday night recommended state spending go up 0.7 percent. Five Republicans on the committee tried to keep state spending flat, but Democrats rejected the move.
O’Malley had been considering furloughs for state workers, but on Tuesday officially ordered almost 70,000 of them to take off two to five days of unpaid furlough. Everyone but those in 24/7 jobs such as law enforcement, corrections and hospitals will be forced to take off the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s Day, with the pay cut spread over the next six months. Those making more than $40,000 a year must take more days off, depending on their pay scale.
Senate President Thomas Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch said they were ordering the legislative staff to take similar furlough days, and said they themselves were writing checks back to the state and were hoping the elected lawmakers would do the same. Under the Maryland Constitution, elected officials such as the governor and legislators may not have their pay cut or raised during their terms.
O’Malley said he already had written his own check to return five days’ worth of his annual $150,000 pay.
O’Malley said while the revenue numbers were “not unexpected, it is fairly unprecedented,” particularly the speed in which the downturn hit. A month ago, he was expecting to be short $200 million in revenue, but that is now $400 million.
The governor already has reduced planned growth in spending by what he calculates as more than $2 billion in the last two years. But the budget has still grown.
“What we have to brace ourselves for are virtually no increases to anything and decreases to quite a number of things,” O’Malley said.
Other than transportation, O’Malley said that 85 percent of the state budget is spent on health, education and public safety, so that is where the cuts would have to come.
“We will strive to do our very best to maintain the core mission,” he said, but the state may not be able to expand Medicaid health insurance coverage, devote more money to the Chesapeake Bay or increase school aid.
