Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley said he would not pledge to avoid raising taxes if he became governor and would pay for the ambitious “blueprint for change” in state services he?s been touting for months in his campaign by seeking federal funding and state legislature help.
In a “major announcement” on a sunny Columbus Day overlooking the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill, O?Malley unveiled his “Action Plan for Maryland Families,” but almost the entire plan already was released in parts over the last few months. The 10 principles that summarize the plan are a routine part of O?Malley?s standard stump speech, repeated several times.
Asked what was new in the event that included campaign workers and several members of the Legislature, Sen. George Della quipped, “It?s Monday.”
O?Malley was vague in responding to a reporter?s question about how he planned to “pay for all this.”
“We will pay for this through compromise, through consensus,” he said. His proposal for increasing mass transit, including the Red and Green lines of the Baltimore Metro and the Purple Line in the Washington suburbs “will require federal help.”
“We might have a federal government more willing to do that in 29 days,” O?Malley said, suggesting Democrats might retake control of the U.S. Senate and House.
He said additional federal funding would also be needed to increase drug treatment programs, but plans to make college tuition more affordable were not necessarily that expensive.
The mayor said the increased funding for school construction he backed could be done partly through appropriations and partly through increasing state bond debt.
He refused to pledge he would not increase taxes if elected because “that would not be responsible in a time of national threat.”
Gov. Robert Ehrlich had pledged not to increase sales or income taxes, but actually had increased the state property tax and raised fees for vehicle registration and sewer and septic systems, amounting to $3 billion over four years. Ehrlich sought to introduce slot machines as a major source of state revenue for education, but O?Malley repeated his stance that slot machines should only be permitted in limited numbers at racetracks as a way to preserve Maryland?s horse industry.
