Elected county officials from across Maryland came to the State House on Thursday to support the governor?s entire revenue-raising package, including slots machines, but none of them would say whether they would accept slots in their own jurisdictions.
They were adamant in theiropposition to anything like the $866 million in local funding cuts Gov. Martin O?Malley said he would make if his tax increases fail to pass.
“Those cuts will have serious consequences,” said Frederick County Commissioner Jan Gardner, president of the Maryland Association of Counties. “That pain will be very real. … Families will suffer, the elderly will suffer, the children will suffer, the future will suffer. It will not be a pretty picture.”
“It will cost Marylanders more,” Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith said. The counties must rely on the property tax to make up lost state aid, and that will wipe out the governor?s proposed 3-cent cut in the state property tax. “That affects everybody.”
Smith said “local government doesn?t have the ability” to raise the corporate income tax and the sales tax or make the personal income tax more progressive, as O?Malley proposes. County residents “will wind up paying more tax,” he said.
Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett praised the governor for offering “a fair and comprehensive solution” to the state?s budget problems, and he said the counties would suffer by “shifting responsibility” for education and public safety.
“We can?t use this as a scare tactic,” Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said of the possibility of reducing funds.
But “citizens need to understand” the consequences of cutting local aid, she added. “It could take us back two, three steps” in the progress made in the city.
“It is very easy to be against tax increases in the abstract,” Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said. “We?re all making progress. The people in Howard County do not want their library system eroded. It?s time for the structural deficit to be solved at the state level.”
Carroll County Commissioner Julia Gouge, one of two Republicans at the event, worried about the effect on senior citizens if counties had to raise property taxes to make up for aid county. “We cannot continually afford not to be getting our fair share.”
Asked about accepting slots in their counties, Gardner said, “We don?t know enough what the governor?s proposal is.”
Smith said they have yet to see the actual slot legislation.
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