Prince George’s County is facing a projected $60 million budget deficit for fiscal 2008 and $100 million shortfall in 2009, according to a letter by County Executive Jack Johnson to the head of the county’s delegation in Annapolis.
The letter, obtained by The Examiner just after it was sent Thursday urges the General Assembly, to relieve the county. In the letter, Johnson said he would soon announce cuts to keep the budget balanced in light of the climbing deficit.
He also wrote that he expected to make public a plan to fix the years-long crises in the county’s hospitals in the next two weeks. That plan is likely to include tossing out Dimensions Healthcare Systems, which currently runs the system.
“We all recognize the need to find a long-term strategy that will involve the eventual acquisition by a new entity,” Johnson wrote. A 2005 report examining the county’s ailing hospitals found that Dimensions had grossly mismanaged the system and suggested the nonprofit be replaced.
A drooping economy, particularly in the housing market, has already cut revenues by $38.5 million, and Johnson wrote he expected it to get worse. That revelation comes just weeks after the county touted its soaring property values, up 51.6 percent in its most recent assessment.
To combat the looming budget crisis, Jackson urged the delegation to make sure state funding doesn’t drop as it did during the 2007 special session, where changes to income tax exemptions, other taxes and educational spending will take away $53.3 million in 2009 that the county expected to receive from the state.
Johnson added he was developing an aid package to the thousands of county residents who are losing their homes to foreclosure that will “dovetail” with a state program. A report released earlier this week found there were twice as many foreclosures in Prince George’s County — 4,187 — during the first nine months of 2007 than in any other Maryland county.
