Gov.-elect Martin O?Malley said he has no plans for new taxes in the coming year, but key legislators he met with on Monday said higher taxes or new taxes have to be looked at for the following years.
“We are spending at a much quicker rate than we can afford,” O?Malley told reporters before a three-hour session with top Democrats in the Legislature. “I?m hoping to be able to submit a balanced budget without any new revenue sources.”
O?Malley must submit his budget to the Legislature two days after he is sworn in on Jan. 17.
Senate President Thomas Mike Miller said, “We?re going to have to look at the whole financial structure of the state.” Miller and other legislators said there has been no major change in the state?s tax structure since the 1960s, and there has been no major study of the issue since the Schaefer administration.
In addition to continuing increases in spending for education and health care, O?Malley also made proposals to cap tuition and spend more ontransportation, open space and the environment.
“Somehow, someway, somebody?s got to be paying for it, and it?s going to be the Maryland taxpayer,” Miller said. “We know what needs to be done. The question is whether there?s a will” to do it.
Del. Sheila Hixson, D-Montgomery, chair of the tax-writing Ways & Means Committee, said she would reintroduce legislation creating a new commission to study the state?s overall tax structure.
“We?ll be more in a studying mode” in the next year, said House Majority Leader Kumar Barve, Montgomery. But “the No. 1 priority for the state is the structural budget deficit,” Barve said.
Miller and Sen. Patrick Hogan, vice chair of the Budget and Taxation Committee, said the proposal for slot machines is still on the table. “I think [slot proposals will] be back until they finally pass,” Hogan said.
But O?Malley, who supports slot machines at race tracks, said, “There will be time for doing that” sometime later. He also continued to reject a $1-a-pack hike in the cigarette tax proposed by health advocates and supported by 80 newly elected members of the General Assembly.
O?Malley said he?s prepared to listen and learn on the budget and tax issues, but “I don?t intend to introduce any new revenues myself.”
Residents “know that no administration can accomplish everything in the first 90 days or even the first four years,” O?Malley said.
