Gov.-elect Martin O’Malley promised local officials from across Maryland – many of them Republicans – that he would govern in a bipartisan way and vowed to work with county officials as chief executive.
“We’re all in this together,” O’Malley told the winter meeting of the Maryland Association of Counties held at the Cambridge Hyatt Regency. There are no D’s or R’s in local government, he said. “There is only one way to reduce crime and pick up the trash – there’s an effective way.”
O’Malley said he could have made his dinner speech short and sweet if he simply promised “more dollars for transportation” and “more dollars for school construction.” But looming deficits in later years make that impossible.
“Deficits and the size of deficits are the major determiner of the speed we move forward, not whether we do move forward,” O’Malley said. A familiar figure at gatherings of local officials from his seven years as mayor, O’Malley was greeted with a standing ovation by several hundred. A long line of well-wishers and supplicants lined up to see him as he sat at head table.
County leaders agreed that transportation and school construction were top priorities, especially after Gov. Robert Ehrlich cut county aid for roads and highways to balance the budget.
“I’m a firm believer that we’re going to have to get some additional revenues,” Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said. Finding efficiencies in state and local government will only go so far in resolving budget gaps, Leggett and “many of the things we¹re talking about will only increase in cost,” and those will continue to go up.
Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith agreed. “I think there¹s going to be a need for new revenues,” though the budget problems will not materialize until next year. Smith said it will take this year “to build some consensus” for any new taxes onthe state level.
But without new revenue sources, “the locals are at risk” for the kind of cuts in aid Gov. Robert Ehrlich used to help him balance the state budget, Smith said.
