What $2 billion deficit? The pre-filed bills before the Maryland legislature show pet causes, narrow interests and bigger spending will dominate debate when legislators convene on Jan. 13 for the 2010 session.
For example, Sen. Robert Garagiola, D-Montgomery County, wants Marylanders to spend $40,000 to build a tai chi court at Cabin John Park. The exercise may promote “serenity through gentle movements,” as described by the pre-eminent Mayo Clinic. But can’t proponents pay for it themselves?
Sen. Edward Kasemeyer, a Democrat representing Baltimore and Howard counties, wants taxpayers to go into debt for $250,000 to help the Columbia Association Inc. improve Symphony Woods Park. For those not in the know, the Columbia Association is a private organization in Howard funded by homeowners on the property it oversees and by fees from nonresidents who use its facilities.
Del. Aisha Braveboy, D-Prince George’s County, wants $250,000 to improve the Walker Mill Day Care Center. That’s great for Walker Mill’s employees and parents whose children attend the school, but not for everyone else who receives no subsidies for child care.
I wonder if these legislators made a personal donation to fund the causes for which they so lavishly pledge taxpayer dollars. More importantly, these proposals make a joke of House Speaker Michael Busch’s statement that the state government is all “bone and gristle.”
The bond bills are small expenses compared to other proposals, however.
With expanded Medicaid rolls eating up an ever larger percentage of the budget, Sen. Joan Carter Conway, D-Baltimore City, wants to force insurers to expand in vitro fertilization coverage. Can Conway explain how a procedure that can only be described as nonessential and that costs more than $10,000 per cycle (many couples need more than one), when offered to women of child-bearing age in Maryland, will help to contain costs and provide greater access to basic medical services? Maryland already has one of the highest number of health care mandates in the country, making insurance more expensive.
With expanded Medicaid rolls eating up an ever larger percentage of the budget, Sen. Joan Carter Conway, D-Baltimore City, wants to force insurers to expand in vitro fertilization coverage. Can Conway explain how a procedure that can only be described as nonessential and that costs more than $10,000 per cycle (many couples need more than one), when offered to women of child-bearing age in Maryland, will help to contain costs and provide greater access to basic medical services? Maryland already has one of the highest number of health care mandates in the country, making insurance more expensive.
Del. Michael Smigiel, R-Caroline, Cecil, Kent and Queen Anne’s counties, and Del. Saqib Ali, D-Montgomery County, should be praised for proposing separate pieces of legislation to expand transparency in the state. And Smigiel deserves special recognition for legislation to make it harder for the state to condemn private property to hand it over to well-connected developers.
But what’s missing is serious legislation, like amending state employee pensions to make them more affordable to taxpayers, to align tax receipts with expenditures. In a Department of Legislative Services report, Michael Rubenstein wrote, “The decline in the system’s funded status from 78.6 to 65.0 percent, and projections that the funding ratio will continue to approach 50.0 percent in coming years, are just the latest signs that the state will face a significant fiscal challenge to pay for retiree costs in the years ahead.”
And that’s not even counting health care for state retirees. Taxpayers should not be fooled if legislators manage to balance the budget this election year. A failure to make substantive cuts to the state budget in 2010 only means higher taxes in 2011 and beyond.
