Delegates who found $1 billion in non-transportation tax increases difficult to pass Saturday struggled Monday to come up with budget cuts to make up next year?s $1.5 billion budget shortfall.
Ultimately, the House Appropriations Committee approved an additional $178 million in reductions. Gov. Martin O?Malley had proposed slowing the growth in spending by $320 million. Altogether, the House committee will recommend about $500 million less in spending for fiscal 2009.
“We are the point where some very, very tough decisions have to be made,” Appropriations Chairman Norman Conway said. “This is not easy. There are always items in the budget that each of us have worked very hard for.”
“I don?t have anybody who comes in that asks me to cut anything,” Conway, D-Wicomico, said.
Del. Gail Bates, a Howard County Republican, called the exercise “a sham,” since there was no budget actually before the committee to be worked on and these were only nonbinding recommendations to O?Malley on the budget he must submit in January.
Some of the new cuts included deferring cost-of-living increases for community providers in health and juvenile services ($24 million), slowing growth in reimbursements to Medicaid providers ($15 million), maintaining limits on hospital stays ($18 million) reducing the commission to lottery agents ($8.6 million), cutting the historic structure tax credit ($10 million), and paying for some equipment with bond money rather than operating funds.
Appropriations subcommittees rejected hundreds of millions in other cuts for education, health care and other services as too severe.
Members of the House?s Ways and Means committee voted to match changes to the public education funding formula known as Thornton with amendments already approved by the Senate. O?Malley proposed freezing an inflator that has pushed the price of public education faster than lawmakers expected when they adopted the program in 2002.
The budget cuts and slowing the growth in mandated spending formulas for education will be taken up today on the floor of the House.
After fairly swift action by the Senate last week, Monday?s pace in the House slowed as hearings were delayed and a meeting of the full House put off.
A gaming subcommittee began working on the slots machines proposal Monday evening, including a proposal for a new slots location in the White Marsh area.
“We?re going to consider everyone one?s amendment,” said Del. Frank Turner, D-Howard, the subcommittee chair.
