Gov. Martin O’Malley and legislative leaders have already warned county officials from across Maryland that they should expect no more money from the legislative session starting Wednesday than the year before. Even so, local officials continue to plead with them not to cure the state’s rising deficit by pushing cuts onto the counties.
“The best we’ll be able to do is level funding,” O’Malley said in a speech to the Maryland Association of Counties last week. “We will not be able to spare any level of our government … from this recession.”
“Our hope is that these cuts will be temporary in nature,” O’Malley said.
O’Malley and House Speaker Michael Busch, as well as many of the local officials themselves, are pinning their hopes on the economic stimulus plan President-elect Barack Obama has proposed. Busch hopes that it will increase the federal matching funds for the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor, freeing up money for other places.
Deputy Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley said the department was ready to go with over half a billion dollars in road projects, “but we don’t expect to get that much,” perhaps $250 million to $300 million. The department already has delayed $2 billion in projects over the next six years due largely to falling tax revenues from vehicle sales.
The counties’ biggest fear is that the state will force them to pick up the cost of teachers’ pensions.
“It’s a very difficult time for all of us,” Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson said, with all the jurisdictions suffering a drop in revenues. “All my people are on furlough,” Johnson said, yet there are “some core government functions that we have to provide.”
“If you shift costs, it’s not as if we can come up with the money,” Johnson said. “We are in the same boat that you are in.”
O’Malley was noncommittal on the issue of shifting some of the pension burden created by higher salaries set by the counties, and not the state. “It’s a perennial debate,” he told reporters.
One hopeful sign was renewed discovery of a $366 million fund to pay local income tax refunds that has never been tapped by the comptroller’s office. “I hope we’ll be able to mitigate some of the greatest pain,” O’Malley said.
House Republican leader Tony O’Donnell told the county group he was happy to hear the governor talk of “level funding,” but he also thinks the increased spending on the Chesapeake Bay and Medicaid approved in the 2007 special session should be rolled back.
O’Donnell opposes shifting the cost of teachers’ pension to the counties without a revamping of retirement and health benefits. “It will probably force local governments to raise taxes,” he said.
The new president of the Maryland Association of Counties, Calvert County Commissioner Wilson Parran, said, “We’re at the bottom of the government food chain.
“It’s good to have a governor that has actually walked in our shoes” as mayor of Baltimore, Parran said.
