Comptroller Peter Franchot accused Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller yesterday of plotting to slash the tax collector's budget and eliminate two senior advisers as "political payback" for Franchot's outspoken opposition to slot machine gambling and a new tax on computer services.
Moments later, Miller dismissed Franchot's claims as an "outrageous" public relations stunt designed as a "pre-emptive strike" against necessary scrutiny of all state agency budgets. He attacked the comptroller as "an embarrassment to the state of Maryland."
The exchange was remarkably sharp, even for the famously outsized personalities of the two Democratic leaders, and it foreshadows a possibly contentious battle next week when legislative committees review the comptroller's budget for potential cuts.
Franchot acknowledged that his suspicions of "political retaliation" by Miller were "just rumors," but he said he began to worry last week when he heard rumblings "from high-placed insiders," whom he declined to name.
"I've been around Annapolis a lot, and when I hear the steady drumbeat of these rumors, I take them seriously," Franchot said. "The exact quote communicated back to me was that `we're going to pistol whip your agency.'"
In addition to "draconian cuts" envisioned for his tax-collection agency, which has about 1,100 employees, Franchot said he believes Miller is targeting his chief of staff, David S. Weaver, and deputy comptroller, Len N. Foxwell, for elimination of their positions.
Weaver was communications director for former Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan. Foxwell was most recently the chief lobbyist for Salisbury University and for five years directed Washington-area transit programs for the state transportation department. But he has also acted as a spokesman for elected officials and political campaigns.
Weaver and Foxwell helped Franchot in his bid for the comptroller's office in 2006, and both are paid more than $150,000 a year, which puts them on par with some Cabinet secretaries and the top-paid members of the governor's staff.
Warren G. Deschenaux, chief fiscal analyst of the nonpartisan Department of Legislative Services, said his agency's analysis of the comptroller's budget will be sent to Franchot today. That analysis will form the basis of the General Assembly's evaluation of Franchot's budget, but the budget committees in the House and Senate are not limited to it.
