Then, of course, there is the unanswerable question of how the economic downturn would affect slots - with so many pensions and 401(k) accounts in the pits because of recent stock market wobbles, how many retirees are still going to be playing the slots, in Maryland or elsewhere? And if you can barely afford your mortgage, can you afford a slots excursion, even if it's closer to home?
That was really a discussion for another day, given that the Board of Public Works was discussing a budget that will guide spending before the first slot machine takes the first token in Maryland. No slots revenues figure into the 2009 budget.
And yet, even in its current theoretical state, slots are a lot easier to grasp than the typical line item in a budget. Many of the cuts felt like inside accounting - eliminating state jobs that were unfilled anyway, for example, or moving an expenditure from the general fund to a special one. In at least one case, more than $900,000 was slashed for a program that was initially funded but never implemented.
It's hard to imagine the leap from paper to the real world for many of the cuts: What will a 7 percent reduction in overtime over at Juvenile Services mean? A 5 percent reduction in some kind of child care and family support contracts?
Some of the biggest reductions, to the Department of Heath and Mental Hygiene, came in the way of reducing planned increases - nursing home providers, for example, were going to get a 6.5 percent increase, but now will get half that. It's put state officials in something of a bind - having supported a budget in the spring, they now have to make a case for a lesser one.
"I argued for the budget in April - the increases we had in there were deserved," said John M. Colmers, secretary of health and mental hygiene. "But circumstances have changed."
They have. Maryland's tax collections have plunged - and are expected to continue to do so. These cuts, officials promise, are only the beginning. With the bulk of state spending going toward health, education and public safety, these aren't just paper cuts.
"We don't make steel. We don't make goods," Kopp said yesterday. "We provide services."
