Budget Crunch

This year will be better than last, the Carroll commissioners said yesterday in their "State of the County" address.The budget crunch will ease, Carroll will have more clout in Annapolis, the county will explore building an incinerator and Carroll Community College will be closer to achieving independence, they said.The commissioners gave their annual address at a Chamber of Commerce lunch at Martin's Westminster before about 120 people."Money, money, money. 1992 was the year of money, or rather the year of figuring out how to do with less money," said Commissioner Elmer C. Lippy.

Baltimore faces a significant budget shortfall for the second consecutive year, necessitating another round of service cuts and tax increases, officials said Wednesday. Fixed expenses are expected to increase sharply, while revenues are projected to decrease slightly, finance officials said. Finance officials declined to state publicly the precise amount of the shortfall Wednesday, but said it is considerably less than the $121 million gap last year. Nonetheless, budget director Andrew W. Kleine warned that closing the current gap could prove more painful, because some taxes are at peak levels and nonessential expenses have already been whittled away.

This year will be better than last, the Carroll commissioners said yesterday in their "State of the County" address.The budget crunch will ease, Carroll will have more clout in Annapolis, the county will explore building an incinerator and Carroll Community College will be closer to achieving independence, they said.The commissioners gave their annual address at a Chamber of Commerce lunch at Martin's Westminster before about 120 people."Money, money, money. 1992 was the year of money, or rather the year of figuring out how to do with less money," said Commissioner Elmer C. Lippy.

COLLEGE PARK -- For years, the University of Maryland has chartered flights to carry the football team to games at Duke and the other schools in North Carolina. But not this season. In one of many telling symptoms of the rough economy on college athletics, the Terps will travel by bus to and from Duke - a 270-mile trip - for the Oct. 24 game. The university estimates the savings at $80,000. The athletic department is also exploring taking buses one way - and flying the other - for games at Wake Forest on Oct. 10 and North Carolina State on Nov. 7, administrators said in interviews.

Faced with a $54.1 million budget gap next year, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has asked for reductions in the fiscal 1992 budget requests of three agencies previously spared from cuts -- police, fire and education.The growing budget crunch also appeared to be spelling an end to the Baltimore Trolley Works; city transportation officials said the service will be shut down and its 61 employees laid off March 1.Clinton R. Coleman, Schmoke's press secretary, said yesterday that memorandums outlining the reductions were sent to department heads as part of the "annual budget exercise."

Maryland's leading candidates for governor are offering starkly different visions of the state's budget woes and how they would balance the books if elected. Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. portrays a state in which spending has been allowed to grow unchecked. He is calling for budget cuts of at least 4 percent for most agencies next year, as well as the legalization of slot machines at racetracks and an eventual scaling back of some government services. Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend sees the state facing one more bumpy year, forcing spending and hiring to be frozen in most areas through June 2004.

Should teachers give up their 6% raise because other county workers,due to the budget crunch, are likely to get little, if any, extra?* Adrienne Prior-Wallace, 37, of Columbia, teacher:"Yes. It's a two-sided coin. If you're going to get the same amount of service, you should get more services for more pay. If they're going to provide added services, fine, then I think I should get a raise, and if not, maybe they shouldn't get a raise right now."

Citing concerns about possible cuts in state aid next fiscal year, Superintendent R. Edward Shilling announced that school officials willhire temporary employees to fill vacant posts."

HAGERSTOWN -- Imagine that an uninvited houseguest is rapidly devouring the contents of your refrigerator.For members of the Maryland Association of Counties who met here yesterday, the state's increasing budget deficit has taken on a resemblance to that hungry and unwelcome intruder: It keeps eating away at their budgets, and there's no way they can stop it.Elected officials from counties across Maryland said yesterday that wrestling with budget shortfalls brought...

People concerned about or just plain unhappy with Maryland's growingbudget shortage will have a chance to tell the state's chief financial officer what they think at tonight's Greater Odenton Improvement Association meeting.Louis L. Goldstein, who has been the state comptroller since 1958, is scheduled to speak on the state'e economy andthen answer questions."The state's economy affects the county's economy," said Pat Wellford, president of the association. "We thought it was a timelyissue."

While Annapolis politicians readily concede that tax revenues are down, the fact that they blame the shortfall on the economy alone is revealing ("Economic pinch hits Maryland tax coffers" Aug. 29). Does it ever occur to Annapolis politicians that an increased tax rate produces a decline in consumption and economic activity? The tax burden in Maryland already ranks fourth-highest in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation. Tax increases were just imposed, and more may be on the way. All of this occurs as Marylanders are feeling the crunch from the paycheck to the pump - and are reminded of it with every single purchase (thanks to our increased sales tax)

When students at Fairmount-Harford High School feel sick, principal Karen Lawrence is forced to tell them there is no nurse and send them home. At Polytechnic Institute, a teenage diabetic waits for her mother to come twice a day to help her administer an insulin shot. These are some of the problems that have resulted from budget cuts to a $10 million nursing program that is meant to place a nurse or health aide in every Baltimore school. The medical personnel are provided by the city Health Department, and the program is funded by the schools and the city.

Its bandwagon, the famous bouncing ball and hectic music schedule are all gone. But when Baltimore's Municipal Concert Band starts its season tonight in Patterson Park, it continues a more than 100-year-old tradition of taxpayer-financed summer concerts that have disappeared from most other big American cities. In Baltimore, too, the handwriting may be on the wall. Because of a budget squeeze, this year's season has been truncated to seven appearances between today and July 14 by the concert band of freelance musicians.

GOV. ROBERT L. Ehrlich Jr. unveiled his $23.8 billion spending plan for state government yesterday, and the best that can be said about it is this: It's balanced. It boosts education. And the cuts he's made are not as painful as many had feared. But the budget's glaring weakness is its failure to address the state's most serious problem - the growing gap between what government plans to spend and how much it receives in revenues. Essentially, Mr. Ehrlich closed a $700 million-plus shortfall to balance his proposed budget.

Anne Arundel County officials fear that the Fire Department, already under scrutiny for its overspending last fiscal year, could exceed its budget again this year. Though the most recent estimate of a $300,000 overrun is an improvement over the $1 million estimate issued earlier this month, it didn't eliminate all worries within county government. "We're going in the right direction, but I still have some concern," said senior county budget and management analyst Wayne Greksa. Earlier this month, in an e-mail to Fire Chief Roger C. Simonds, Greksa wrote, "I realize it's fairly early in the fiscal year, but my first cut at estimating expenditures indicates that the Fire Department is on track to overspend approved appropriations by as much as $1.0 million."

Despite growing doubts about how to fund state-required all-day kindergarten, Howard County school officials told the County Council yesterday they need the program to help every child succeed. All-day kindergarten is "really targeted at our youngest and often neediest" children, schools Superintendent John R. O'Rourke told the council during a presentation of a new five-year "Bridge to Excellence" plan, another state requirement, in the council's Ellicott City offices. "Having children come to school ready to learn is really very important to that child's success," he added.

There's one consolation for the nation's governors and state legislators. They all have the same problems that won't go away: Enormous mountains of debt, state constitutions that require balanced budgets and an unwillingness either to raise taxes or cut spending to achieve this goal on time.The impact of the recession, after a decade of prosperity, has staggered state governments. Plunging revenues make it impossible to finance expanded social problems and maintain enlarged bureaucracies.

The Schmoke administration next year will charge fees for sanitation, police and other services the city provides for the hundreds of festivals, parades and foot races held in Baltimore ,, each year.The administration says the city can no longer bear the financial burden of providing the services without compensation. But event organizers say the new fees will put a big dent in their budgets and could eventually kill some of the festive gatherings that have become a hallmark of Baltimore.

Howard County's budget crunch means potentially big increases in both local income taxes and county property taxes, according to County Executive James N. Robey. In his first statement outlining the county's fiscal problem using detailed figures, he used terms like "crippling blows" to describe holes punched in revenues by state budget cuts, lower investment income and fewer surplus dollars. "Spending requests are almost $50.25 million more than our anticipated revenue," not counting more rumored state budget cuts, he said in a prepared announcement.