Budget

Baltimore school officials unveiled a $1.174 billion budget plan Tuesday, which they said focuses on academics with a new science team to implement curriculum, programs for advanced students and a shifting of staff in the central office. Enrollment is projected to increase in traditional schools by about 2,500 students, causing per-pupil funding to decrease by $40 from last year to $5,190. The annual amount could change if the system doesn't see the projected increase in students.

The budget package proposed by Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz this week includes $5.6 million to finish a Perry Hall park that officials say has languished for years. Improvements to Gough Park, a 17-acre site at the intersection of the intersection of Honeygo Boulevard and East Joppa Road, will include a new gymnasium. The county bought the land in 2000, but "the land has sat idle," said County Councilman David Marks, a Republican who lives in Perry Hall. With continuing development in Perry Hall, Marks said the site will provide residents with a "green space in a growing community.

Harford County Sheriff's Office and Maryland State Police Reports: Aberdeen Ronald B. Comer, 26, of the first block of North Post Road, was charged Friday with second-degree escape. Prentis James Vinson III, 24, of the first block of North Post Road, was charged Saturday with violating probation in a case in which he was found guilty of theft below $100. Justin D. Baughman, 24, of the 800 block of Matthews Avenue, was charged Sunday with concealing a dangerous weapon and possessing drug paraphernalia.

In response to your editorial "Put up or shut up" (April 11), I just have one question: What part of economics don't you understand? You mention that the president wants to "reduce deficits to a manageable size. " Yet in his budget he proposes growing government spending by 60 percent from 2012 to 2023, and increasing revenues by 113 percent. And he still can't balance the budget! This budget makes the argument that we need more government and more debt. His proposal leaves us with gross debt of more than 100 percent of GDP by 2020 (it was 40 percent of GDP in 2008 and is projected to be almost 80 percent of GDP next year)

As federal agencies pull back on spending, 7Delta's strategy is thinking big. The Columbia information technology firm, which grew by focusing on work for one federal agency, is going after larger contracts and broadening its reach. It's a diversification tactic that other federal contractors at the smaller end of the scale are trying, too: expansion in a time of retrenchment. Deltek, a Virginia IT firm that provides services to government contractors and other businesses, is seeing that trend - but warns that it cuts both ways.

President Barack Obama's Fiscal Year 2014 budget is a concrete plan to create jobs and cut the deficit. We do not need to choose between these two priorities. The president's balanced, compromise plan proves we can do both. The guiding principle behind the president's plan is reigniting America's engine of economic growth: a rising, thriving middle class. The plan is focused on addressing three fundamental questions: How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do the jobs of the 21st century?

Baltimore County would add classrooms for thousands of students under a budget proposal unveiled Monday by County Executive Kevin Kamenetz - a plan advocates hope signals a commitment to solve the overcrowding that has plagued the school system. "There's an acknowledgment of the number of seats needed, and there seems to be the will to fund the additional seats," said Yara Cheikh, president of the PTA at Hampton Elementary School in Towson, the county's most overcrowded school. Kamenetz's proposal includes a $2.8 billion operating budget and a $339 million capital budget.

It's facile to say that if the extreme right and left of American politics dislike something, it must be a good idea, but in the case of President Barack Obama's budget proposal, it may be true. The president is taking one more stab at a "grand bargain" on the budget that would reduce deficits to a manageable size, through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts - including cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Some liberal groups are promising primary challenges to any Democrats who vote for a reduction in future Social Security benefits.

Labor unions representing federal employees reacted angrily to the $3.8 trillion budget unveiled Wednesday by President Barack Obama, who proposed trimming $20 billion from federal retirement benefits - reopening a debate many Democrats felt had been resolved last year. The 2014 spending plan - which arrived months late - would reduce annual budget deficits by an additional $1 trillion over a decade, according to the administration's estimates; raise the federal minimum wage to $9; curb Social Security spending; increase the federal cigarette tax and close tax loopholes the Obama administration has pursued for years without success.

Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska who survived a stormy confirmation hearing to become the new secretary of defense, had a coming-out party of sorts last week before the National Defense University, the government's graduate school for American and foreign military officers. Mr. Hagel, who had been reminded in that hearing that he once described the Pentagon and U.S. military he would be taking over as "bloated," elaborated on the notion in gentler but nevertheless specific terms.