Spending Plan

Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposed budget was assailed on many fronts Wednesday as county executives, education advocates, Maryland hospitals and Republican leaders began making their case against the $36 billion spending plan. Some said cuts in payments to Medicaid providers would lead to higher medical bills for everyone else. Others argued that shifting $240 million in teacher pension costs to the counties would inevitably require cuts to community services - and schools. Even some leading Democrats in the General Assembly said the governor's proposal to increase income taxes on the top 20 percent of Maryland wage earners would hit people who don't earn enough to afford it. Republicans were more blunt.

The Baltimore County Council unanimously approved Thursday the spending plan proposed by County Executive Kevin Kamenetz for the coming fiscal year, a $1.65 billion operating budget that includes no furloughs, layoffs or tax increases. The lean budget, which goes into effect in July, relies heavily on savings from retirements, attrition and reorganizations in county agencies. The county will have 7 percent fewer employees than in the previous year. The council emphasized that local government would have less to work with as employees try to deliver the same level of services.

A Senate panel took the first bite out of Gov. Martin O'Malley's $13 billion general fund spending plan Monday night, voting to remove an estimated $150 million, mostly from small snips to hundreds of education and health programs. "We tried to do the appropriate thing," said Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer, who chairs the Health, Education and Human Resources Subcommittee. "We could have taken more." Cuts included a $6.2 million reduction in funding for stem cell research. Senators also eliminated some health-related agency positions, but protected funds for a number of scholarship programs.

There's a tendency among some to shorthand the ongoing federal budget debate as between Republicans who want to reduce government spending and Democrats who don't. This isn't really the case, as recent actions in the House have demonstrated. On Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee took a close look at President Barack Obama's proposed $525.4 billion defense spending plan and decided that simply wasn't enough. The GOP-controlled committee voted to authorize nearly $4 billion more than what the Pentagon had requested for 2013.

Republican state delegates charged yesterday that Gov. Parris N. Glendening's budget has so many problems that it should be rejected out of hand and sent back to him for reworking. "The budget is masterful in its deceit, and it violates the spirit of the constitution that requires a balanced budget," said Del. Alfred W. Redmer Jr., a Baltimore County Republican and House minority leader. "Let's send it back and get it right the first time." The Republican caucus members said that they would seek to exercise an obscure parliamentary rule to bring a bill directly out of committee and to a vote of the full House.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has proposed borrowing $15 million, eliminating 17 vacant positions and scaling back a street-cleaning contract to compensate for a $26.5 million reduction in state aid. A city budget adopted by the Board of Estimates Wednesday leaves in place service cuts announced earlier by the mayor, such as shortening pool hours and closing child care and recreation centers. Dixon revised her spending plan after the General Assembly balanced the state budget partly by keeping $160 million in highway money that was intended to be distributed to local governments.

Yesterday, they joked in school offices that the cover on the superintendent's proposed $112.28 million spending plan for fiscal 1993 waspurple so it wouldn't show any bleeding.Unveiled to 35 citizens last night during a 75-minute public hearing at Spring Garden Elementary, Superintendent R. Edward Shilling's proposed budget calls for the 22,500-student district to spend $5.15 million more next year.Nearly all categories of spending, from administration to instructional salaries, will be increased -- anywhere from 1 to 12.7 percent.

Don't touch our stuff. That's the message dozens of Baltimore County residents sent to the County Council last night at a largely tranquil public hearing on a proposed $1.79 billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year. At a time when county coffers are brimming with a surplus expected to reach $85 million, County Executive C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger found something for everybody in the budget proposal he unveiled earlier this month. The plan includes money for everything from comfortable chairs for the lobbies of senior citizen centers to classroom listening devices for special-needs students to pay raises for teachers.

Baltimore's school board amended its original budget request yesterday, adding new programs for disruptive students.After shifting $1.7 million to school-safety programs, the board approved a $646 million spending plan that is 2.3 percent larger than this year's budget.The proposed budget for school year 1995-1996 now includes $900,000 for the creation of six "presuspension centers," $600,000 less than school administrators say they need to launch their programs for counseling and teaching students with behavior problems.

The O'Malley administration is proposing an infusion of almost $90 million for engineering of two new transit systems — including Baltimore's east-west Red Line — as part of an otherwise flat $9.4 billion transportation spending plan for the next six years. Unlike plans of the past two years, the 2011-2016 Consolidated Transportation Program is not a litany of recession-related deferrals of transportation expansion and maintenance projects. "The great news is we didn't have to cut. That's what I'd like to shout from the rooftops," Maryland Transportation Secretary Beverly Swaim-Staley said Monday.

Standing side by side, Gov. Martin O'Malley and the state's two top legislative leaders unveiled the broad outlines of the budget plan they hope to enact quickly during a special session next week. The plan will raise income taxes on those making more than $100,000 a year (households making more than $150K), a House-backed proposal similar to the one that budget conferees agreed to in the final hours of session. It also makes deeper cuts than the budget O'Malley initially submitted in January.

Maryland taxpayers actually gain in the "budget mess" recently created by the General Assembly in failing to agree on a fiscal 2013 spending plan. Let's be clear, if Maryland had set the new budget at the level of the 2009 budget, we would be in significant surplus! Why is it that our high-paid legislators think they can go after taxpayers when they decide more money will be spent? If I want to spend more money next year, I can not tell my boss, "This is the increase you will pay me. " Wise up, legislators and The Sun. I am a taxpayer and I am mad as hell and am not going to take it anymore!

Anne Arundel County residents would see their property taxes increase under the $1.2 billion budget proposed Monday by County Executive John R. Leopold, but that would be partially offset by a drop in trash pickup frequency and fees. County workers, meanwhile, would see an end to furloughs but receive no raises. Leopold's spending plan for the year that begins July 1 includes boosting the tax rate from 91 cents to 94.1 cents per $100 of assessed value. For a home with an assessed value of $261,200, the forecast countywide average, taxes would go up by about $128 for the year, officials said.

Maryland's General Assembly failed to pass a balanced budget, according to a memo obtained by The Baltimore Sun. Enacting a balanced budget is the legislature's primary constitutional requirement. "The [fiscal year] 2013 budget is nearly $70 million out of balance," wrote Budget Secretary T. Eloise Foster in a memo to all of Gov. Martin O'Malley's Cabinet secretaries. She recommended that the governor not sign any legislation that reduces revenues "until the imbalance is addressed.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates on Wednesday awarded a $120,000 contract to a Columbia-based company to buy T-shirts, primarily for youth sports. Nightmare Graphics took over the city t-shirt contract from Replay Sports, which had previously held the city contract. Over the past three years, city agencies have purchased more than $444,000 in T-shirts, polo shirts and hats from the company.  A database of all the transactions can be found here . While about three quarters of the money used to purchase uniforms for young athletes at recreation centers, nearly $147,000 was used to buy uniforms and t-shirts for employees and program participants in other departments.  City officials are grappling with the fourth consecutive year of significant budget shortfalls.

The youngest member of Maryland's state senate sent email to constituents Tuesday saying that he was "embarrassed" by the so-called "Doomsday" budget that passed in the General Assembly with his support. Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said that he cast his green vote on "what we believed" was a compromise spending plan that included a "Doomsday" clause. The budget that passed closes a roughly $1 billion revenue shortfall mostly with cuts, firing hundreds of state workers and making deep cuts in education and other Democratic priorities.

The Baltimore County Council unanimously approved Thursday the spending plan proposed by County Executive Kevin Kamenetz for the coming fiscal year, a $1.65 billion operating budget that includes no furloughs, layoffs or tax increases. The lean budget, which goes into effect in July, relies heavily on savings from retirements, attrition and reorganizations in county agencies. The county will have 7 percent fewer employees than in the previous year. The council emphasized that local government would have less to work with as employees try to deliver the same level of services.

ROCKVILLE -- The Montgomery County Council, often accused of being dominated by tax-and-spend liberals, did a little less of both in approving a $2.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2000.The council gave County Executive Douglas Duncan almost all the money he asked for in March, but trimmed $2.6 million from his proposed spending plan. It also passed along to taxpayers a series of small cuts totaling $7 million in the first year, and increasing to $24 million after three years.The fiscal spending plan is 7 percent above the current year, but 1 percent below a spending cap the council set last month.

What follows may sound like a message from the Dead Horse Beatings Division of The Aegis editorials operation, but it's a message that bears repeating: Government spending should be based on anticipated tax revenues, or, to put it another way, tax policy should not be adjusted simply because more government spending is approved. For the past several years, the state government, through a single term of a Republican governor and a term and a half from the current Democratic governor, has had the attitude that planning to spend more than is being brought in constitutes a "structural deficit" that can be resolved only by bringing in more revenue.

Gov. Martin O"Malley's $69.5 million supplemental budget, an update to the overall state budget that usually comes to the General Assembly late in its 90-day session, would add 85 positions in the Office of the Public Defender to deal with a Court of Appeals decision expanding the right to representation at bail review hearings -- putting the executive brance above its limit of full-time employees. To bring the state under the limit set by the legislature's Joint Committeee on Spending Affordability, legislative analysts are recommending that lawmakers require the governor to trim 77 positions from its payroll over the next budget year, which starts July 1. The spending affordability panel has set a goal of limiting the number of full-time positions to just over 79,000.