A little bit of everything
The $77 million in budget cuts approved last week by the Maryland Board of Public Works mark the first recognition there’s a price to be paid for placing election-year politics ahead of fiscal realities. It won’t be the last spending pullback, either.
Maryland has a serious, ongoing imbalance between its high spending habits and its lower than expected revenue receipts. Everyone knew this was coming
Read moreThe key budget-balancing bill signed by Gov. Martin O’Malley last Thursday contained several unconstitutional provisions, including language exempting Carroll and Frederick counties from aspects of the rain tax.
That’s what Attorney General Doug Gansler told O’Malley in a letter the day before he signed the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act of 2014.
Read moreAlthough the number of overtime payments to state employees made in 2013 remained roughly the same as those made in 2012, the sum of those payments rose by more than $8 million. In 2012, the total amount of overtime paid out to all state employees totaled $126,719,585. Over 2013 the total payments rose to $135,050,262 — over $8 million more. Roughly one-third of this increase is due to an across-the-board living allowance raise which occurred in January of
Read moreFull-time professors at Maryland public universities earn a salary roughly $16,500 above the national average, but tuition at Maryland public universities has remained lower than the national average, according to data from the American Association of University Professors
Read moreThe number of state employees making over $100,000 jumped dramatically to 6,847 in 2013 due to an across-the-board 2% cost-of-living raise, MarylandReporter.com’s fourth annual analysis of state salaries found. Numerically, this represented a 1,184 increase from 2012, a 20% rise in the number of state and university employees making six figures
Read more“If it weren’t for the more moderate leadership in the Senate, things would be a lot worse than what they are” in the Maryland General Assembly, Sen. Ed Kasemeyer told Howard County business leaders Wednesday
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Paul Ryan’s yearly Misanthropic Paroxysm, otherwise known as the Ryan Budget Proposal, would be laughable for its sophistry if it
Read moreEnvironmental and land conservation advocates, along with county officials across the state, are gearing up to fight a Senate Budget Committee proposal to limit Program Open Space funding to $100 million a year. The Maryland Association of Counties said the cap on open space funding would result in “devastating” cuts of as much as $263 million over the next five years.
Read moreWith minimal debate, the Maryland Senate rejected a half dozen Republican attempts to further trim Gov. Martin O’Malley’s $39 billion budget Wednesday, and gave preliminary approval to the spending plan that will be sent to the House this week.
The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee ultimately cut $492 million from the current budget and O’Malley’s proposal for next year, partly to make up for lowered revenue estimates in both years.
Read moreThe Senate Budget Committee voted Friday to take $500 million over the next five years from extra payments into the state pension system to balance the budget this year and for the next four.
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