Rascovar: State Center boondoggle
Above: State Center area with Howard Street at bottom, Preston Street in middle and armory on the right. By Barry
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$1.5B in lottery sales – where it goes
Players spend more than $1.5 billion a year on Maryland lottery tickets and get about $1 billion back in winnings — on average, a 50-cent return for every dollar they spend. Here’s where the money they lose goes:
Read moreGambling in Md. Part 1: Low-income players drive lottery sales, big source of state revenues
This is the first part of a four-day series by Capital News Service examining how Maryland uses gambling to raise revenues.
It starts with the state’s 40-year-old lottery, now the fourth largest source of state revenue. This article looks at how lower income ZIP codes contribute a disproportionate share
Read moreRascovar column: Election politics trumped budget realities
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 moreBudget bill signed by O’Malley contained unconstitutional provisions, Gansler says
The 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 moreOvertime pay for state employees rises; some double their salaries
Although 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 moreMd. state university profs make more than national average
Full-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 moreState employees making $100K jumped 20% to 6,847 last year
The 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 moreMd. legislature ‘would be a lot worse’ for business if not for Senate leaders, Kasemeyer says.
“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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Obama is right: Paul Ryan’s budget is a ‘stinkburger’
Paul Ryan’s yearly Misanthropic Paroxysm, otherwise known as the Ryan Budget Proposal, would be laughable for its sophistry if it
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