A little bit of everything
Environmental 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.
Read moreMuch or all of an annual $300 million extra payment into Maryland’s pension system is on the chopping block as Senate budgeters seek to balance Gov. Martin O’Malley’s $39 billion budget at a voting session Friday.
Read moreGrappling with the issue of affordability in higher education, lawmakers are taking suggestions and drafting legislation to ease the financial burden Maryland college students face.
Read moreState employees last Wednesday ratified a new one-year contract that provided 2% raises, regular step increases, health premium holidays and other financial benefits they had been denied in the lean years of the Great Recession.
Two days later, the legislature’s budget staff recommended rolling back about half the negotiated increases, moves that took the largest state union by surprise, calling them “alarming” and “disturbing.”
Read moreGreater transparency in Maryland government contracting is the goal of legislation that would provide more information about each contract on a state website.
The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee is considering a bill that would pour $1.4 million into the growth of the website that allows the public to view payments made to state contractors.
Read moreIt takes quite a bit for the quiet, diplomatic State Treasurer, Nancy Kopp, to criticize her fellow Democrat, Gov. Martin O’Malley. But she gently laid it on the line in opposing O’Malley’s $100 million budget cut for state pension contributions.
“It’s a question of trust,” Kopp said
Read moreState Treasurer Nancy Kopp told lawmakers Thursday that she opposed Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed $100 million cut in the pension contribution, and said it would undermine trust by the state’s bond rating agencies.
“I think this is a very difficult thing to defend with the rating agencies,” Kopp told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and Administration.
Read moreFrom my usual corner at the back of the House of Delegates chamber, Martin O’Malley’s eighth and final State of the State address seemed one of his better efforts.
Think what you might of O’Malley’s accomplishments over the last seven years — the real subject of the whole speech — the gov is an effective communicator, except when he reaches too far for the lofty rhetoric of his beloved Irish poets.
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