A little bit of everything
Picking apart Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed fiscal 2015 budget, the legislature’s chief fiscal analyst told lawmakers Monday that the administration relied on “familiar budget balancing strategies” to make the numbers work. They included a small than average surplus, shifting special funds, replacing cash with bonds, tapping reserves and cutting pension payments.
Read moreThe largest unions representing state workers and public school teachers are upset at Gov. Martin O’Malley’s decision to permanently cut $100 million from extra payments into the state pension system. The money came from additional employee salary deductions required by a 2011 pension reform, and was intended to help cure underfunding in the pension system.
Read moreO’Malley as usual rolled out the new budget with an elaborate PowerPoint presentation to reporters that put a positive spin on the budget numbers. But a different spin can be put on some of the numbers.
Read moreThe budget picture is brightening for Gov. Martin O’Malley in his final year, but will he spend it all or save some for his successor.
Read moreThe General Assembly’s Spending Affordability Committee recommended Wednesday that next year’s state budget be allowed to grow by 4% and Maryland’s debt limit be allowed to increase $75 million to $1.16 billion next year.
Read moreMaryland and Virginia are among the top five states in the nation in the dubious competition for most government-financed employment, according to a new economic study. It turns out Virginia, Maryland’s closest fierce competitor for business, edges out Maryland in most categories for taxpayer-funded jobs.
Read moreMaryland may have a requirement for a balanced budget, but its audited financial statements show that its spent more than it took in from fiscal 2008 to 2012, according to the Institute for Truth in Accounting.
This made Maryland one of 13 “turkey states” that had more expenses than revenues in fiscal 2012. The list includes all of Maryland’s neighbors except Virginia.
Read moreThe legislature’s fiscal staff told lawmakers Thursday that they should not follow an O’Malley administration proposal to increase Maryland’s authorized debt by $375 million over the next five years.
The staff said this is one way to reduce debt service — payments of principal and interest on the state’s bonds — that will grow by 24% in those five years. It would be the largest increase in any budget category.
Read moreWhen legislators finished the 2013 General Assembly session in April, they patted themselves on the back for putting the state on a glide path to wipe out Maryland’s long-running structural deficit in the next budget. Think again. That deep, dark fiscal hole has returned big-time, and many factors are to blame, but the failure to reduce spending by the governor and legislature are principally to blame.
Read moreLike a chronic skin rash that keeps coming back, the persistent structural deficits that legislators thought they had almost cured earlier this year are looming again for fiscal 2015, the legislature’s top budget analyst told lawmakers Wednesday. There now appears to be a $400 million potential gap in next year’s budget, Warren Deschenaux, the chief of policy analysis, told the joint Spending Affordability Committee. A nearly $300 million surplus estimated when the fiscal 2014 budget passed in April has disappeared in the face of unplanned expenses and reduced revenues, and there may instead be an $87 million deficit.
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