Local governments already faint from a cut here and a nip there are about to get their tummies tucked. Without anesthetic.
Trying to close a $700 million deficit, the surgical team on Wednesday proposed chopping $210 million in state aid to local governments.
The Board of Public Works – made up of Gov. Martin O’Malley, Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasurer Nancy Kopp – plans to trim state spending overall by $454 million, cut 364 state positions and require 70,000 state employees to take as many as 10 days off without pay.
Locally, these cuts go deep.
This is why Upper Shore Mental Health Center is shutting down. But Kent County also is slated to lose $70,431 in police aid, $24,522 in aid to community colleges and $1.3 million in highway user revenue.
A call to the State Highway Administration office in Chestertown and to State Police barracks in Centreville to find out what exactly this means got no immediate answer.
The total reduction in state spending for Kent is $1.6 million.
For Queen Anne’s County it comes to just over $3 million. QAC loses $143,495 in police aid, $80,175 for community colleges and $2.6 million in highway user revenue.
The Board’s first round of cuts this summer involved 39 layoffs and $40 million in cuts to higher education.
For some perspective, and for the record, the Board doesn’t always spread the pain evenly. Less than three months ago, on June 3, the very same board (O’Malley, Franchot and Kopp) gave a go-ahead for a $1.4 billion project to develop 28 acres in midtown Baltimore.
As the Baltimore BusinessJournal reported at the time, “The vote was not unexpected, as O’Malley has supported the project since he was mayor of Baltimore . . . ” And the magazine said Kopp said she felt that “despite financial concerns” the project should be funded.
And this is what that’s all about: The state would lease the land to a limited liability corporation. The private firm would redevelop the site for homes, commercial space and offices. The state would then lease the office space from the developers for use by state agencies.
Anyone wanting to make their views known to members of the Board of Public Works can go to this website: www.bpw.state.md.us/ and click onto the image of any member. That leads to each one’s home page. There are easy links to phone numbers of key staff and to a site for sending a message.
Ronnie Fithian says
The writer of this article says he called the State Highway to find out what effect the $1.3 million dollar cut in highway user money will have to Kent . That $1.3 million dollar cut to Kent is not to the State highway. It is to the County Roads. As a County Commissioner, I can tell you what it means. It means that last year the county received almost 2 million dollars in highway user money which comes from the road tax we pay on the gasoline we buy. The counties share is determined by the miles of county roads we have to maintain. Kent has 270 miles of just county roads. Earlier this year, they cut us by 48%. Now they have come back for the rest. This year, instead of having $2,000,000.00 to spend on the upkeep of our roads, we will have $102,000.00. That’s if they don’t come back for the rest.
Sometime in the 1980’s the State decided to turn over all county roads to the counties. In doing so they agreed to pay the counties a certain percentage of the highway tax. The county went out and hired men, bought the trucks and equipment and developed an entire county roads dept.. Up until now our share of the tax money has fully paid for county roads without any help from the general fund. Now the State just takes away the funding. Is there any wonder that people have little trust in government?