The Maryland General Assembly is back in session — and the only thing lawmakers must do before they adjourn in April is pass a balanced budget. In an election year, there is no way that policy makers are going to raise taxes.
To fill an unexpected $1.5 billion gap between revenues and expenditures, fueled by unintended healthcare expenses and rising costs in education, Gov. Wes Moore is looking at spending cuts and untapped pots of money. Like every year, long‑term projections look increasingly grim.
So how worried should Marylanders really be?
In this episode of Maryland Now, hosts Dori Henry, Josh Kurtz, and David Nitkin break down the state budget in a way that’s clear, digestible, and grounded in decades of reporting and public‑affairs experience. They explore why the budget is never as simple as it seems, what’s driving the latest shortfall, and whether Maryland’s infamous “structural deficit” is a real crisis or a self‑inflicted accounting exercise.
Featuring insights from some of the state’s most respected budget minds — including Warren Deschenaux, longtime nonpartisan fiscal analyst; and Rich Madaleno, former state senator and current Montgomery County chief administrative officer — this episode explains how Maryland’s finances got to the shape they are in, what’s unique about our budgeting process, and why the next few years will be especially challenging.
Here are some of the key quotes you’ll hear in this episode:
Warren Deschenaux, former Department of Legislative Services
“You hear concerns about a millionaire’s tax or ‘taxing the rich’ or taxing incomes of any particular level. But the problem, the practical problem, is that people with high incomes have high flexibility in terms of where they situate themselves. So there’s always concern as taxes go up, that the base of taxation will go down.”
Rich Madaleno, former state senator and Montgomery County Chief Adminstrative Officer
As someone who lives in the Washington region, you never hear of the structural deficit in Virginia. Do you know why? Virginia law does not require them to project spending. So we go through this exercise of self-flagellation at this point to say like, oh, look at the gap. Look at the gap. And Virginia doesn’t; they have a two-year cycle. They only project out the two years. So we do it to ourselves.
Maggie McIntosh, former chair of House Appropriations Committee
We never…looked at that money as being surplus money. We looked at it as being one-time only expenditure money. We looked at it as money that we could use to help lift our economy away from COVID. And that’s how we used the money. We never used that money to view it as creation of a permanent program put in place that would not eventually need its own funding or would not eventually phase out.
Boyd Rutherford, former lieutenant governor
All these folks get elected by saying ‘yes’ and saying what they are gonna do. And sometimes you have to say ‘no, let’s look at the results.’ And, you know, even just looking internally. Can we do things better in terms of running the state operations? Can we improve? Government doesn’t have external pressures. Business has external pressures.
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