Coming next: Special session?

With initial cuts in hand, counties are staking their claim to state aid

If the state is to address the deficit before the General Assembly’s 2008 session, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) must negotiate an agreement with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and House Speaker Michael E. Busch that could bring legislators back to Annapolis for a special session.

‘‘It depends upon the governor,” said Miller (D-Dist. 27) of Chesapeake Beach. ‘‘He wants to have a consensus ahead of time. You know, he’s not going to get complete consensus. No governor’s that good.”

The prospects for a special session are hazy.

‘‘I think we’re in a bit of a holding pattern,” said Del. Brian J. Feldman (D-Dist. 15) of Potomac, chairman of the Montgomery County House delegation. ‘‘Two weeks ago I heard the lieutenant governor say [a special session is] ‘definite,’ only to be told by Speaker Busch two days later he wasn’t too keen on it.”

Miller supports a special session, which would likely take place in the fall, and has proposed generating new revenue through slot machines and a gasoline tax.

Passing any new taxes in a special session would mean an extra six months of revenue flowing into state coffers, Miller said.

‘‘To delay is to deny a responsible solution,” he said.

Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis opposes a special session, which he said should be reserved for emergency legislation, such as recent special sessions on electricity rates and medical malpractice insurance.

The state has ample reserves in its rainy day fund and its citizens ‘‘deserve a fair and full debate on all the issues that center around the budget,” Busch said during a meeting with Gazette editors and reporters on Wednesday. ‘‘... The idea of coming in in a 24- to 48-hour period of time to pass more than a billion dollars’ worth of revenues that aren’t in sync with your budget, I think realistically, to the general public, would look like the ultimate backroom deal.”

The sooner the legislature faces the deficit, the better, said House Minority Leader Anthony J. O’Donnell (R-Dist. 29C) of Lusby. ‘‘The administration has been coasting too long,” he said.

Sen. J. Lowell Stoltzfus (R-Dist. 38) of Westover agreed. ‘‘There’s been too much sitting on fiscal hands,” he said.

During this year’s legislative session, Stoltzfus offered an amendment to balance the budget for fiscal 2008, which began July 1, through $643 million in cuts, including a delay of $159 million for the final year of the $1.3 billion Thornton school funding plan.

Stoltzfus said it was ‘‘patently absurd” that the legislature did not address the deficit during the session.

In the coming weeks, the Republican Caucus plans to propose its budget solution, which O’Donnell insists does not have to include any new taxes if the state restrains its spending.

O’Donnell called the $280.7 million in cuts approved unanimously by the Board of Public Works ‘‘a baby step in the right direction,” adding that it is ‘‘woefully inadequate considering the magnitude of the problem we’re facing.”

The cuts are O’Malley’s attempt ‘‘to create an environment to justify raising taxes,” he said.

Miller is calling for ‘‘cuts, slots and revenues. It’s a formula for success in terms of dealing with the political will of the various institutions, the executive branch and the House and the Senate.”

What needs to happen now, he said, is for O’Malley to sit down for dinner with Miller and Busch so the governor can lay out his plan for addressing the deficit, and all three can agree on what a special session should address.

If there is no special session, some lawmakers predict the budget debate will become a beast that will devour any legislation in its path during the 2008 session.

‘‘It would drag out the entire session,” said Sen. Patrick J. Hogan (D-Dist. 39) of Montgomery Village. ‘‘If someone thinks you go to Annapolis in January and get it done by the end of January or February, they are sadly mistaken.”

Legislators should not let it come to that, said Barbara A. Hoffman, who was in the Senate during the 1991 and 1992 special sessions that addressed the state’s budget problems.

‘‘I think there’s no benefit to having all this angst during the regular session for anybody,” she said. ‘‘... I can’t tell you the level of bad feelings that gets generated and people get put into these political boxes and [say,] ‘I can’t vote for this because I’m this.’”

Legislators need to face tough decisions, she said.

‘‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” Hoffman said. ‘‘There’s no way to do that painlessly. There’s no way to do that without touching local aid.”

The question, Busch said, is how many lawmakers will support cutting aid to counties by $652 million as detailed in analysts’ ‘‘doomsday” scenario.

Lawmakers could shift responsibility for more than $318 million in teacher pension costs on to the counties, Busch said, but that’s a hard pill to swallow.

Pension costs range from $810,000 in rural Somerset County to $9.6 million in Frederick County to $108.6 million in Montgomery County, the state’s largest school system.

Busch said he expects such a shift to draw ‘‘a lot of resistance from the county governments” and their delegations.

‘‘So I don’t know that that’s going to be a viable option,” he said. ‘‘But if we don’t get enough legislators to vote for a revenue increase, then that’s probably what’s going to take place because the governor’s got to balance the budget and we have to balance the budget.”

Counties are digging in to defend their share of state aid with help from the Maryland Association of Counties.

‘‘MACo is very strongly sending the message that we do not want a solution to the state’s problems to be shifting responsibility to local governments,” said Montgomery County Council President Marilyn J. Praisner.

Counties ‘‘have strong partnerships with school boards, teachers unions, with PTAs” that are prepared to mount ‘‘strong opposition” to any attempt to shift pension costs to counties, said Praisner (D-Dist. 4) of Calverton.

None of which sits well with Miller, who called it ‘‘sheer lunacy” for counties to ‘‘dig in their heels” against cuts after receiving steady increases of state aid.

State aid has increased an average of 9 percent a year since fiscal 2002, according to a recent budget analysis delivered by MACo to county executives. It now accounts for more than 40 percent of the state general fund.

‘‘Everybody’s got to share,” Miller said. ‘‘The counties aren’t going to have to pay the lion’s share, but they have to take some cuts.”

Senate Budget and Taxation Chairman Ulysses Currie agreed that a budget resolution necessitates compromise.

‘‘It’s a matter of everyone coming together realizing where we are as a state,” said Currie (D-Dist. 25) of Forestville. ‘‘Everyone has to share. Everyone has to give. Everyone has to be part of the solution.”