Officials at Maryland Public Television must pare an additional $500,000 from the public broadcasting agency's spending under Gov. Parris N. Glendening's belt-tightening edicts.

The directive, part of the governor's administration-wide effort to balance the state budget, comes three months after the station laid off 32 employees - 14 percent of its work force at the time. Additionally, all remaining employees and executives were required to accept reduced salaries, and some local programming was scaled back, too.

The earlier moves had been prompted by deep drops in revenue, largely from the defection of underwriting support from corporations after the ouster of Wall Street Week host Louis Rukeyser. The stalled economy was also blamed.

But the newest round is part of Glendening's efforts to right the books before he leaves office. "We've got to find a way to solve this problem," said T. Eloise Foster, the state secretary of budget and management. MPT falls among a tier of state divisions asked to take the greatest cuts.

Larry D. Unger, MPT's executive vice president and chief financial officer, said the station would avoid any new layoffs. "I believe that we will be able to take this budget cut and not cut any programs or any personnel," he said.

That's because officials at the Owings Mills headquarters have received new grants and underwriting funds. Jobs of staffers who leave voluntarily may be left unfilled. And planned purchases can be put off into the next fiscal year, which begins in July 2003.

The new cut represents a relatively small amount of MPT's total $37 million budget and represents about 4.5 percent of the $11.1 million in state funds the broadcast agency was scheduled to receive this year. Yet Unger said he has little room to maneuver, pointing to last summer's cuts of $2.1 million. In June, a foundation created to support MPT sold $750,000 worth of bonds to cover a shortfall for the previous fiscal year, which was also linked to Rukeyser's forced departure.

"We're obviously disappointed that these recent devastating budget cuts weren't taken into account," Unger said. "We've been hit hard. I doubt that any other state agency has been or will be hit with something of this impact."

"Who else in the state has gotten this kind of cut?"

Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who takes office in January, has not yet announced his budget plans for the state broadcasting system. But Unger said that additional reductions in spending next year would be hard to take. "People can't continue to work at reduced levels," he said. "You can do this for awhile, but you can't do this forever."