The opening of the 90-day General Assembly session in Maryland is a lot like the first day of school -- everybody's happy to see each other and, for a moment, it seems like they might all be friends. Gov. Martin O'Malley noted this in his remarks to the state Senate. "The opening day of the session is the time when partisanship is at its lowest ebb and citizenship is at its highest ebb, and that's what we need to move forward."

That spirit had been on display a few moments before when Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller was re-elected to his post -- for the 24th consecutive time, largely a formality. Forty-four yes votes went up on the board, with three Republicans abstaining. Their decision to abstain, rather than vote no, may be about as bipartisan as it gets for the next 90 days.

Senator Miller said in his opening remarks to his chamber that cooperation was what got the state through the terrible recession of the early 1990s and it was what would get the state through this one. Sen. Allan Kittleman, the minority leader, replied that Republicans want to cooperate and to be part of the solution. A few minutes later, Senator Miller told reporters that the moderate, pragmatic Republicans who voted for tax increases and other measures to solve the budget 18 years ago are now gone and replaced by partisans. And Senator Kittleman lamented that the Democrats don't include Republicans in the discussions of how to solve the budget gap.

Within an hour, a man in a pickup truck was driving around State Circle towing a "Bring Back Ehrlich" sign. In the evening, tea party activists protested on Lawyers Mall.

It would be nice to think that the governor and the 188 members of the General Assembly would spend the next 90 days putting parochial and partisan interests aside to accomplish the singular task of this session, balancing the budget at a time when revenues are expected to fall as much as $2 billion shy of projected expenditures. There should be some sense of common interest -- Democrats are now forced to accept the need for the kind of severe cuts that the GOP has been pushing for years, and Republicans have, in at least a few cases, seen the effects of cuts on their constituents and have resisted them. But it is an election year, and that is the last thing we can expect.

Governor O'Malley must present a balanced budget to the General Assembly next week, but it's hard to see how he'll accomplish that. He said that all of the things people picture when they think about state government -- the Department of Natural Resources, the Agriculture Department, the Department of Housing and Community Development, etc. -- make up about 18 percent of the budget, and they have already been cut deeply.

The big money is in the other 82 percent, which is in largely formula-driven spending in three areas: education, health and public safety. And education, health and public safety, he said, are the state's top priorities and the things that will help bring Maryland out of the recession. So all the money is in the areas we don't want to cut, and some of it we can't cut because of stipulations the state agreed to when it took federal stimulus money last year. It is, said Del. Murray Levy, a Southern Maryland Democrat and authority on the budget who is retiring after this year, the "you can't get there from here" budget gap.

The talk in Annapolis is of the possibility of a second round of federal stimulus spending to help states shore up their budgets. In makes sense in that without it, states would have to lay off thousands of workers, imperiling any economic recovery, but it also papers over the long-term budget problems Maryland and other states face.

If the Obama administration and Congress are offering up more money for state budgets, Maryland should take it. But the governor shouldn't do what some lawmakers are suggesting, which is to present a technically balanced budget by using some sort of placeholder, either explicit or hidden in accounting trickery, in expectation of an infusion of federal money.

The governor should put his cards on the table so legislators -- and the people of Maryland -- can see what it would really take to bring spending in line with our current economic circumstances. No tricks, no one-time transfers, no stopgap measures until more federal funds come in -- or until tax increases become more politically palatable. Perhaps the economy will recover or the Obama administration will come through and such draconian measures can be put off for another day. But Maryland will never really solve its long-term budget problems until it faces up to what they truly are.