Just days from leaving office, Gov. Martin O'Malley has left Gov.-elect Larry Hogan a series of public recommendations on how to trim the budget to make up for a roughly $750 million shortfall in next year's budget without severe cuts to K-12 education.
O'Malley distributed the proposed cuts at a news conference Friday with the State House press corps. John Griffin, the governor's chief of staff, said the administration began sharing its ideas for budget adjustments within weeks of Hogan's election victory.
By making it public, O'Malley gives legislators and reporters an alternate budget proposal to compare with the one Hogan is expected to unveil Thursday, a day after he takes office. It shows $769 million in reductions to the budget that begins July 1, with $538 million coming in spending cuts and the rest from other actions
The O'Malley recommendations are most noteworthy for what is not there: no tax reductions and no cuts to the Geographic Cost of Education or any of the education formulas. The only constraints proposed for K-12 are to reduce the inflation adjustment to 1 percent, saving $17 million, and to revise the way some grants are calculated to save $13 million.
Hogan has said he expects to propose tax cuts as well as spending reductions. And education advocates are nervous that he will seek cuts in the geographic index -- which benefits about half of the state's 24 jurisdictions, including the largest and most Democratic ones -- and aid formulas themselves.