When Gov. Larry Hogan released his cost-cutting budget last week, he called it the "first step among many" to pare back state spending.
His second step was already tucked into another document, which asks the legislature for many long-term, permanent trims to education, private colleges, community colleges, libraries, and economic development for farmers.
The organization that helps farmers get financing to continue working in agriculture, the Maryland Agricultural and Resource-based Industry Development Corporation, for example, would take a one-year hit of $1.1 million this year under Hogan's budget. Under his second step, that cut would last until 2024.
Private colleges such as Loyola and Johns Hopkins University are, by law, supposed to get $16 per student for every $100 per student the state sends to the public university system. Under Hogan's long-term plan, those schools would share from a pool that would grow by a smaller amount each year.
This plan requires approval of lawmakers, but it marks a different approach to budgeting in Maryland. And it's likely to be unpopular with key state Democrats who control the legislature and the many advocates who fought to get automatic increases into law.
More details on Hogan's long-term cuts are being revealed during a briefing with lawmakers Monday afternoon. But according to the Department of Legislative Services, future spending on community colleges, private colleges, and K-12 education would be untethered from the current formulas that require increases each year -- and would be capped instead.
To understand the significance of those moves, first a little background: Maryland's budget shortfall - estimated to be $750 million for the next budget year - arises annually in large part because revenues can not keep pace with many of the laws that call for increased spending. Each year, the legislature and the governor propose one-time exceptions to those laws. Since the laws aren't permanently changed, the cycle repeats itself every time revenues fall short.
Under former Gov. Martin O'Malley, the size of that gap shrunk each year with permanent budget cuts. The gap was $1.7 billion when O'Malley took office in 2006, and it was $750 million when he left in 2015.
Hogan has recommended permanent reductions that would stretch far into the future in an attempt to erase the cycle of budget shortfalls.
The per-resident funding for libraries would be reduced until 2025. Community colleges wound never see more than 1 percent less than the growth in the state's general fund. This year, for example, the general fund grew by 2.4 percent, and under Hogan's plan community colleges would see no more than a 1.4 percent increase.
The approach creates a permanent change to state funding. Several Republicans have praised Hogan for tackling a systemic problem in state government, while some Democrats have argued that the state's structural deficit does not need to be closed entirely in one year.
Appropriations Chairman Maggie McIntosh, a Baltimore City Democrat, said the legislature's fiscal panel had recommended cutting the structural deficit in half this year and finishing the job the next. She suggested it wasn't necessary for Hogan to try to close it a day after he took office.
"I'm confident that the economy is going to help us lift ourselves out this situation," McIntosh told reporters last week. "That said, should we try to eliminate the deficit in 24 hours?"