Before her election, Brooke Lierman had not even been inside the treasury building in Annapolis. Now, Maryland’s first woman to hold the office of comptroller is focused on making tax season easier for citizens, updating her department’s aging infrastructure and her next 100 days in office.
A former member of the House of Delegates, Lierman was busy most of her first 100 days in office with the 2023 legislative session, which ended April 10. She said she sought to use her new role to collaborate with her former colleagues.
“I understand what it’s like to sit on the other side of the desk,” Lierman, the state’s 34th comptroller, told The Baltimore Sun in an interview last week. “So I tried very hard to explain the agency in a way that would make it relevant to our delegates and senators, and so that they could understand how we can be a partner to the work that they’re trying to do.”
Lierman had seven bills introduced on her behalf in 2023, including legislation to create a taxpayer advocate division to assist people filing their taxes and collect data to address areas within the agency that taxpayers struggle with the most. The bill passed out of the legislature but has yet to be signed by Democrat Gov. Wes Moore.
“But we also had hundreds of bills that we were tracking because they impacted the agency, whether it was because they were tax-related, or because of revenue estimates that were needed,” Lierman said.
Though she spent eight years in Annapolis representing South Baltimore neighborhoods in the House, Lierman felt herself to be an outsider with inside perspective upon her election to a four-year term as comptroller.
“I had never set foot inside the treasury building until the press conference announcing my transition team,” she said. “I didn’t even know that the comptroller’s office had three buildings on the campus here.”
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Lierman’s work began within days of her election, when she announced a transition team headed by female leaders from across the state — and the outgoing comptroller, Democrat Peter Franchot.
Ahead of her inauguration, Lierman convened six work groups with dozens of stakeholders to study policy areas that involve the agency: data and innovation, local government engagement, pension and investment, procurement and the Board of Public Works, public engagement, and tax administration and customer engagement.
Her administration released a 44-page report on the teams’ findings shortly after Lierman took office, and is working with deputy comptrollers and division directors to implement its recommendations. They include the creation of a chief equity officer position and the establishment of data-sharing standards between the office and other entities. The comptroller’s office already has created a position this year to help the agency interact with local governments, based on some of the challenges noted in the report.
The comptroller oversees state income tax collection; imposes state taxes on gasoline, alcohol and tobacco; and has a seat on the three-person Board of Public Works, which approves major state contracts. The comptroller makes $165,000 annually.
According to Lierman, her office receives 2,500 calls and 800 emails and holds 250 in-person meetings daily during tax season.
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“It’s a huge amount of work,” she said.
Lierman also is responsible for chairing the state Board of Revenue Estimates. She said her first meeting “was a tough one” because the forecast predicted the state would bring in almost $480 million less than previously anticipated due to slower economic growth.
“But it also presented us with an opportunity” to work with Moore and the legislature on how to home in on weak spots in the state’s economy, Lierman said, like Maryland’s “rapidly aging workforce” and its dependence on high-income earners.
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Lierman has prioritized making her agency easier to navigate for Maryland taxpayers, while also making it a better workplace.
The comptroller’s buildings on the State House campus — the treasury building, the revenue administration building and the Annapolis data center — were in dire need of repair. According to Lierman, one of the buildings had bats nesting in holes in its walls and ceiling. That work is underway already.
At the retirement party of a secretary who worked under five comptrollers over 42 years, the outgoing employee joked “it took a woman comptroller to get new toilet paper dispensers in the bathrooms,” Lierman said.
“That’s sort of just emblematic of the state, of the infrastructure writ large within the complex of the Treasury buildings,” she said. “I say this not to complain, but to say ... we need to build an infrastructure that will support our employees, so that they feel proud to work here and want to come to work.”
Lierman also emphasized the need to modernize the agency’s technology infrastructure, which is operating on aging mainframes that use outdated coding languages. According to the comptroller, Maryland’s tax processing and general accounting systems “are some of the oldest in the country.”
This session, Lierman worked with State Treasurer Dereck E. Davis and Department of Budget and Management Secretary Helene Grady to successfully pass legislation to move the state from a legacy accounting system to a cloud-based platform. It will take a few years to implement, she said.
“When we are modernizing, it’s not for modernization’s sake that we do that,” she said. “It’s to have better results, to make government work better, be more interactive with constituents, with agencies, with colleagues to get data that can actually drive policymaking and help people do their jobs better.”