Mayors and county executives gave Gov. Martin O'Malley a standing ovation this week when he told them he did not plan to shore up state finances by passing millions of dollars in teacher retirement expenses on to local governments.
But on Friday, the local leaders got a reality check: There's still plenty of pain headed their way.
As state lawmakers prepare for the 2011 legislative session, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch are warning that it will likely be impossible to balance the state's $13 billion operating budget without squeezing local aid.
"Let's all work together to solve the problem," Busch told local leaders Friday at the winter conference of the Maryland Association of Counties.
O'Malley and other Democratic state leaders stressed the "in this together" theme throughout the conference. Busch appealed to local leaders to speak up with cost-savings and revenue-generating ideas of their own if they see the governor's budget, to be released this month, as unappealing.
Miller told local officials that while the governor had tried to "make you feel good" by promising not to send any of the $900 million teacher pension burden their way this year, it's merely a way to "kick the can down the road on pensions."
The 90-day General Assembly session, which begins Wednesday, promises to be tougher than ever on Baltimore and Maryland's 23 counties. City officials said this week that Baltimore appears to be facing an $81 million budget deficit. And county leaders have complained loudly about dwindling road maintenance resources.
Faced with year after year of deficits, O'Malley has repeatedly raided local road repair funds.
As a result, Anne Arundel County saw state road assistance dwindle from $25 million two years ago to just $838,000 last year, according to County Executive John R. Leopold, a Republican.
At the same time, he said, "I recognize that we've all had to make difficult choices."
Diminishing state aid has increased local governments' reliance on lobbyists in Annapolis.
Most jurisdictions designate an employee to work nearly full time in the capital during the legislative session, which runs from mid-January to mid-April. During the session, the lobbyists have weekly meetings with their delegates and senators. Those lobbyists typically have other duties as well, such as interacting with county councils or serving as a chief of staff for the executive.
Some of the new county executives have tapped Annapolis veterans for lobbying positions. Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker and Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, both Democrats, hired from O'Malley's legislative shop.
Kamenetz said his government affairs director, Yolanda Winkler, who has worked with the legislature for 20 years, most recently as an O'Malley liaison, "knows Annapolis well and knows the process well."
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat who served on the City Council with O'Malley, pared back her Annapolis lobby and will send chief of staff Kimberly Washington down to do double duty. Washington said her goal is to make sure that funding to the city is preserved to the extent possible.
County officials and their aides says it is helpful to have a governor with experience leading at the local level. Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, a Democrat, said O'Malley called that background "critical."
Still, he acknowledged, this will be a tough year for counties to make their case for anything involving state funding.
"We're going to have to come to Annapolis with a sense of realism," Ulman said.
Government affairs directors said the Maryland Association of Counties provides a way to give the local governments a louder, unified voice — something that will come in handy as the legislature contemplates teacher pensions and local aid.
"It's a great way to ensure that we don't have to go alone to fight a bill that has an impact on all of us," said Alan Friedman, Anne Arundel County's governmental relations director. "It helps us mobilize and respond immediately to show that legislation may have more implications than at first glance."
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