State Transportation Budget Cuts Highlight Larger Fiscal Problems BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) - Last week, state Transportation Secretary John Porcari announced more than a billion dollars in budget cuts that will delay highway and commuter rail improvements for years. The delays are part of a wider problem with the state budget brought on by the nation's declining economy. WYPR's Joel McCord reports.

State transportation officials had planned to expand the cramped parking lot at the West Baltimore MARC station, which straddles Route 40 at Smallwood Street. And they were going to make improvements to the dingy platform where increasing numbers of passengers wait for trains.

Likewise, they had planned to upgrade six intersections on Route 175 as it skirts the eastern edge of Fort Meade in anticipation of thousands of new commuters brought in through the Base Realignment and Closure process, known colloquially as BRAC.

But all that's off the boards indefinitely because of the sluggish economy. Porcari said revenues from gasoline taxes, vehicle titling taxes and registration fees, which pay for those projects, are $115 million lower than expected.

What we're seeing both nationally and in Maryland is that people are driving less, and given gas prices it's not surprising.

And the pain has spread to the rest of the state budget as well. The day before Porcari announced the delays in transportation projects lawmakers learned that tax revenues are four hundred thirty two million dollars lower than anticipated. And the number could go as high as a billion.

When the figures were announced, Governor Martin O'Malley said in a statement leaders will come together in the weeks ahead to address this latest budget challenge presented to us by our national economy. State budget officials have begun looking for places to cut in this year's budget. And O'Malley will have to sharply reduce the budget he is to deliver to the General Assembly in January.

Meanwhile, Senate President Mike Miller suggested eliminating merit pay increases for state employees. That touched a nerve with Sue Esty, assistant director of AFSCME, which represents about thirty thousand blue collar state employees.

She said state salaries already are consistently lower than the pay for comparable jobs in federal and local governments.

If you're a security officer in a building your starting salary is 23 percent below the average in the market. Or if you're a police officer, sergeant, it's 17 percent below what it is in the market. So the salaries are way below competing employers no matter where you look.

The low salaries, she agued, have created a revolving door for many who use state employment as a training ground.

If you want to be a correctional officer you know that you can earn more money working for the county. And so what you do is you come to the state, which is desperate for correctional officers, you put in a couple of years, you have that on your resume and then you know, just like that you probably can make five thousand dollar more a year by going to work in a county detention facility. That's repeated over and over again in a number of different jobs around the state.

She said state leaders should look for new sources of revenue, such as closing corporate tax loopholes and authorizing slot machine gambling, rather than take aim at employee salaries to close the budget gap.

But there is determined opposition to a Constitutional Amendment to allow fifteen thousand slot machines at five locations in Maryland. State Comptroller Peter Franchot is among elected officials fighting the proposal.

Public support is eroding for slot machines and why wouldn't it? It's a give-away to the national gambling industry, it's a Constitutional Amendment; it's a bad direction for the state to go in.

He blamed the budget problems on the governor and General Assembly leadership rather than the declining economy.

The governor and the Senate President pushed through the largest tax increase in Maryland's history less than a year ago, saying that this would solve the budget deficit. Well, it didn't solve the budget deficit because they combined it with out of control spending and the result is that we have high taxes and a continuing deficit.

However, when the governor put together the state budget adopted during the last legislative session it was balanced based on revenue estimates provided by Franchot's office.

I'm Joel McCord, reporting in Baltimore for 88.1, WYPR.
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