Maryland Governor Wes Moore unveiled his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year Wednesday morning in Annapolis, and what it didn’t include answered some of the biggest questions for this year’s session of the General Assembly — for now.
Click here to read Governor Moore’s FY2025 budget proposal
After giving a quick overview of his spending priorities in the $63 billion plan, Governor Moore noted it didn’t contain any tax hikes. “We will achieve each of these goals without raising taxes on Marylanders,” he told reporters at a statehouse press briefing.
That answers the $761 million question, as that is the estimated size of the budget shortfall facing Maryland. To plug that gap, Moore proposes using money from the state’s rainy day fund, as well as the shifting of dollars from certain state programs to others. The Democrat refused to call that shifting ‘cuts’, instead using the term ‘re-basing’ to explain why some items will receive less money.
“Basically re-basing is simply looking at…during the Covid years with federal Covid dollars, we were spending and adding that to a long-term budget and a long-term balance sheet, that was not sustainable,” Moore said. “Because the capital we were receiving during COVID times, that is not going to be consistent.”
Money from the federal government in response to the Covid-19 pandemic is largely drying up this year, one of many reasons Maryland faces the budget pictures it does. The General Assembly still has its say on the budget, and can make changes to it including tax hikes if enough lawmakers don’t like Moore’s approach. The Governor has already said he has a ‘very, very high bar’ for any potential tax hikes the General Assembly could send him, and fellow Democrat State Senate President Bill Ferguson has made similar statements. But they haven’t been 100%-ruled out either, and that has Republican Senate leader Steve Hershey saying that lawmakers should proceed with caution. “While it is a relief that the Governor’s budget spends less than last year and does not raise taxes, the number of fee increases proposed by his Administration through legislation and the regulatory process is concerning,” Hershey said in a statement.
