Faced with a half-billion-dollar budget gap, Gov. Larry Hogan is proposing to roll back several programs enacted to help Baltimore recover from the riots of 2015 and to freeze pay for state workers.
The Republican governor would also downsize a major state prison in Hagerstown, delay money for a long-desired hospital in Prince George’s County and reduce extra payments into the state’s pension system.
New details in Hogan’s $43.5 billion spending plan emerged Wednesday, a day after he said the proposal “sounds too good to be true, but it is true.” He said it avoided “serious cuts.”
The Hogan administration blames the $544 million deficit on lackluster wage growth, larger tax refunds for corporations than expected, and unpredictable capital gains income for the wealthy.
To balance the budget, Hogan proposes eliminating 400 open positions in the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services as the agency shrinks the size of the Maryland Correctional Institute, the 85-year-old medium-security facility in Hagerstown. State officials say the inmate population there is declining.
Click hear to read the rest of the article written by Erin Cox over at the Baltimore Sun