We didn’t have our anticipated speaker, who had to bail out at the last minute due to unforseen circumstances, but two fill-in speakers backed up with a fill-in secretary (me) made this month’s WCRC meeting work nonetheless.
As usual we had the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, and various reports. Club president Marc Kilmer announced two upcoming events: the November WCRC meeting will be held on the 23rd of November with the speaker being District 37 Senator Rich Colburn and the club’s Christmas party upcoming on December 13th. He also thanked those who particpated with the Autumn Wine Fest.
Sean Fahey, administrator for the Lower Shore Young Republicans, gave their report. Next spring will be a repeat of their successful canned food drive inaugurated earlier this year, and they were negotiating to host next summer’s state Young Republican convention here in Salisbury and trying to draw a “name” speaker for the event.
Along the same vein, Salisbury University College Republican president Matt Taffeau introduced himself to the club for the first time in a formal setting; however, they had been present at previous events such as the WCRC Crab Feast and fundraiser for District 38B Delegate candidate Mike McDermott. Growing their membership to over two dozen since the start of the school year, they’ve managed to attract speakers like the aforementioned McDermott, Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis, and state party chair Dr. Jim Pelura. They were also in the early stages of trying to get national party head Michael Steele to come to SU and were “looking forward” to helping out on Campaign 2010.
One of our two pinch-hitting speakers for the evening was County Councilwoman Gail Bartkovich, who cobbled together some news and notes about the budgetary woes facing Wicomico County.
Part 1 of the cuts had already been approved by the County Council when the furlough plan requested by Council and put together by County Executive Rick Pollitt was approved. Part 2 would be the harder part, cutting many of the departments by 15% along with other manuevers to cut about $1.2 million from the budget.
It’s worthy to note, Gail reminded us, that the actual deficit was much higher – on the order of $4 million. But taking money from reserve funds and increasing a number of fees helped to at least create an action plan before the public had its say in an upcoming meeting November 10th.
Some of the cuts could be painful, though – everything from $611,000 to the county’s funding share for Wor-Wic Community College to eliminating 13 paid crossing guards out of the Sheriff’s Department budget. Only the Board of Education and volunteer fire departments were unaffected.
But Gail also pointed out that many of the “cuts” were simply shifting salaries around to departments with enterprise funding, particularly solid waste. A question was asked whether these positions would be eventually restored to their original departments (particularly the roads department, which was hard hit by state funding cuts) or if the relatively lucrative solid waste department would continue to carry these positions having little to do with that area. Councilwoman Bartkovich decried the lack of a “long term game plan” to deal with the county’s finances.
Then we turned to the state level as District 38A Delegate Page Elmore was kind enough to lend his expertise. As we all know, the state of Maryland has the second-worst tax burden in the country behind only California and continually has needed to maintain its balanced budget with mid-fiscal year cuts totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
While the tax and spending increases passed at the 2007 Special Session take a share of the blame, Elmore pointed to two other factors hurting the state – the court order dictating education spending be held at increasing levels (which led to the Thornton Commission and its budgetary impact) and a 10% income tax cut enacted as an election year measure by former governor Parris Glendening in 1998.
But Page revealed that the Spending Affordability Committee estimated next year’s structural deficit will range between $2.5 and $3 billion. Democrats on a committee to reform business taxes in Maryland (which would be all but him) and their allies believe the best solution would be to change to a system of combined reporting for corporate entities, a move business interests despise because of the increased accounting burden. Elmore predicted that Democrats “probably won’t pass” combined reporting in 2010, but they may try to.
Two questions drew interesting responses from Elmore. One asked about the chances of saving construction money for new schools by repealing the “prevailing wage” and dropping expensive “green” building requirements. With just 37 votes in the House, Republicans couldn’t do much. (Personally, I think it’s a great place to start if we have to build all these schools rather than the comparatively puny savings Governor O’Malley thinks standardizing plans would create.)
The other questioner brought up the environmentally-induced moratorium on building new chicken houses in Maryland. One thing I didn’t know is that while Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia labor under restrictions on runoff, these restrictions don’t exist in nearby states like North and South Carolina. Delaware has been proactive in allowing chicken houses to be built as restrictions are still pending but Maryland has dragged its feet. Those upcoming restrictions expected in 2010 are expected to dramatically reduce the allowable discharge from chicken houses to perhaps unrealistic levels. That’s okay, the Eastern Shore doesn’t need industry anyway.
Closing out the speaking trioka, Dr. John Bartkovich gave a fairly upbeat Central Committee report. Asking why the GOP was successful in 1980 and 1994 and why it failed in 2008, essentially he opined the important factor was a good message in bad economic times. These principles could win again in 2010 and 2012. We just needed a message of hope and change along with a plan to bring them about through fiscal conservatism and Republican principles.
What we thought would be a fairly short meeting turned out to be a long one, but it was informative. As I stated above, State Senator Richard Colburn will speak at our November meeting on Monday, November 23rd.
Michael,
Thank you for the report. We ran long as well. Addie was a bit pressed for time, but we are quite thankful that she was able to attend. Steve Lind’s meeting is Tuesday night, can you make it? I hear he is going to have some interesting guests.
Joe
Mathias and Conway at an AFP meeting? That’s a mixture that is too good to resist. I may have to make my way to Ocean Pines to see it.