Budget briefing: Miscounted kids, more slots dough, huge temporary fixes and lingering deficits

http://www.marylandreporter.com/page5502421.aspx

The number of Baltimore City public school kids may be undercounted, and Maryland may get more slots money this year than expected, legislators learned as they began dissecting the proposed state budget Monday.

But more than by any other surprise, lawmakers said they were taken aback by the degree to which the $32 billion budget is balanced on one-time fixes.
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Warren Deschenaux, the General Assembly’s chief fiscal analyst, and other budget analysts started pulling apart Gov. Martin O’Malley’s fiscal 2011 spending plan for lawmakers who have two months to cut it.

Deschenaux emphasized that O’Malley’s balanced budget depended on one-time fixes and an infusion of federal dollars that would still leave the budget $2 billion out of balance in future years.
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Del. Steve Schuh, R-Anne Arundel, an Appropriations Committee member, said, “I was surprised at how much of the corrective actions are one-time accounting maneuvers, fiscal raids and other budget tricks.”

“I thought we were at the end of this,” Schuh said. “What we’re seeing is a clear road map to a major tax increase next year.”