For Immediate Release September 9th, 2020
Contact Stuart Katzenberg, 443.956.2798, for more details
AFSCME Council 3 President Patrick Moran’s Comments on the Comptrollers FY20 Closeout
- amongst other things, shows $585+ Million fund balance https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDCOMP/bulletins/29cf0cf
We are encouraged by the Comptrollers FY20 closeout report showing almost $600 million in fund balance. We have said from the beginning that the Governor needed to be prudent and not just wildly cut state services and those who deliver them. This report validates our position. Going forward, the number of positive cases in Maryland continues to rise. Public employees continue to be on the frontline of containing the spread of the virus and mitigating the social and economic effects on our neighbors. We urge caution and measured actions to ensure our state can economically recover. We call on the USM and the Governor to put frontline workers first so that public services continue to function and deliver for the people of Maryland.
There is a long list of actions that both the Governor and Chancellor could take to help mitigate future financial castrophe, these include but are not limited to;
*Demand a full accounting of private contracts to identify over $1 Billion dollars in cost savings. The State and Universities spends $10+ billion dollars on private contracts that give them “flexibility” and additional excess function. This is the time to re-evaluate and reduce costs associated with these contracts.
*Cut or re-allocate top heavy management across the state. The State and Universities have 10,000+ managers, directors, and supervisors. With the frontline workers at all our public institutions facing an immense staffing shortage the redundancy of mangement level staff and supervisors should be reduced to create cost savings for the state and some of the resources redirected to frontline positions.
*Merger of all the different personel systems to create efficiency and cost savings. Right now, Maryland public employees operate within at least 7 different systems (SPMS, DOT, USM, Judiciary, MES, MSU, and SMCM) that each have separate staff, IT systems (hardware and software) and programs. A merger of all these systems would create efficiancy and costs savings from at least staffing, hardware, and software year over year.
*Cut and reduce tax credits to realize $100s of millions in cost savings. We should audit all tax credits to identify ineffective or unneccessary measures and target them to realize savings. The 2012 Tax Credit Evaluation Act (SB739) established a system for determining if certain tax credits are in the public interest. Many tax credits originally suggested for review were exempted.
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AFSCME Council 3 is the largest and fastest growing public employee union in Maryland. We represent close to 30,000 state and university employees across Maryland in every county.