By Steve Crane | Editor-in-chief
“We're having these conversations and having the tough conversations, and we're going to continue to. They're going to have to be genuinely tough decisions that are going to make impacts on how the budget is taken. Hopefully, this sets us on course for the next 20 years if we do this right.” - Maryland Budget Secretary Yaakov "Jake" Weissmann, on his department’s direction to agencies to prepare budgets outlining 3% to 10% budget cuts as the state enters another year with a projected multibillion-dollar shortfall.
State officials are preparing for a tough budget year, and a long-awaited commission to study possible reparations may finally be getting underway after months of delay. Welcome back to the working week.
State agencies were directed by the Department of Budget and Management to prepare budgets for the next fiscal year that outline anywhere from 3% to 10% in reductions. It comes as the state is staring down another multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, with more projected in later years. Lawmakers say all options, including budget cuts and higher taxes, are on the table, as Bryan P. Sears reports.
Lawmakers in 2025 approved a Reparations Commission to assess how public and private institutions may have benefited from specific federal, state and local policies from post-Reconstruction to the Jim Crow eras, and make recommendations for possible reparations. That panel was delayed for months after a surprise veto by Gov. Wes Moore, but now it appears close to kicking off its work. William J. Ford has that story.
We also have more looks back to 9/11, including its impact on the surveillance we all lieve with today, plus top headlines from the past week for you to review on this Monday. Enjoy!
Budget Secretary Yaakov "Jake" Weissmann, in a January photo with Gov. Wes Moore, said asking agencies for up to 10% in cuts for next year's budget planning is a "prudent approach" to the state's ongoing fiscal problems. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)
By Bryan P. Sears
State agencies are being asked to tighten their belts as they finalize budget requests for the coming difficult fiscal year.
Emails to every executive branch agency, as well as state universities, told them to prepare fiscal 2028 budget requests that include reductions of roughly 3%, with two dozen Cabinet-level agencies told to prepare budgets with up to 10% reductions. The memos come as the state heads into a 2027 General Assembly session in January that will be dominated by efforts to eliminate a projected structural budget gap of about $3 billion in the coming fiscal year, with wider gaps predicted in coming years.
Lawmakers left Annapolis after the last session with a balanced budget — a legal requirement. And not all the news is bad: A recent report released by Comptroller Brooke Lierman showed the state closed fiscal 2026 with hundreds of millions more in surplus than expected. Even so, the state faces troubling structural gaps, with projected revenues falling short of expected spending. Lawmakers said all options are on the table at this point, from potential tax increases to cuts or deferrals to programs like the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s sweeping schools reform package.
A statue of Maryland native and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the high court, stands in front of the Maryland State House. (Photo by Danielle E. Gaines/Maryland Matters)
By William J. Ford
To Del. Aletheia McCaskill (D-Baltimore County), “in some ways, this moment still doesn't feel real.”
This moment is the pending launch of a Reparations Commission, years after it was first proposed and 17 months after it was passed by lawmakers, vetoed by the governor as unnecessary and then overridden by the General Assembly. A majority of the 23 members of the commission have now been selected. The all-volunteer commission will include members of the House and Senate, representatives of Black business and real estate groups, an attorney with expertise in civil rights law or constitutional law, a mental health expert and two members from the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities with expertise in the history of slavery, and more.
The commission is charged with assessing the impact of specific federal, state and local policies from 1877 to 1965, the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, to see how public and private institutions may have benefited from policies that led to discrimination. It is also charged with recommending appropriate reparations, from a statement of apology to monetary compensation or social service assistance.
IN OTHER NEWS
Surveillance post-9/11: Twenty-five years after 9/11, the surveillance infrastructure built and expanded in its aftermath has become part of a far larger digital ecosystem — producing tools that can collect and analyze information on a scale unimaginable in 2001.
Pennsylvania measles: Pennsylvania has recorded 676 cases of measles, with cases confirmed in 37 of the commonwealth's 67 counties, state health officials said. They included two measles-affiliated deaths and infections of four fully vaccinated people.
HUD reorganization vacillation: The Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed plans this month for a large-scale reorganization of a significantly downsized workforce, but then quickly withdrew those plans for unknown reasons.
MATTERS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
Panel looks for funds to buttress healthcare: State officials are scrambling to cushion the blow of skyrocketing healthcare costs and federal changes to the Medicaid program on Marylanders' pocketbooks, in hopes that people can still afford coverage.
Remembering 9/11: At the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, in Shanksville, people marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with stories of courage and loss in an unimaginable time, and some with frustration for a perceived lack of justice for those behind the attacks.
9/11 attacks still claiming victims: The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks killed thousands of people in a matter of hours. But 25 years later, illnesses to responders continue claiming lives: More than 400 FBI workers have been diagnosed, and dozens have died since 2001.
MOST-READ STORIES OF THE WEEK
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