The Impending O’Malley Tax Hike

We talked a bit about it yesterday here but it seems more and more likely that Governor O’Malley, having made some relatively painless cuts in spending, is going to go the “shut-down-the-Washington-Monument” approach to scaremonger substantial tax increases next year.

Part of this is the construction of “shadow budgets” showing the impact of budget cuts on alleged services but presumably not highlighting the extra 7K or so every Maryland family will have to shell out to pay for said services. (News flash here, if you have to buy it, it ain’t a service.)

Cato at Delmarva Dealings links to the smoking gun, so to speak, at Monoblogue

I just spoke to the County Executive Smith and Jan Gardner about a conversation I had with Josh White, the Governor’s Intergovernmental Relations Chief, about which we wanted to motivate a a (sic) response.

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Josh is interested in coordinating a message for the Governor as he goes on roadtrips to the counties. He is looking for not just the property tax equivalents, but real vignettes of the county “doomsday” budgets… like closing libraries, reductions in deputies, larger class size, no support for volunteers (sic) firefighters. I suggested a goal of 10 examples for each county, if the proposed State “doomsday budget” comes to fruition..

You get the picture.