“We have a $17 billion liability that’s 2 percent funded. At what point to we begin to take action? I think we should be getting a plan together now.”-Maryland Budget Commission Member George A. Roche
from The Baltimore Sun
Gov. Martin O'Malley assured local leaders gathered at a conference in Cambridge tonight that he will not shift any portion of teacher pension costs to them this year -- defying his budget advisers' recommendation to do so.
Budget Secretary T. Eloise Foster had crafted plans to shift 40 percent of the state's $900 million annual burden to local governments, either in an across-the-board fashion or through a wealth-adjusted formula that would have called for places such as Montgomery County to pony up more than other, poorer areas.
"It's my belief that we cannot have a fruitful conversation" about sharing pensions "until we fix the pension system itself," O'Malley said at the winter conference of the Maryland Association of Counties. "I will not propose to pass pension costs this year onto the counties."
The line drew a standing ovation from local leaders who have fretted about the enormous holes the teacher pension costs would blast into their budgets.
O'Malley, a Democrat and former mayor of Baltimore, noted that lawamkers may propose the pension shift anyway. A plan passed the Senate last year but died in the House of Delegates.
No comments:
Post a Comment