I never thought I had much in common with the Washington Post editorial board until I read "Maryland's Silent Tsunami," the lead editorial in its October 4, 2010 edition.
It is frighteningly on-point about the crisis facing the Old Line State: "Neither O'Malley or Erhlich have cared to publicly discuss the most daunting threat to Maryland's fiscal health:
Billions of dollars in pension and healthcare bills coming due for retired teachers and former state employees, and no plan in place to pay for them."
This wakeup call could have been lifted directly from my Clean House in Annapolis District 27A Delegate 2010 campaign website.
The Post explains better than I:
"Having shortchanged--for almost a decade-- its contributions to the pension fund that covers more than 100,000 former employees, the state faces unfunded pension liabilities of more than $18 billion and unfunded health-care obligation projected at $15 billion. That's $33 billion in bills coming due, a sum equal to an entire year of state spending. And no one knows where the money will come from."
The Post editorial writers seem to agree with my analysis of the source of the problem:
"The numbers reflect a sorry record of political avoidance, cowardice, and pandering by decisionmakers in Annapolis, often in thrall to public employee unions. Starting in 2003, lawmakers allowed the state to trim its annual payments -- a decision akin to with holding part of your mortgage payment....
"Lawmakers proceeded to bulk up spending on schools and other popular programs through the mid-to-late 1990s, while closing their eyes to unmet pension obligations that widened year after year. They compounded the damage in 2006 by increasing pension payments to retired teachers and state workers, a "benefit enhancement" -- as the euphemisum went-- that was retroactive to 1998 and added $1.8 billion to the state's liabilities over the next 25 years. Added to the problem, the state's pension assets, invested mostly inequities, consistently underperformed the stock market.
"And that was the situation before the economy imploded two years ago.... Against the $15 billion owed for healthcare and other benefits, the state has less than 1 percent on hand."
The Post prescribes one major reform that has been at the center of my own public reform agenda since my first primary campaign for Delegate in 2006:
"The state must recalibrate its benefits for new employees to shift from a system of set payments toward one stressing defined contributions, as most private-sector businesses have done.... If locally elected politicians want to raise benefits, they must also be on the hook for at least part of the payments. To do otherwise invites massive irresponsibility."
Where the Post and I part company is that the WP smartypants writers chide the Two Governoristas for failure to "talk about" this entirely preventable breakdown, but pass over the real villains: the lifers and greasers in the General Assembly. But the Post fails to even mention Democrat bosses Michael Busch and Mike Miller, much less the pack of other tenured weasels and termites occupying Naptown for the past 112 years-- like our own Joe Vallario and Jim Proctor.
With this level of delusional public opinion continuing to hold sway in Maryland-- in sharp contrast to the massive shift to conservative fiscal responsibility that voters in other states seem poised to mandate on November 2, I truly fear that the voters are condemning Maryland to a maelstorm of forced austerity that will make the downturn of 2008 seem in comparison like a puff of wind.
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