Though Gov. Wes Moore has a self-mandated commitment to reinvigorate the state government workforce, it’s unclear whether the $2 billion he has proposed in budget cuts will impact the effort.
This week, Maryland lawmakers will begin contending with the state’s nearly $3 billion budget deficit, and state workers are wondering what the fiscal crisis means for them — especially as they say current staffing levels are subpar.
In a statement to The Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, said that staffing levels in state agencies “are not anywhere close to where these levels should be.”
“If we want to make Maryland a state where no one is left behind and a state where people want to work, live, and raise a family, then we have to ensure our state workers — the ones who make these essential state services happen — are taken care of,” said AFSCME Maryland. “That means continuing to focus on recruiting and retaining state workers, ensuring state workers are safe on the job, and building back up our state services and facilities so they are in the place to meet the needs of Marylanders.”
Some of the governor’s top supporters in the General Assembly seem confident Moore will remain committed to filling the vacancies.
“We have this tough budget circumstance, but I also know the governor is committed to making sure we rebuild the state workforce,” House Majority Whip Jazz Lewis said when asked about the governor’s potential budget proposal.
On Wednesday, Moore, a Democrat, is expected to drop his budget proposal for the 2026 fiscal year. Last week, he announced that his proposal will include $2 billion in cuts. How the state will contend with the remaining gap has yet to be determined.
At the start of his administration, Moore issued a goal to rebuild the state government workforce, which shriveled under former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican.
At the start of the 2023 legislative session — days before his inauguration — Moore said that there were nearly 10,000 vacancies among positions in state employment. The union representing state workers also confirmed that number.
While adding thousands of new positions, the Moore-Miller administration decreased the state employee vacancy rate from 13.4% in January 2023 to 10.33% as of August 2024.
Lewis, a Democrat representing Prince George’s County, said Friday that he is “prepared to see anything” regarding the budget, including a potential pause in hiring, but does not anticipate layoffs.
However, Lewis also said the state “essentially lost a generation of potential workers” under the Hogan administration.
“We’re not going to rebuild that by completely taking another pause for four years or more,” Lewis said.
But the proposed major slash, regarding which there are limited details, raises questions about the potential hit to state government employees.
Asked if he anticipates the $2 billion in cuts coming at the cost of state employees, Moore said he’s “not trying to build someone else’s government.”
“I think, in many cases, we saw a decimating of state government that we had to be able to fix and we had to be able to course correct on, but one of the growths was that fixing that and course correcting didn’t necessarily mean ‘Let’s build the government that other people tried to.’ That’s not the answer,” Moore said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun last week. “You will see that, yes, we need more people to be able to get certain work done on certain elements. I think there’s a different way that we could approach actually meeting people where they are.”
During a meeting of the Spending Affordability Committee in December, Department of Legislative Services fiscal analyst David Romans recommended that state government officials prioritize filling vacancies in state government jobs before creating new positions.
Moore announced Friday that he plans to make an additional $50 million dent in the deficit by eliminating wasteful and inconsistent spending across government agencies.
Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said at a news conference after the announcement that Moore “made the right decision” by focusing on where cuts on government excess can be made first.
“That has to be the lens that we start the conversation with the budget,” Ferguson said. “I appreciate that the governor is going to put forward a number of places where he sees within the administration areas for the state to tighten the belt.”
Have a news tip? Contact Hannah Gaskill at hgaskill@baltsun.com.