That sounds like a great idea but for comparrison sakes. Was your school district funded directly by your city council or do your schools have independent taxing authority?

Are you currently in Harford County? We could use some fiscally conservative minds up here. Your input on the budget process would be valuable for next year.

So, how to proceed? I highly recommend those on both sides of the tax debate make a pact to use a “Price of Government” index. This shows the impact of taxation as a percentage of real income on the average citizen. We used this in Garland, Texas while I was Deputy Mayor Pro Tem and Mayor Pro Tem to get an idea of the IMPACT of taxation. Frankly if your local government takes more than 1% of the average citizen’s income on a PoG index, your governemnt is probably oversized. Ours in Garland, the last year I was on, was at 0.8% and I still thought government was too large. The citizens however seemed happey at that level.

Thank you.

I hope that you will also let your County Councilman and the County Council President know what you think of County Executive Craig’s budget, its recklesness and the property tax burden it will impose on County residents.

At the same time let them know what you think of County Executive Craig’s proposal to significantly reduce the taxes on an out of state corporation seeking to do business in Harford County. I believe that every business in the County would like the deal he is extending to OPUS LLC. For more details, check the fine article written by MissThompson in the May 20 edition of the AEGIS, page A11. 36 cents per rentable square foot, adjusted to the Consumer Price Index every 5 years. Other property owners are aying $2.70, per $100 of assessed value, which is fixed by the County Charter at two and one half times Harford County’s real property tax rate of $1.08. On top of that the OPUS property taxes will only be adjusted every 5 years, while other commercial property is adjusted every 3 years. The very best part is the index used. This tax break uses the Consumer Price Index, while the state assessment uses a combination of market value, strengthened and heavily influenced by the cost of building a new structure. The Consumer Price Index has not and does not increase much at all, unlike the construction costs.

Why can’t everybody get a similar deal?

Your thoughts in point 43 are well stated and I agree with many of them. I especially agree with your general point/s on Leadership. Our career politicians generally lack leadership qualities and integrity. Instead of taking positions that make sense – they too often take positions of less resistance in order to get reelected.

Just so you know where I’m coming from, I’m a registered republic but frankly consider myself an American first. I’m not sure what your background and life experiences are. My professional experience is business management with concentrations in budgeted, finance, and accounting.

Federal, state, and local governments are NOT held to the same fiscal standards as the rest of us. More and more these organizations are unionizing and demading more more more when there is no more to give. Liberal State governments like California and New York are in real trouble because they offered more than they could afford. They have some of the highest tax rates in the nation and yet they face the biggest budget deficits for years to come. THEY SIMPLY PROVIDED MORE THEY COULD AFFORD. Of course, they will raise income taxes even higher and will eventually force taxpayers out of their states. In the end the federal government (i.e. us) will need to bail them out.

It used to be a trade-off – you made less for taking a government job but had job security, solid benefits, and generally less job pressure. It has changed now – the average pay for a federal worker exceeds $75,000 annually, they have unbelievable leave benefits, and its virtually impossible to fire them for POOR performance (its easier to reassign them as deadwood).

The same trends have occurred in State and local governments. In fact I saw a recent survey that suggested that government workers are generally paid more than private sector employees for the same job.

The Harford County budget is simply fat. Mr Craig should be FIRED for the outrageous raises that he provided to staff in recent years. He may be nice guy but he is no leader and he has absolutely no REAL business experience. He definitely does not share conservative values.

He is in the same mold as JESSE BANE – go along with the POLICE UNION and GET ALONG.

Budget reductions born from a desire for fiscal responsibility are indeed applaudable. Budget reductions conceived out of necessity and previous recklesness are not. Harford Couonty Executive Craig’ s 2010 budget is a case of the latter. Simply put, he was forced to make reductions because he could not extract any more revenue from the residents of Harford County. All revenue sources have declined either from budgetary actions at the State level or the current economic circumstances, except those from property taxes.-

In order to fund his 2010 budget, County Executive Craig raised property taxes, to provide more revenue from this source than provided last year, spent balances from previous years, and furloughed selected County employees.

This situation was caused by recklessness of previous years and the economic situation. Clearly, County Executive Craig is not repsonsible for the current economic woeson, although by raising taxes he does contribute to it. His budget of 2009 is very much the principal factor which raised operating costs in the 2010 budget. His pay increase to County employees, which may well have been deserved, was truly reckless as it failed to recognize that the weak ecnomy would not provide sufficient revenue to pay employees and meet other budgetary objectives. The result is that in 2010 all Harford County property owners will be burdened with a property tax increase. Harford County employees will be doubly affected. Not only will their property taxes increase, they will also get a five day furlough. An unintended consequence of this is the added cost that business owners will charge their customers to pay their own property taxes, which worsens the economic situation for all Harford County residents.

This situation gets worse in 2011. Not only will operating costs increase, but the multi million, multi year contracts initiated in 2010 will be in their second year and will require funding. The State is expected to further reduce its contribution and pass back more operating costs to the County, and present revenue sources will remain constant or decline. Unlike the State whihc can reduce its contributions and pass back costs to the counties, Harford County’s only options will be to increase taxes, terminate contracts, or furlough and perhaps layoff employees. It is unliekly that County Executive Craig will increase taxes close to an election year, or terminate contracts without cause. The only recourse available will be furloughs and perhaps layoffs.

A prudent manager would seek to avoid such a looming budget dilema by truly reducing expenditures this year and next. A true leader would anticipate the future problems caused by the combination of all these factors, or at the very least recognized the obvious, and reduce expenditures to avoid even larger problems in the future. If County Executive will at least recognize the obvious, restructure his 2010 budget to reduce property taxes, give back the five day furlough on selected County employees, and reduce expenditures within these revenue constraints, to avoid futurre problems he will be applauded as a visionary with keen fiscal acumen, wisdom and insight. Failure to do so will condemn Harford County residents to increased taxes, increased costs, and furloughs and perhaps layoffs for County employees.

I look forward to meeting you at tonights TEA Party/rally and would enjoy hearing your thoughts if your decide to speak

If you look at the FY2008 Revenues, the state received $6,604,348,000 in federal funds. That’s 26.46% of the state revenue, which totaled $25 billion. http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/34bud/html/sumr2008.html

This means that the state raised about $19 billion in revenue by itself. We know they had a special session, which was supposed to raise about $1.4 billion (yes, they raised taxes in one year by about 1/16th of the previous 225 years), and that they are taking away $13,000,000 that was for the counties, raiding money pledged to counties, and passing the buck on state services (including teachers pensions and state prisoners that the county houses because the state doesn’t have enough prisons).

We also know that the tax increases aren’t yielding what was expected. We can expect the state to liberate about $20-22 billion from MD taxpayers all on it’s own (I expect the low end). Despite this, the FY2010 budget is over $31 billion.

If getting 25% and more of your budget every year isn’t a bailout, there is a problem. I mention all of this because I maintain that no action would benefit America more than phasing out federal contributions to state budgets. If legislatures want to spend money, they should have the taxes on their own conscience, and not their federal comrades.

More simply, I could reference the Obama “state stimulus” that some Republican governors rejected, but that O’Malley asked for more of. Go to http://www.statestat.maryland.gov/overview.asp# to see where Obama’s $3.9 billion in bailout money to O’Malley was spent.

Mr. Mallano(33) An actual dollar decrease in budgets is a rarity and is something to be applauded. You can rail against Craig, the budget, and taxes, but at least admit that that is a good thing. You can give credit where it is well deserved and still say it isn’t enough. That’ would be a sensible position I think most would agree with. I think the administration would agree that they haven’t put together the ideal budget, but we should recognize that it is a good one, far better than what the rest of Maryland is facing.