Proposed budget to share total retirement costs between state and locals

Governor O’Malley released his FY 2013 proposed budget yesterday. It does include a shift of retirement costs to the local governments. Currently, the state pays all of the costs for teacher pensions (a total of $946 million) and the counties and Baltimore City pay all of the costs for social security. O’Malley’s proposal would combine these two retirement costs and split them 50/50 between the state and the local governments. Although this is still an increase in the costs for local governments, it is not as high as if there a shift of pension costs and no change in social security.

 

At this point, the budget is in the hands of the General Assembly. The General Assembly may take things out of the budget, but not put something in it. This means that they can choose to reduce the costs being pushed down to the local governments; however, to do that and keep the budget balanced they must reduce spending elsewhere. Concern over this push down will be raised at the Maryland Library Legislative Day.