Gov. Larry Hogan's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year offers roughly $400 million in new tax cuts, he announced Thursday.
Hogan announced the $17 billion proposal just under a week before lawmakers return to Annapolis for the annual legislative session. Priorities include education and transportation funding, he said.
"We're investing an unprecedented $2 billion into shovel-ready infrastructure projects, which will fix every single structurally deficient bridge in the state, and which will finally move us forward on every single top priority road project in every single jurisdiction in the entire state," Hogan said.
He also promised to increase education spending as required by law.
However, he plans to introduce a bill cutting back on the number of budget items the state is required to fund at increasing levels year after year regardless of the state's revenue picture.
“Mandated spending accounts for 83 percent of the entire operating budget, driving unsustainable spending and putting the budget on auto-pilot for massive spending increases that we simply can't afford,” he said. “Eighty-three cents of every dollar can't be touched, and we're forced to do all of our budget balancing and all of our reining in of spending out of the other 17 cents."
But Democrats questioned how realistic those goals are.
"It's important to know what are mandates? Mandates are education spending, healthcare spending, public safety spending,” said Sen. Richard Madaleno, a Democrat from Montgomery County. “What the governor is actually proposing is less money for public schools and more money for tax cuts."
House Speaker Michael Busch also questioned how the governor plans to pay for his proposed tax cuts.
Hogan didn’t offer specifics either on the tax cuts or on which mandates he would eliminate.