At Wednesday's Board of Public Works meeting, millions of dollars were cut from the state budget.
As part of our In Focus commitment, we're breaking down the numbers for you.
The cuts are being made by program not by department-wide budget.
For example, the Board of Public Works is seeing a $2.5 million reduction to its Miscellaneous Grants to Private Nonprofit Groups, a 10.45% reduction of the original $23.92 million that was appropriated for those grants by the legislature.
"Nearly every state agency is impacted by these reductions, including my agency."
-Brooke Lierman, Maryland Comptroller
The Governor is only allowed to request up to 25% reductions in budget for specific programs and four programs saw that quarter cut today.
The Maryland Department of Emergency Management's State Disaster Recovery Division program's $2 million, will be cut to $1.5 million.
The Department of Transportation's Port Operations allotted $1 million is also getting cut by a quarter, as well as the Department of Health's Health Services Cost Review Commission and the Department of Commerce's Regional Institution Strategic Enterprise Zone Program.
"When we took office 18 months ago, our team realized that Maryland's business model was broken. That's not politics. That's math."
-Governor Wes Moore
The Rural Maryland Council in the Department of Agriculture also got a cut of $2.25 million, which would be 24.97% of the budget allotted by the Maryland General Assembly.
The Board Agenda for July 17th went into detail about where the money would be cut for each of these programs.
For the Office of the Public Defender, where the budget is being reduced by $1.13 million, the impact would "reduce available funding restricted for future salary adjustments for existing staff."
For many of the programs, the impact would delay the hiring of new positions until later in the year.
It reduces the amount of money going toward the State Disaster Recovery Fund, reduces funding for major IT developments and reducing increased funding for correctional education.
"I want to just recap, again, why we're bringing this package of actions to the BPW at this time, and what the package represents. This proposal before the BPW is an important step to maintain a balanced budget through targeted reductions in FY25. As the governor describes this focus this follows on a series of targeted reductions in the governor's original FY25 budget as we work to realign spending within a relatively stagnant revenue base that we inherited, while also making critical strategic investments in our most core priorities."
- Celine Grady, Secretary of Budget Managmenet
For the Port of Baltimore Operations, it would reduce the funding for a drone-based security system there.
The State is also cutting some support for State Operated Institutions of Higher Education, which is overall being cut by 1.09% translating to more than $25 million in reductions. Within this program line, this includes a 33% cut to new funding for the Morgan State University Center for Urban and Coastal Climate Science Research and a 50% reduction in new funding for the University of Maryland Global Campus Completion Scholarships.
The cuts would also reduce increased funding for the computer forensics laboratory by more than $1.45 million.