Reznik Report Week 2 (2012)

Hi, I'm Delegate Kirill Reznik. Welcome back to my weekly video blog updating you on what's happening here in Annapolis during the 2012 Legislative Session.

The most important thing to happen this week was Governor O'Malley presenting his 2013 budget proposal to the General Assembly. I want to stress that this is only the first stage of the process before we result in a final budget.

Now that the governor has sent his proposed budget to the legislature, both the House Appropriations Committee and Senate Budget and Taxation Committee will begin the tedious process of combing through thousands of pages of funding proposals for every agency in our government and make changes.

While the General Assembly can cut funding in the budget, by our state's constitution we cannot add or shift any lines items in the Governor's proposed budget. Once the committees make the changes they believe necessary, they will send a final budget to the House and Senate floors for final approval. A lot can and will change between now and the beginning of April, and no matter what is done, we are required by law to pass a balanced budget every year.

There are two highlights in the budget I wanted to quickly mention. The first is the situation with the Developmental Disability Administration funding. As many of you know, in the past months we have learned that DDA made a mistake that resulted in over $25 million in state funding being unspent for the last fiscal year at a time when we have thousands of Marylanders on wait lists to receive essential services. With so many in our community struggling, many of us were truly outraged to learn that such a mistake happened.

After an investigation it was discovered that the problem had to do with the outdated accounting system that DDA operates with. I joined many of my colleagues in signing a letter requesting Governor O'Malley to put in his DDA budget proposal the funding that went unspent and returned to the general funds account. I was pleased to see that not only does the Governor's budget return all of the state funding that went unspent last year, but the Governor has invested millions more into the agency to get some of the most in need of services residents we have off of our waitlists and to completely update its accounting system to make sure this mistake never happens again.

The second issue I wanted to highlight is the Governor's proposal to shift part of the state's teacher pension obligations to the counties. This is a major concern for me and many of my colleagues, as I know many of you are concerned about it as well. I and the other members of the Montgomery County Delegation, working with county officials, are going to begin the process of analyzing the effects of this change, as well as the overall budget, on Montgomery County and will be fighting to make sure that the budget is fair, equitable, and funds the priorities that are important to our constituents.

That's the update for this week. I am currently working on getting my legislative agenda prepared and a number of bills are currently being drafted. I will update you every week on the priorities I am working on.




Please contact me with your thoughts and questions on the issues we are working on here in Annapolis and if there is anything I can help you with, whether it's a state, county, or neighborhood issue. As always, I look forward to updating you again next week. See you then!

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