Alsobrooks proposes freezing 800 county positions in tough budget year

Alsobrooks, who is running for U.S. Senate, said difficult decisions had to be made for the $5.46 billion budget she unveiled Friday, which confronts dwindling federal aid and higher interest rates in addition to increased obligations.

“This year’s budget includes cuts to almost every county agency except for public safety and the Prince George’s County public school system,” she said. “Most departments will see a decrease in dollars year over year, and some programs and initiatives will face reductions.”

Prince George’s isn’t alone in grappling with a confluence of challenges from the pandemic recovery, dwindling federal aid and increased expenses. The state also is facing a round of belt-tightening, as lawmakers’ ambitions collide with lackluster economic growth. State House lawmakers on Friday released a $1.2 billion package of proposed taxes, tolls and fees to avoid cuts to programs, including a landmark education initiative that Alsobrooks has singled out as a major cost driver for Prince George’s.

“I’ve been talking with my counterparts across the state, and we’re all having the same difficult decisions and the same challenges,” Alsobrooks said.

The county is again dipping into its reserves to help make ends meet, but the request is less this year, at nearly $33 million, which Alsobrooks said is designed to protect the county’s Triple-A bond rating. Last year the county reached for $56 million. She also shifted spending to overcome a $60 million budget shortfall.

But those maneuvers weren’t enough to ward against increased costs and coronavirus reverberations, and the county’s long-term projections show more challenges. In January, the county’s Spending Affordability Committee predicted that structural challenges could leave Prince George’s with a deficit of up to $407 million within the next five fiscal years.

Similar to last year, nearly 62 percent of the county’s operating budget goes toward education, 20 percent goes to public safety, and the rest covers government services, such as college and library spending and infrastructure development.

Alsobrooks has resisted asking county residents to pay more; Prince George’s is seeking to lower the burden on property owners by luring more development, in hopes of diversifying its tax base.

She said she’s pressed for more flexibility from state lawmakers in how the county may spend select tax proceeds that have by law been largely earmarked for schools.

“I have specifically avoided raising taxes,” she said, casting her efforts in Annapolis this year as a way “not to further burden our residents and to make sure that they get the services that they have come to expect.”

Lawmakers have so far indicated support for bills she requested to allow Prince George’s to exercise discretion over money generated by the local telecommunications and energy taxes. The taxes brought in a combined $88.4 million in the 2022 fiscal year, county records show, with nearly all of that going to operating expenses for Prince George’s County Public Schools — the second-largest school system in Maryland.

That money previously had not counted toward Prince George’s required contributions under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a landmark state education plan aimed at ensuring that Maryland schoolchildren have equal access to quality education.

Ahead of Friday’s news conference, Alsobrooks said in a letter to the Prince George’s County delegation in argument for the legislation that her office had already made $100 million in reductions in anticipation of a shortfall.

To avoid affecting current county employees, Alsobrooks said she froze positions, a choice expected to have trickle-down impacts on residents.

“[That] means that we have fewer people doing more,” she said.

Alsobrooks built her budget proposal on the assumption that the county would be granted control of the local telecommunications and energy tax proceeds; the legislation is in the hands of the state Senate.

“We would have seen much more dramatic cuts if we had not been able to have that flexibility,” she said.

Despite the dour forecast for the county’s financial future, Alsobrooks said she made targeted investments in the safety and health of the county, by increasing the Prince George’s County Police Department’s budget 2 percent, or $7.6 million. The growth in the agency’s budget includes funding for 100 recruits. She also allotted nearly $280 million to the fire and emergency services department, which also would fund 100 recruits and a paramedic program.

The budget also includes about $104 million for health and human services, a priority for Alsobrooks, about $21 million of which goes to support mental health, addiction and substance abuse programs.

County Council Chair Jolene Ivey (D-District 5) said the council will work closely with the county executive’s office to pass the budget for the new fiscal year, which begins July 1.

“We’re going to spend the next couple of months really going through it line by line, and trying to make sure that we’re all in agreement on the best way forward for the county,” she said. “We’ve all had to really look at the budget and be more fiscally conservative because once you know what we have to deal with, we just can’t go spending money willy-nilly. You have to make sure that you’re being responsible.”