Baltimore Sun: Ehrlich's Rosy numbers seen as misleading

(The Baltimore Sun)

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. offered a glowing account of Maryland's finances during his State of the State address yesterday, saying the state would end the current budget year in June with a $680 million surplus.

Since he took office, the governor boasted, "we have resolved a $4 billion - four, with a b, billion dollars - in shortfalls."

But the numbers Ehrlich plucked for his speech offer only a partial - and somewhat misleading - view of Maryland's fiscal outlook, lawmakers and legislative analysts said.

By promoting a $4 billion solution, the governor is adding up several years' worth of temporary patches that leave the underlying problem unresolved, analysts say.

"If he has a $1 billion projected budget deficit for four years in a row, and solves each of them mostly with one-time solutions, he has $4 billion in solutions," said Warren G. Deschenaux, the General Assembly's top budget analyst. "It illustrates the fact that we haven't made the structural solution, because we keep filling gaps heroically."

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