As Maryland lawmakers wrestle with budget challenges, political observers point to neighboring Pennsylvania and Virginia as examples of better fiscal management.

“It’s all about leadership, said David Williams with the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. Williams talked about what he described as Pennsylvania’s effective budget management and warned that Maryland’s approach could lead to deficits and drive residents to relocate.

Republican Del. Ryan Nawrocki from Baltimore County echoed these concerns, saying, “We have a spending problem in Maryland.”

Nawrocki noted that Virginia, a state in which Democrats control the legislature and there’s a Republican governor, has managed its budget effectively.

“It’s not a partisan issue here,” he said. “They’ve figured out how to do this right.”

Virginia’s Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently announced a budget plan offering a $200 rebate for individual taxpayers and $400 for couples. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania, with a population of roughly 13 million, operates on a $40 billion budget, servicing more people with less money than Maryland, which has a population of 6 million and a budget exceeding $60 billion.

Nawrocki said Maryland should adopt similar fiscal strategies.

“They’re just efficiently and more effectively managing their budget. We can do the same,” Nawrocki said. “There just has to be a will to want to do the same and we have to really want to look at what is driving our budget deficit.”

Last week, Gov Wes Moore, House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones of Baltimore County and Senate President Bill Ferguson of Baltimore City, all Democrats, announced that they had settled on a final framework for closing a roughly $3.3 billion budget deficit that includes an additional $500 million in cuts.

“This reform package will help us to bring our tax code into the 21st century,” Moore said last week. “It means the majority of Marylanders can keep a little more in their pocket even as we here in Annapolis tighten our belts.”

But Williams criticized Maryland’s leadership, stating, “It’s all about leadership, it’s all about excuses and not making excuses. Gov. Moore has made excuses from day one. He has blamed former Gov. Larry Hogan, and he has not instituted any real policies to address the structural deficit.”

Nawrocki added, “We’ve talked a lot about cuts that aren’t real cuts. You know, like not contributing to the rainy day fund, shifting some money around that are not real budget cuts.”

Other neighboring states like Delaware and West Virginia also present contrasting fiscal scenarios. Delaware, a Democratic Party-controlled state, boasts a budget surplus, while West Virginia lawmakers have decreased their budget size this year.

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