As dishonesty and disdain were normalized elsewhere in America, Maryland showed the nation an example of productive and respectful bipartisan government. Disagreement between Maryland’s Democratic legislature and our former Republican governor was real but never descended into the name-calling and vitriol that defines so much of American politics.

This was possible because trust existed between the two sides, a trust rooted in the idea that critiques of performance and disagreements on policy could be sharp but would always be fair. Maryland was one of the few places in America that escaped the winner-take-all version of politics prevailing across the nation. Our Republican governor often criticized a Republican president, and Maryland Democrats helped give their Republican governor a 77% approval rating. The world was upside down in Maryland, in the best possible way. Our state wasn’t free of political infighting, but we avoided the worst and never accepted as our norm dishonesty and disdain.

Something has changed for the worse in Maryland politics.

The trust that underpinned Maryland’s politics is fraying, weakened by the bad-faith accusations of our current governor against our former governor. The stakes of the moment are high. Maryland’s budget problems are real, not because they look bad on a ledger sheet but because they threaten our state’s financial stability, its economic vitality and its ability to provide quality services to citizens. We must understand how we arrived in this perilous place so we can properly navigate the obstacles, and we must rely on facts to guide us. Maryland Democrats were proud of our calls during the COVID-19 pandemic to follow the science and tune out the political hype. That same approach can see us through now.

Efforts by Gov. Wes Moore to reshape history to place blame on his predecessor are disingenuous and a far cry from the fact-based politics Democrats champion. As Moore often says, a portion of our state’s rainy day fund was made possible by federal money provided during the pandemic. But it was the deliberate decisions made by former Gov. Larry Hogan and his Democratic partners in the legislature that preserved this money rather than see it spent. The rainy day fund and the surplus we enjoyed as recently as two years ago were not accidents of federal funding. They certainly weren’t the “sugar high” that Moore describes. They resulted from hard and thoughtful decisions about what to do with the federal money as it arrived, and it was through restraint and responsible governance that our surplus came into being and survived.

Hogan’s entire brand as governor for eight years was responsibility and restraint. He was criticized at the time for vetoing the bill to fund the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the very legislation that’s now driving a huge portion of our deficit, a veto later undone by the Democratic supermajority in our legislature. It’s absurd to first criticize his veto for being too fiscally conservative and then blame him for the fiscal cliff created when that veto was overturned. Any honest Marylander would be hard-pressed to describe Hogan as being anything other than fiscally prudent. It was, in fact, his fiscal conservatism that most exasperated Democrats during his administration.

Peter Franchot, Maryland’s long-serving former Democratic comptroller, co-wrote a commentary with Hogan attesting to the sound state of Maryland’s finances when they left office. Moore himself attested to the same, describing the state’s finances as “fortunate” in the early days of his administration. For a long time in Maryland these assurances from Democrats would have been unnecessary. But since 2023, as our politics in Annapolis have come to resemble the ugly politics of Washington, it became necessary for a respected member of the other party, someone like Franchot, to reassure Democrats that Hogan’s fiscal management was sound. This is what happens when Maryland adopts the politics of the nation and stops being an example of what politics should be. Moore’s radical departure from his own 2023 assessment demonstrates a dishonesty and expediency that represents the antithesis of Maryland’s sharp but collegial politics under Hogan and his Democratic colleagues. Moore’s denial of the basic facts surrounding the origin of our fiscal condition is reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s denial that the threat from COVID was real. Both men seem willing to discard the truth in pursuit of their political well-being.

Key portions of Moore’s budget proposal continue the theme of political expediency. His plan proposes depleting our rainy day fund by $500 million, 20% of its current value. This leaves the fund above its state-mandated minimum and might be acceptable if it were plugging a short-term hole or addressing the unexpected. It does neither. The fiscal condition facing our state was entirely predictable, anticipated by the fiscally conservative budget Hogan offered Moore as a recommendation in 2023 and by Franchot’s comments in early 2024 that the state was once again facing fiscal challenges and deficit. Depleting the rainy day fund also does nothing to make future withdrawals less likely, and the size of our state’s deficit will continue to grow over the next few years, despite the complex plans and assumptions of Moore’s budget. Nothing in his budget, not his tax policy, his spending policy or his rainy day fund withdrawal, prevents our state from having a deficit in the years ahead. Despite soaring rhetoric and frenetic activity, we’re solving no problems.

Maryland was at its best before Moore brought Washington politics to Annapolis. We could take pride in being one of the few places in modern America that was guided by facts and governed with bipartisan civility. Since 2023 we’ve lost much of what set us apart. Moore’s dishonest representations of Hogan’s legacy, and his willingness to rearrange rather than solve our state’s problems, is a departure from the uniqueness that recently defined Maryland politics. As we tackle our complex fiscal problems, all of us would do well to focus ourselves on what matters most: facts, honest discourse and civility. In the recent past, under the leadership of Hogan and his Democratic colleagues, this was Maryland politics. Two years after Gov. Moore’s arrival, Annapolis seems to point fingers far more than it points toward solutions.

Colin Pascal (colinjpascal@outlook.com) is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a registered Democrat, and a former member of the Veterans for Hogan Coalition. He lives in Annapolis.