People aren’t likely to confuse Wes Moore with Bob Cassilly. One is the governor of Maryland and a Democrat, the other is the Republican county executive in Harford County. But comparing how both speak about looming budget shortfalls at the state and local level, it’s not hard to see the similarities. Just as Moore warned local officials meeting at the winter conference of the Maryland Association of Counties last week that some spending will need to be reduced and the state needs to become more business-friendly, Cassilly on Monday brought essentially the same message to the Baltimore Sun Editorial Board suggesting that school reform plans need to be “right-sized.”

And while the former state senator also noted he and the governor may have differing views on specifics of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future — with Cassilly emphasizing, for example, a need to reduce central office personnel costs — there was another major point of agreement. He echoed Moore’s assessment (also mentioned at the MACO meeting in Cambridge on the Eastern Shore) that part of the problem was the “sugar high” of federal dollars meant to provide some temporary COVID pandemic relief that instead of going to one-time expenses were adopted into local budgets.

“I would have liked to have had a chance” to decide how to spend those dollars, said Cassilly, who was elected to office in 2022 while the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan went into effect in 2021.

All of which suggests that no matter what happens after Moore presents his proposed state budget to lawmakers in the next Maryland General Assembly session — or how local governments deal with their own fiscal year 2026 spending plans shortly thereafter — some tough decisions lie ahead. Given the size of the shortfall ($2.7 billion for the state, the worst in two decades), there is ample reason for concern. But given some of the rhetoric we’re hearing so far — including words like “balance” and “compromise” — we’re also somewhat encouraged that fiscal sanity that seems so difficult to find in the nation’s politically polarized Capitol will be achievable in places like Annapolis and Bel Air.

As for Harford County, we would humbly suggest to the incumbent (who already expressed his intent to run for a second term as county executive and not for governor in 2026) that one obvious budget move would be to restore the county’s property tax rate to $1.042 per $100 of assessed value, the same amount the county charged for years before it unwisely reduced the rate to the current 97.79 cents. Much spending will still have to be cut but it would seem a fair approach given nearby jurisdictions including Baltimore and Baltimore County charge more.