This week, Maryland announced it will implement a hiring freeze to address an $121 million gap in the state’s budget.
Gov. Wes Moore told state employees the news via letter, saying the state would offer voluntary buyouts to retiring employees and would not be filling vacant positions.
This comes as the state has been courting federal workers that have been laid off by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Fagan Harris, Moore’s chief of staff, joined WTOP’s Shawn Anderson and Anne Kramer to share more about how the state will handle the hiring freeze and how it intends to selectively bring in skilled new workers.
This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Anne Kramer: The governor and all of you have known this $121 million cut was out there, and it was looming. So why wasn’t more done during the legislative session to make cuts then, or make some reductions then? Because there are a lot of questions being raised by lawmakers about why the administration waited.
Fagan Harris: I would start by just looking at the facts of the session. The governor, in partnership with the General Assembly, produced the balanced budget that, frankly, had hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts baked into it. It was the most reductions that we’ve seen in a general fund budget in more than a decade. I think actually a decade and a half, you have to go all the way back to the Great Recession to see a governor and a general assembly work together to reduce spend to that extent.
This $121 million personnel reduction was part of that agreement. It’s honestly a very small part of a much larger cuts package, and so all of it was done in tandem then. What we’ve now done in the spring is to think through how to do that really thoughtfully and minimize the impacts to the state workforce, but more importantly, make sure that there’s no interruption to programs and services for taxpayers and residents in the state.
Shawn Anderson: So when can we expect to see these actions start? Crunch some numbers, figure out to how these voluntary buyouts would work, what kind of package you might be offering them?
Harris: We are working with the various unions across state government. We’re conferring with them to design the voluntary separation package, or the buyout, as you put it. That will roll out in the coming weeks. So we’re doing that in collaboration with the workforce. The unions will help promote those opportunities to the workforce for those who are, for example, nearing retirement and ready to step back from state service, those represent opportunities for the state to honor that service, but also save money. And so, those details are forthcoming, being actively negotiated with the union, and we’ll have more soon.
Kramer: When are you expecting the hiring freeze to start? And how is that going to look?
Harris: The hiring freeze will start on July 1, which is the first day of the next fiscal year. So the first day that the new budget that the governor signed into law in May takes effect.
I want to unpack that a little bit for your listeners, the hiring freeze does not mean that all hiring and state government stops. What it does mean is that we raise the bar of what qualifies as a priority hire, and that we slow our hiring down to accrue savings, so that the state is tightening its belt and being fiscally responsible, but also we have to continue to be strategic about hiring.
As you all know, we’ve been on a really determined mission to recruit federal workers into the government; that will continue in these really high priority functions. We need really technical professionals across state government, for example, in finance or IT, to do important work for the state. So the goal of the hiring freeze is simply slow down the hiring, raise the bar to make sure that you’re only hiring the most important and critical functions, save money for the taxpayer, but continue to get the best personnel to do the work of the state.
Anderson: But in hindsight, was it financially smart to make that commitment to fired federal workers when you knew that these budget cuts were coming down the road?
Harris: I think we have to walk and chew bubble gum, and I think most Marylanders will understand that we’ve got to slow our hiring down to make sure that we’re being fiscally responsible stewards of the taxpayer dollar, and we’ve got to continue to make priority hires.
I think it would be a shame for us to miss out on an incredible talent pool that’s in our state, and for us not to help those people who’ve been laid off by the federal workers, by not making that available, you still want to get the very best people involved in state government, even if you’re hiring fewer people, we’ll continue to hire.
And look, state governments a big place, right? It’s more than 40,000 employees. There will still be hundreds of roles filled, and for those individuals, I think it’s a really important opportunity that we make available.
Kramer: Fagan, what else could complicate the state’s financial situation even further now?
Harris: Obviously, we’re watching the situation in D.C. incredibly closely. I’m really proud that the governor has done, I think, an extraordinary job delivering a balanced budget that made a lot of tough decisions. We’re talking billions of dollars of cuts and reductions that were necessary and hard, and we did it in partnership with the General Assembly that keeps us on a fiscally responsible path. I think we’re doing everything we can to navigate through the current environment, but obviously it changes by the day. You see federal agencies getting shuttered. You’re seeing more federal layoffs. You’re seeing really important federal programs like food stamps and Medicaid being impacted by really draconian cuts. And so we’ll continue to watch that. We’ll continue to be responsive and proactive.
Part of what we’re doing here with the hiring freeze and the voluntary separation and the buyouts is giving the state government the tools that it needs to slow spend where it needs to, but also continue to fill roles where it has to, and minimize disruption to the taxpayer and the Maryland resident, and make sure that we have the margin as a state government and as a state to absorb whatever shocks may come.
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