Q&A: Maryland Gov. Moore talks about effects of Trump administration on state job cuts, disaster aid

Maryland has taken a greater direct blow by Donald Trump’s firings than anyone else inside the entire country. Where we’ve now, over the past month, 3,500 federal workers have been fired by Donald Trump, and so we knew that we had to be able to support those who were going through difficult times right now.

So yes, we’ve not only worked with our partners in the General Assembly to be able to initiate unemployment insurance and supports for those and giving some financial support so people can get their prescription medications and be able to get groceries, while they’re looking for new opportunities.

But we also know that we’ve been able to provide new work opportunities for them as well. Our “Feds to Eds” platform is now actually streamlining people to go from fired federal workers, to then say, let’s get you inside of classrooms and to become educators. Let’s get you inside of hospitals and let’s streamline the process and get it done quick.

So we know that $700 cannot replace a steady paycheck, but it can help to cover groceries or transportation costs while our families are stabilizing, seeking out work opportunities and exploring other resources while they continue to take these blows that are coming from the Trump administration.

We’ve received a very strong voice of support. And again, both for those who are taking and utilizing it, by saying that we actually want to try a different type of career path, or there’s something else that we want to be able to explore. We think this is a good opportunity to do it. But also, I think people are seeing this is also just smart governance, that I’m not interested in building someone else’s government. We have to build a government for the 21st century that you can deliver better results, but also say we need to do it in a fiscally responsible manner.

I’m really proud of the fact that over the past three years — well, mine is the first administration in over a decade that has gone three straight years — where we have actually come up with a general fund that’s smaller than the year before. So we are actually producing better results with less money.

And so while Donald Trump is really using a sledgehammer in the way that he’s looking at social services, we’re saying we can use a scalpel, and we can be smart and be fiscally disciplined and responsible and still get better results, which is exactly what the people are hoping for.

Well, the instructions that I have are the same instructions that I have for every one of my Cabinet secretaries. It’s results. I have a very high expectation for the type of results that our secretaries and our agency heads are going to produce. And I expect collaboration. And I think that’s the reason that we are seeing such encouraging numbers when it comes to public safety all across our state where, when we first came on board, the homicide rate in the state of Maryland had nearly doubled over the eight-year period from my predecessor. We saw how Baltimore City went eight straight years of 300 plus homicides unabated. And we said, we are going to take a different type of approach.

We made historic investments in local law enforcement. We made historic investments in technology and predictive analytics and saying, if someone committed a violent crime with a firearm, I want them in handcuffs in 24 hours. And saying that we are going to invest in our communities, and we’re working with the mayor and other local leaders to be able to produce the kind of results now where Maryland is amongst the fastest drops in the country in violent crime.

We’re seeing public safety numbers that we have not seen in 50 years. The last time the homicide rate was this low in Baltimore City, I wasn’t born yet, and so we’re really proud of the results that we’ve been able to show all across the state of Maryland. But we also want the people of the state of Maryland to know that we’re just getting started.

Yeah, I just deeply disagree with the decision that they made there. We saw catastrophic results with the flooding in Western Maryland, and we put in, immediately, for federal supports for it, because we knew that in order to fully recover from this, the state is doing everything and anything that we can do to be able to support them. But we also know that the federal government has role and responsibility, too.

These devastating floods that hit Western Maryland in May, they clearly met Disaster Assistance criteria that was established by FEMA. And so it’s just deeply disappointing that the White House has now decided that the supports that our friends in Western Maryland need and deserve and qualify for, that the White House is now saying that we’re on our own.