Protests welcome back Assembly (MD)

ANNAPOLIS — Hundreds of anti-tax demonstrators greeted lawmakers on their return yesterday for a special General Assembly session to consider Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan to increase taxes and legalize slot machines to cut the state's $1.7 billion budget shortfall.

Voters opposed to the plan by Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, began their protest in the early morning by flooding the state Capitol with nearly 1,000 phone calls before noon, then packing Lawyer's Mall in front of the State House to call state Democratic leaders the " 'Taxes' Axis of Evil."

In his opening remarks last night, Mr. O'Malley implored lawmakers to work together to fix the structural deficit.

"We now face one of the toughest challenges in our state's 373-year history," he said. "This storm is upon us, and this looming budget shortfall threatens to do grave damage to the very quality of life that our neighbors have elected us to defend."

Meanwhile, Edward T. Norris — a former Baltimore police chief turned radio personality — implored voters from his makeshift studio at Chick & Ruth"s Delly restaurant in downtown Annapolis to re-create the anti-tax Boston Tea Party by throwing tea bags into the water.

"This session is needless and senseless," said Joyce Cornett, 57, of Severna Park. "It takes a lot of nerve to do this."

But Democratic leaders who are set to pass one of Maryland's largest, most wide-ranging tax increases were resolute.

"I've never seen someone come down here and say: 'Don't fund my schools,' " said House Speaker Michael E. Busch, Anne Arundel Democrat.

"... this looming budget shortfall threatens to do grave damage to the very quality of life that our neighbors have elected us to defend."

TRANSLATION: "We've gotta protect our phoney-baloney nanny-state welfare-protectin' jobs!"

The rats want to raise taxes for the obscene pensions of government workers. Unfunded liabilities in Maryland for retiree health care (not pensions) have been estimated at 20 billion dollars. Every time that you see infrastructure neglected, think about the outrageous retirement benefits to government workers.

Defined retirement benefits are a carefully disguised form of deferred compensation. The public does not clearly understand the value of the deferred compensation. In my study of defined benefit pensions in Colorado, the average professional and administrative retiree received $900,000 lump sum deferred compensation. This compensation was in addition to the compounded account balance from employee and employer contributions.

Effectively, public employees in Colorado were given huge golden parachutes to facilitate early retirement, in some cases as early as age 50. In addition, public employees can use the money that most of us pay in payroll taxes to fund an auxiliary 401K. The state government carefully hides the actual value of the retirement compensation in compensation surveys. The compensation surveys make the ludicrous claim that retirement compensation (on average) is higher in the private sector than the public sector.

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