Questing for Atlantis

As always happens this time of year, the governor of Maryland has to put forth the budget. This year the stakes are rather high with that since we’re facing a $2 billion shortfall.

Lost on the Shore has, quite accurately, noted that O’Malley’s proposed budget doesn’t really solve the problem. It closes the gap, but it does so through a mix of one-time fixes that just kick the problem down the road and assumptions of money that isn’t guaranteed to come in.

Unfortunately, in the same post he both advocates a rather poor solution to our budgetary woes (I direct him to my previous post on the follies of combined reporting) and buys into the foolish idea that the only options are to increase taxes and/or decrease spending on existing programs.

This is an incredibly foolish statement and one that is made all too frequently. It completely ignores the option of drastically reforming the structure of programs in order to reduce expenditures. Yes, this is technically cutting spending, but it’s far different from simply reducing the funding for a giving program. Through properly executed reforms you can get as good a product or better from the program at the same or lower cost.

There are a wide range of these, but I’ll point to two that should sufficiently gore oxen of both the left and the right.

1) Move our school system completely over to the charter model.

Charter schools have consistently shown that they produce results significantly higher results than regular public schools while charging a fraction of the cost. According to Andrew Coulson,

Based on the latest (2006-07) figures, the average charter school in Michigan spends $2,000 less in state and local tax dollars per pupil than the average district school. So the savings from a district-to-charter student exodus would add up to $3.5 billion annually

I don’t know the exact numbers, but if we received even a 1/3 of those kind of savings we’d be worlds better financially. And it shouldn’t be a hard move either. Since charter schools still have to meet basic government standards they are far less politically controversial than the even more effective school voucher programs. I would also note that charter schools aren’t some insane right-wing idea – prominent leftie blogger Matt Yglesias has repeatedly stated his support for charter schools.

2) Decriminalize marijuana.

According to economist Jeffrey Miron:

it costs taxpayers at least $7 billion per year to pay for the arrest and prosecution of pot offenders. Taxpayers pay another $1 billion per year to house the estimated 50,000 state and federal inmates serving time for pot, according to data derived from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Now admittedly, these are national numbers, but with the urban centers of both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. it stands to reason that Maryland could benefit substantially from reducing its expenditures arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning people for marijuana usage.

This too shouldn’t be controversial. Several other states and localities have taken this step and have yet to annihilate themselves in an orgy of put-fueled violence. And should we be willing to go even further, and fully legalize pot the economic returns could be even larger.

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I only point to these as two examples of innovative reforms that could allow the state to help close the budget deficit while not requiring an increase in taxes or reducing the spending in ways that will hurt beneficiaries of cut programs (like the patients at Upper Shore for example).

Governor O’Malley and the rest in Annapolis should be willing to look beyond the gimmicks and the usual business of politics to consider these and other such options.