Pam Wood of The Baltimore Banner covers all things Annapolis every day and joins Nestor from the State House for a mid-session primer on the state legislature, balancing the budget, federal cuts and how Trump’s policies are crushing and crippling “blue state” Maryland in the short term.
Nestor Aparicio discusses the challenges facing Maryland’s state legislature, particularly the impact of federal policies on the state’s budget and programs. Pam Wood from the Baltimore Banner highlights the critical issues, including potential Medicaid funding cuts, which could cost Maryland $1 billion annually. The state faces a $3 billion budget gap, with 9% of its $67 billion budget coming from federal sources. The conversation also touches on the importance of federal funding for infrastructure projects like the bridge connecting Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, which is currently under repair with 100% federal funding secured. The discussion emphasizes the critical role of journalism in informing the public about these complex issues.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Maryland legislature, state budget, Medicaid funding, federal government, education blueprint, Wes Moore, Trump administration, economic impact, federal funding cuts, healthcare, infrastructure, unemployment insurance, Chesapeake Bay Program, tax proposals, state government.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Pamela Wood
8Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. I’m going to be positively taking the merely crap cake tour back out on the trail. This month, we’re going to be at State Fair. Next month, I’m wearing my state fair shirt, but this week, at Faith leaves on Thursday, we’ll also be at the pizza Johns on the 21st of the month, which is really baseball kickoff, because Luke and I are going to be in Toronto with Getty Lee and Anthony Santander and everyone else at skydome as we kick off the season. All are brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. Have the magic eight ball scratch off some giving away. Also, home run riches will remind everybody 162 games, lot of home runs. They move defenses back, all that stuff. And you know, when this guest comes on, usually in season, she will talk about Anthony Santander and him going off to the Blue Jays and and she will be at some point, putting her white paneled bird cap on, but she is really putting her reporters cap on and her citizenship cap on her civics cap on she is of the Baltimore banner. She is the reporter at the State House in Annapolis. I have been very unsuccessful in reaching Wes Moore or some people around him. Brook Lehrman is going to be coming on, Johnny O’s now running around down. So I have people politicians moving in different directions, but there’s reporters that are staying entrenched, and I reached out to Josh Kurtz, who with Maryland matters, who’s sort of moved away, and it’s just more important than ever that we have people to know what they’re asking, what’s being held accountable. We have a bridge down. We have all sorts of shenanigans going on 40 miles away in DC. But Pam wood is trying to make heads or tails, lots of things going on in a very, very important session in Annapolis, and legislative session where a lot of money has been promised, and Republicans are doing their thing, Democrats are doing their thing. And Pam, welcome. I we’re not going to do baseball. I might hit you on a Justin Tucker thing, by the way, great journalism being done by your colleagues. I had Julian this week, and I highly encourage everyone that wants to understand more of the nuance of the Justin Tucker’s reporting to have at it. You’re down there doing the good work for all of us here. What’s important in Annapolis right now? Pam, what’s going on? Yeah,
Pamela Wood 02:19
thanks for having me. Nestor, really appreciate it. I always love coming on the show. There’s a lot of important stuff, but a lot of it is tied, as you noted too. Down the road in Washington, DC, everyone here in Annapolis is focused on, what is President Trump doing? What is this Republican Congress doing? And how does that affect the state of Maryland? How does it affect the state’s budget? Look, we have 1000s of Marylanders are losing their jobs through the federal government, through nonprofits that are no longer getting funding. We have tons of money being stripped from anchor institutions. You know, the research money at Hopkins. There is a worry that the Republican Congress is going to, you know, turn off a bunch of the federal money that helps Maryland run its programs. The biggest one is Medicaid, that is insurance, health insurance for people who are low income, people have disabilities, and they’re talking about pulling back some
Nestor Aparicio 03:19
of the Medicaid at that time I’m 9187 84 year old mother who lived to be 98 um, because of Medicare and Medicaid?
Pamela Wood 03:28
Yes, yeah, absolutely, it is Medicare and Medicaid. Now, once
Nestor Aparicio 03:32
you get to be old, unless you’re a billionaire, all of this stuff has affected you all. Yes,
Pamela Wood 03:37
yes, absolutely. And the Medicaid portion of it. Look we have like, 6.16 point 2 million Marylanders, and it’s like, well, north of a million, I think 1.8 million people have Medicaid, including a lot of children. A lot of babies are born on Medicaid, and Congress is talking about stripping some of that funding, and Maryland would be out a billion dollars a year, potentially, and the state just doesn’t have money to make up if the federal government abdicates its responsibility on these or other things, Maryland doesn’t have a bunch of money laying around in the couch cushions to make up the difference. So that is what I am focusing on here in Annapolis. That is what the leaders are focusing on, figuring out how bad that problem is going to be and then how to fix it.
Nestor Aparicio 04:21
There’s so few people that understand this that are qualified. You are one of them, and I am not to come down there and do your job and ask the kinds of questions and have the the deep perspective of having done this for how many years, Pam, have you been doing this? Too
Pamela Wood 04:37
many to count full time, since 2018 But several years before that, I would come down just for the session in the winter. Your
Nestor Aparicio 04:44
curiosity in wanting to do this job for the Baltimore banner, before that, the Baltimore Sun and before that, you know, working your way through ranks to be able to do this as a citizen. What are your concerns? What’s your job down there? I mean, I asked Julie sharper, the same. Thing in regard to the bile, quite frankly, the Justin Tucker put out, in regard to your journalism and tabloid like that, sickens me, and it sickens me coming from the White House Down and all of you work very, very hard and have an incredible level of expertise in the same way that people in I went to Steve molesky at the Towson game the other day, who left massen, and I saw there’s been a thing with Masson as well, with money and sports like people that have deep institutional knowledge are indispensable. I mean, they’re like, they’re like our grandparents, like, just knowing so much, you know, to be able. And I’m now at 56 and I like having people like you down there, where, for me, I try to cut through what is the bro Hogan Republican message versus the anti Wes Moore, anti democratic message. We have a bridge down. It’s not democratic. It’s not Republican. And you go down and try to fight through what is a lot of rhetoric really start I mean, when I mean Donald Trump’s running the country and befriending Putin, I mean that becomes a bigger story than even Justin Tucker. And you know, anything else that’s going on in the world for me, but how it affects how Wes Moore is managing the state, and with every guest I have on talking about children, pre K, employment, I shared a stat the other day that I just saw on, you know, it was a one of those media places like the New York Times or The Washington Post, which we can get into that as well. And what media is. I shared a thing about Maryland specifically on federal money, specifically because of what goes on in the two counties around Washington and all sorts of federal parts of DC that are based in Maryland and Virginia, loud and, you know, rich counties in the Northern Virginia area, and what it’s going to do to this local regional economy in an unbelievably devastating way that they might not feel in Idaho,
Pamela Wood 07:04
yeah, Maryland is uniquely exposed to the federal government. Of course, our proximity to Washington, DC, there are many federal agencies that are headquartered here. NIH is in montgomery county. You know, no one silver spring Social Security just had hundreds of jobs losses. That’s right here in Woodlawn. So there are a greater proportion of federal workers and federal contractors as well in Maryland, as compared to other states. Virginia also has a large number, but they have a Republican governor, Glenn youngkin, so less likely that he’s going to speak out then Governor Moore. And look, Governor Moore took a turn about, you know, pretty recently, he came back from a Governor’s Association meeting in DC and changed his tune. He started out saying, Look Wolf, you know, he was a big Kamala Harris supporter, of course, but he said, Look, we’ll work with anybody you know. Hopefully we’ll find alignment with the Trump administration on things, and we’ll partner when we can. And then he came back from this governor’s meeting recently and said, Oh man, this is bad. This is bad. And he’s taken a sharper turn against Donald Trump, as he has to deal with Governor Moore and the general assembly down here have to deal with the problems being created by Washington. And my job, as I see it, is, if I could, to be sort of the translator and the explainer of what’s going on. Look, Marylanders are busy. People have jobs, school, family commitments, like you don’t have time to figure this all out. You don’t have time to sit there and watch cable news all day, and I recommend against that, but hopefully myself, my colleagues in the press court down here, we try and understand what’s going on, explain it to you, the folks, our neighbors, to understand what’s going on. And those of us who’ve been here for a while, we can do a little bit better job of reading between the lines, reading the tea leaves, explaining what’s really going on. That’s what I try to do here in Annapolis.
Nestor Aparicio 09:06
I have been unsuccessful. And Wes has been governor for 25 months. Whatever it’s been, I have not had an on air conversation with Wes Moore. Him coming back last week. I saw parts of that. I didn’t see all of it. I don’t know what is said after scrums, before scrums, or what his people are saying about what’s, what the experience was, the video that came out, you know, with that guy, saucing, the main governor. I mean, I mean, he brought Zelensky into, I mean, I mean, I, I don’t know what chance Wes Moore has when he’s going to do this to Zelensky. Other than Wes has military background, and a whole lot of different dealt with a whole lot of different kinds of people. But we had a bridge down here, and we had an economy that was going kind of okay, and I think we would have had been having a different conversation at Kamala. Has been President right now, and it would have been a tough enough conversation, right? Am I? Am I correct in saying that on January 3, before Trump took office, when Biden was still saying his goodbyes, that when the Assembly met, it really was about we got a lot of money out, not a lot of money in. And how did this happen so quickly? And then I see the the rhetoric coming from the right side, saying Hogan left this treasure tree. You know, it’s just all of this web. And I tried to cut through that and then process whatever the Trump thing is going to be as to how healthy the state is or isn’t. And I know lots of rich people here hate the inheritance tax stuff. And as they’re getting older, you know, partners of mine that have moved off to other states where they get more shelter because they’re in that tax bracket. I don’t know what that means for the rest of us who love it here, want to stay here and be here and contribute to things. But things were painted pretty rosy when Hogan left. We’re two years in now, and it was painted as sort of a difficult thing in regard to where money is coming from, in regard to all sorts of pots, you know, and I talk about lottery money and gambling, and the things where I talk about it, you talk about federal money. And I’ve had a lot of different people on about education and health, but there was just a general sense that this was going to be a tough legislature to begin with, right before Trumpism took over, it pretty quickly, right?
Pamela Wood 11:22
Yes, and that’s something that the governor said to me is, look, this would this the state budget in particular, would have been tough on its own, and now you’ve sort of added the up the difficulty factor, and the problem is bigger to solve now with the Trump administration and the Republican Congress look, coming into this year, the the difference between money coming in and money going out was about $3 billion and that’s on a $67 billion state budget. So I’m not good at percentages, but that’s pretty big gap, and yes, Governor Hogan did leave the state with a surplus, but it’s also correct that that was a little bit of not false, but something you couldn’t count on because it was part of it was COVID money that came from the state government that’s starting to run out. At the same time, the economy has been kind of lagging here in Maryland, like it’s been okay, but it hasn’t been growing as much as it could, which means not as much tax dollars coming in as they would have hoped. And so you’ve have this imbalance, and it’s $3 billion this year. And look, the state government has to have a balanced budget. You know, county governments, Baltimore City, they all have balanced budgets. Unlike the federal government, they have to figure it out every year. So $3 billion was already hard, and now of that $67 billion state budget, 9 billion comes from the federal government. For No, I’m sorry, more than 20 billion comes from the state government. 9 billion of it is Medicaid. So if Congress slashes Medicaid, if Congress slashes other aid, you know, transportation aid, you know, all sorts of things that makes that problem even harder. So all session, there has been just this running undercurrent of, there’s negotiations, conversations of how to figure it out.
Nestor Aparicio 13:13
Pam wood is here. She’s trying to figure it out. She’s down in Annapolis covering all state government and the legislature and the movings of Wes Moore, and what’s the atmosphere down there? You’ve seen it during COVID. We’ve had masks on. You’ve joined the show with a mask on from down in that, down in that wonderful Wi Fi pit in Annapolis. And I haven’t been down on apples in a little bit, just, and not, certainly not floating around in the way that you do, maybe just down there for a show or meeting people, or being in that environment a little bit, and it’s always a little you know, people come in from all over the state, and everybody needs something and but the elephant in the room being Trump at this point and everything that’s going on over the last six weeks. I’m not going to paint it as bullying or somber, but you tell me, you come to work there every day?
Pamela Wood 14:01
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s not a lot of fun down here this session. Frankly, that I think these challenges are weighing on lawmakers. It’s actually a little hard to get excited about different sort of policy ideas because there’s no money, there’s no extra money sitting around to start new programs to solve problems. It’s, there’s sort of a, just a cloud cast over it with what’s coming from Washington and how that hinders the work of, you know, people who come here from all across the state, trying to solve problems, trying to do things for their neighborhoods. And there’s, yeah, there’s sort of a cloud over it this year, really, the number one thing is the budget happening? And then the number two thing is the education plan, the blueprint for Maryland’s future, which is very, you know, laudable, excuse me, laudable goals. But it’s expensive, and it’s going to only get more expensive. And how do you keep paying for it? That’s actually being discussed today, as I’m down here in Annapolis, and it’s a lot of. Tough decisions, so maybe not as somber as COVID when they were all in masks and people couldn’t gather very much. But it’s kind of a similar vibe in that it’s, it’s a bit of a cloud. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 15:12
everybody’s hanging on to get whatever they can get for their community or for their group. At the top of all of this, you mentioned education, you mentioned the blueprint, raising all this money for blueprint and the ambitions of it. And I’ve done various segments, although nothing really recently. I mean, I need to reach out to some folks and talk more about All right, we’re paying a lot of money. What? What are the expectations in this? And why is it so expensive? And, you know, I think we can all look and say, whatever we’ve done with education here, we failed, just in general. I mean, I look at the White House, and I know we failed, but and you know, they want to burn the books we got. So I would say, for education. Nobody’s against education. No one goes down and argues against it. Then the question is, what are we going to have to cut? And I think that’s where it becomes real sticky,
Pamela Wood 16:03
absolutely. And look, everybody is for education. There are policy differences over what’s the right funding, what are the right types of programs to fund? The superintendents came down here doing apples, and said, look, the Blueprint programs are starting to work. They’re starting to pay off. We’re investing, in particular in high poverty schools, bringing more resources to those, the kids who need it, the teachers who need it, to teach those kids. But the problem is, when they started this about five years ago, they dedicated some money to it, but not enough. There’s some some lottery and gaming. Money goes into it, some nicotine, tax money goes into it, but not enough to cover everything. As the program grows and they put more pieces in place. So that is a difficult conversation that’s happening right now. What’s the smartest way to spend the money to help the most kids?
Nestor Aparicio 16:57
Well then raising money, whether it’s tolls or whether it’s me getting speeding tickets on 695 or, you know, however, money is going to get raised civically, in a general sense, um, you know, it’s going to come from the taxpayers. And this is where the rain tax happens, or the bottle tax happens, or the plastic tax, you know, all of these things that get politicized to some degree, but the money has to come from somewhere. And again, I’ve already mentioned the people I know have some affluence leave because that’s another tax resource that we use here, and we’re trying to keep the bay clean. We have these issues that some other states don’t have in regard to environment and how it affects our economy when we don’t have crabs in a season because we’ve dirtied up the bay. So all of this, the ecosystem of the money, it’s this is a, I guess, a worrisome time, as I would say, anxious for a lot of people, anxiety would be high, yeah. I mean,
Pamela Wood 17:59
we want all those things, right? But they don’t come for free, and we had to pay for it, and you have to balance the needs versus willingness to pay. And certainly the governor, and you know, Democratic and Republican leaders here don’t want to sock the middle class. They don’t want to sock low income people. So the proposal from the governor this year rests largely on taxing people a little higher, at the very highest amounts. And as you pointed out, that’s a conundrum. Does that cause people to leave? Because those are the people who, you know maybe have the most mobility, right? So that’s a that’s a question, that’s something they have to wrestle with. And you know, we’ll see how that shakes out. I think we are in day 55 of 90 as we’re recording this. So we’ll see. I’m sure we will hear more tax proposals floated. And you know, it may take them all the way until day 90 to figure this out. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 18:52
and you’ll be up late that night. Pam, what is here? She’s at the Baltimore banner, doing the good work and reporting on the state. So a couple things that that come to the Trump Wes Moore thing that happened last week. Talk a little bit about that and the expectations or lack thereof. And obviously everything about this is a throw of a dart when you’re dealing with Trump. We saw four years of that. So there’s nothing that can be reliable or, you know, and I think that that that admission going in is difficult, but I don’t know what, how that you recover from that, when you come back from that, and that becomes the, well, we’re not going to get any help from
Pamela Wood 19:37
there. It’s a difficult situation for the governor, and yes, he’s amped up his rhetoric, but but maybe not all the way after that Oval Office meeting a few days ago, from when we’re recording with President Trump and President Zelensky, more than a dozen Democratic leader Democratic governors put out a statement, you know, criticizing the president for how he handled that, and Governor. Was not on that statement, so he still is picking his battles. But look, he is so concerned that the governor, every governor here, has a federal affairs team, right? They have some folks in Washington who deal with Congress, deal with the administration. Well, Governor Moore realize that’s not enough, and the state has been spending a couple $100,000 on consultants to help advise, help parse out and game plan all these different worst case scenarios, what could be coming, what the state might have to do. And so there are consultants helping the governor figure out, who know you know what may come, what all these possibilities are. I think you and I could put our heads together, and probably could come up with several, but, you know, not the whole universe of potential bad things that becoming Maryland’s way.
Nestor Aparicio 20:48
Well, Pam, if things were normal, we’d be doing this over Costas, and you’d be taking a Key Bridge from your palatial home in beautiful northern Anne Arundel County, and we’re five minutes away, and instead you’d have to take the harbor tunnel. So instead, we’re doing this on Zoom, my people in the bridge, our bridge, my bridge, your bridge, our bridge, Key Bridge. You know, I mean, been year, this week or like that, this month, couple I don’t know exactly what day it was, right? Yeah, end of March, yeah, yeah. Coming up couple weeks.
Pamela Wood 21:20
Where are we? So the good news, hopefully, is that back in December, the governor Maryland’s members of Congress secured 100% federal funding, a promise of 100% federal funding, Congress signed off on it back in December as part of an emergency like disaster aid plan that hit a bunch of different places, my understanding is that that is still intact, that is different from some of these other streams of funding that Congress could be chopping that said, I am absolutely certain that the Governor’s team in Washington that Maryland’s congressmen and senators are keeping a sharp eye on that, because that is crucially important to keep that project moving forward. You know, I know listeners, know what a vital artery that is, and the sooner that gets rebuilt, you know, the better it is for Greater Baltimore. So as I understand, the funding is secure. Normally, these kinds of projects if you were just building it, because you need, you know, it was, it was time to replace it. It’s 90% federal, 10% state. This because it’s disaster. And you know, outside of the planned timeline for that bridge, it’s 100% federal funding that is secure as of today. And I know they’re all working to keep it that way, to get that bridge up and running. I drove it almost every week before it went down. So we all know how important that is.
Nestor Aparicio 22:47
Well, when you have a retaliatory felon King, sort of you know that would that would do what he did, that Zelensky and Wes Moore can’t sign his name on the little thing that says that’s not cool, that we don’t make friends with Putin, we don’t sell out our grandparents that went to war to fight for all that. That the fact that he can’t sign that because he’s afraid of retaliation, kind of speaks to and for items like this. That to your point, he has to pick his spots, right? And that’s kind of where we are, is there, I should say, is there anything else at risk? Only everything right? Is it risk, but so security, locally, Medicare, Medicaid, you know, I had John Hoey from the Y on a couple weeks. He was talking about pre K and, you know, early education and just and an education in general that comes from federal funding. What have we left? Have we left anything out that I’m not aware of that could also be a part of this NSA and the other jobs, jobs are a lot, but what’s the next thing that can fall because of all of that, other than just, you know, we go to 8% unemployment in the state or something like that, because of this, that
Pamela Wood 24:02
could be a huge concern. Like the State Department of Labor is making sure they have enough people to run unemployment insurance. You know, in COVID, it crashed, it was disaster. They want to make sure, if we’re getting this influx of unemployed people that are preparing for it. Look, there’s a whole bunch of other things, the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program, which oversees the multi state effort to clean the bay that’s facing a cotton funding. They’re they’re talking about, you know, hacking it up at the Department of Education, which, yes, there’s funding, but Department of Education also oversees important policy like Title Nine for gender equity, like services for special needs kids, kids who have IEPs. That is all because of federal law. If you don’t have the federal government there supporting and enforcing these laws, you know, it trickles down to people who benefit from policies. It’s just really across the board. You can name any agency, look the Park Service, cut people. We had a great. Story in the Baltimore banner recently about Fort McHenry having this big celebration, but they just lost six employees in this government purge. So really, almost anywhere you look, there are effects of either this administration or the Republican Congress, negative effects on Maryland.
Nestor Aparicio 25:19
Well, who you vote for matters. I say that every single day, sometimes I feel like I’m yelling into a hole, but it doesn’t stop me from yelling, Pam, what is good enough to spend some time with us? I highly encourage you to follow her and give the banner of the 20 bucks a month that funds good journalism being done. We talk so much about Justin Tucker and Julie sharper, everything on a journalism side for you, you go down and cover what you cover. And it’s kind of, we say, it’s like Hulk Hogan. We walk to the ring and people yell at us, and you’re this and that, whatever. But I the work you guys are doing down there has been fearless Kimmy, everybody, and I know that. You know, every single day you’re doing important work down there in Annapolis and trying to decipher for your citizens, fellow citizens, what’s going on down there? And I’m very, very appreciative of that, and I hope they’re treating you right down there. Pam,
Pamela Wood 26:11
they are. We’re surviving every day. Look, we have a place to work. We have a place to sit. Most people answer most of our questions. So that’s kind of all you can hope
Nestor Aparicio 26:18
for. Most people answer most of our questions, she’ll drop the mic on that. Pam, what I hope to see you when the bridge is reconnected and Barbara Mikulski is honored, and we can have crab cakes together on both sides of Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County and connecting the bridge and connecting the dots, please do yourself a favor. Make sure you’re following the folks at Baltimore banner for the good work they’re doing to honor the late, great TED venetoulis, who dreamed it all up, and it’s all happening now, including all the journalism going on going down with Justin Tucker. So I try to bring on some banner folks. You know, once or twice a month. Sometimes it happens twice in one week. And we’re gonna be getting the Maryland crappy tour all over the state, by the way, I’m gonna be at State Fair next month, but we’re going to be fade leads this week. We’re going to be pizza Johns and Essex on the 21st having some pizza and crab cakes and hopefully some cannoli as well. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
