Our Say: Bleak budget prospects bad news for the schools

The governor, reviewing the gloomy prospects for school spending next year, found himself paraphrasing a famous wisecrack by Samuel Johnson: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

What Gov. Martin O'Malley actually told the state's school superintendents, at a meeting in Annapolis last week, was, "There's nothing that focuses the mind like our own execution, is there?" The "execution" he was contemplating is the prospect of cutting a $13 billion state budget to deal with a projected $2 billion shortfall.

O'Malley was warning the superintendents that their schools - which have largely been kept out of the budget-cutting so far, even though they account for about 40 percent of the state's general-fund spending - will take a hit in the next round.

O'Malley's own thinking, however, doesn't seem to have been concentrated enough yet. While there's nothing wrong with the proposals he tossed out at the meeting - using uniform school designs, putting solar panels on school buildings and buying furniture from the state prisons - they aren't going to close the sort of spending gap he was talking about, and he knows it.

Hearing all this from the governor is bad enough, but most of the superintendents can expect to hear the same thing from their local governments. Anne Arundel County, according to budget figures we obtained, is facing a $90.6 million shortfall next year.

That's roughly the amount of money it takes to run the county police department for a year. County Auditor Teresa Sutherland estimated that, if schools were excluded, closing this gap would mean a 20 percent cut to the rest of budget, including police, fire protection, libraries, senior centers, parks and roadways. And the county pretty much ran through its stock of short-term fiscal gimmicks while patching together the last budget.

County Executive John R. Leopold has already cut 100 vacant jobs, imposed hiring freezes and delayed expensive purchases. This time it seems unlikely he can balance the budget without furloughs or layoffs, without significant cuts in county services - and without requiring the school system, which accounts for roughly half the county's budget, to share the misery.

Unfortunately, no one will come riding to the rescue. With Congress looking ahead to next year's election and facing gargantuan deficits, another big federal stimulus package - though not impossible - seems unlikely. State and local politicians, also looking ahead to an election, won't raise taxes on recession-strapped constituents.

It will all come down to county executives like Leopold and school superintendents like this county's Kevin M. Maxwell. We bet they have some very strong ideas about where budgets can be cut, but that in ordinary times they wouldn't do anything to risk infuriating constituents, parents and teachers and other government employees.

These, unfortunately, are not ordinary times. We can only hope that Johnson was right: When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.