History is filled with cases of well-intentioned governments committing to long-term programs, only to suffer terrible disappointment when their plans didn’t work out, due to unanticipated developments. The colloquial way of referring to this is “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Maryland is on the verge of experiencing multiple failures of this type.
In recent years, the Maryland General Assembly, at the behest of well-funded and well-connected advocacy groups, has passed various pieces of legislation establishing in law very ambitious timetables for transformative policy goals. Although these laws were enacted by progressive legislators with the best of intentions, their collateral consequences will inevitably visit much pain and financial suffering on Maryland citizens. As the storm clouds approach, let’s consider three of the impending problems.
Gas-powered car phaseout
First, thanks to a recent law, starting in 2035, just 11 years from now, Maryland car dealers will not be able to sell any new cars containing internal combustion engines. Further, by model year 2027, which is just around the corner, a regulation issued by the Wes Moore administration to implement the new law requires that at least 43% of new vehicles sold in Maryland be zero emission. As a measure of how far we have to go in this respect, as of last year, less than 1% of light-duty vehicles registered in Maryland were zero emission, and just 2% of the vehicles sold in Maryland were electric or hybrid vehicles. Does anyone really think we can achieve the 43% benchmark in just three years?
Right now, electric vehicles are being heavily discounted in order to move them off of showroom floors. Automobile manufacturers are losing money because most people don’t want to buy zero emission cars. In fact, some manufacturers are either already in bankruptcy (Lordstown Motors, Arrival) or are losing money and flirting with bankruptcy in the near future (Lucid, Rivian, VinFast, Polestar and Fisker). Polls show that 60% of Marylanders oppose the 2035 zero emissions mandate. This is probably due in part to the paucity of charging stations in Maryland, the lengthy charging time per vehicle and the demonstrated low range of electric vehicles in cold weather months. None of these collateral consequences were considered by the General Assembly when the underlying legislation was passed.
Climate Solutions Now Act
Moving on to another General Assembly policy initiative, legislation passed in 2022 known as the Climate Solutions Now Act requires a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Maryland by 2031, just seven years from now. However, as enacted, the bill contained no cost estimates and no dedicated funding mechanism to achieve this goal. Last summer, a workgroup reported that the cost of meeting this target would exceed $1 billion annually between now and 2031. Once again, however, the workgroup failed to identify any source of revenue to pay for this.
Environmentalists, who made the enactment of the Climate Solutions Now Act their biggest priority in 2022, are now hugely upset that the state budget passed in the 2024 General Assembly Session does not set aside the suggested $1 billion amount for the 2025 fiscal year, and, given the yawning deficits projected for the following fiscal years, the prospects of achieving anything close to a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2031 are looking very dubious. Again, none of these collateral consequences were discussed by the General Assembly when the Climate Solutions Now Act was passed.
Blueprint for Maryland’s Future
Finally, the famous “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future” has been much in the news lately, and for good reason. Passed in 2021 by the General Assembly and then delayed a year by the pandemic, it set up a 13-year, $32 billion program envisioned to transform Maryland’s public schools into the best-performing schools on the planet. Again, no dedicated funding source was identified to pay for the astronomical cost of this program, and the costs were designed to ramp up over time, starting out with modest annual cost increments and growing larger and larger as the timeline progressed.
We are now several years into the Blueprint. So how are things going? The most recent (2023) Report Card issued by the Maryland Department of Education shows that, far from making progress toward becoming the best schools in the world, Maryland’s schools are actually moving backward. Two years ago, 215 public schools in Maryland earned a five-star rating, while last year, only 85 schools earned five stars. Last year, Maryland’s elementary schools garnered 9.7 points out of a possible 20 points, under 50%. The state’s middle schools earned 8.7 points out of a possible 20 points, worse than the elementary schools. The high schools achieved 15.2 points out of a possible 30 points, barely over 50%. Nationally, Maryland ranked 23rd in education, a far cry from being No. 1 in the world.
Indeed, while Maryland schools have thus far moved backward under the Blueprint, what is not moving backward is the cost of the Blueprint. The extra cost, on top of Maryland’s base budget, will increase each year until, in 2032, the added cost will be $3.4 billion. The ramp up over the course of the next several years will be significant. The most recent State Spending Affordability Committee Report shows that while the State’s projected deficit for next year is $761 million; in the following years, the deficit climbs to $917 million, then to $1.18 billion, then to $2.379 billion, and onward and upward, largely driven by ever higher Blueprint costs. The gnashing of teeth that occurred in Annapolis over this year’s state budget is merely a prelude to far more serious strife in the next several years as legislators try to balance budgets in the face of massive deficits.
Beyond the sheer cost of the Blueprint and its failure thus far to have accomplished any improvement in Maryland public schools, a huge additional problem is the “one size fits all” approach taken by the Blueprint. It puts all of its eggs in particular baskets and then forces each county to implement that basket without regard to the considerable differences between the various counties in the state. As a consequence, virtually all of the county school systems are currently grappling with the short and long-term difficulties of conforming to the new strictures, benchmarks and arbitrary deadlines set forth in the Blueprint.
This is causing considerable anguish in the county school systems and serious concern that adherence to the Blueprint will gravely impair the education offered to Maryland schoolchildren by local elementary, middle and high schools. Unfortunately, because the legislation enacted in 2021 must be followed, there is little that can be done to head off these impending problems. A bill that made its way through the legislative process this year will add some flexibility to the Blueprint, but what is really needed is a fundamental and comprehensive re-thinking of the mission, implementation and cost of the Blueprint. That is not happening.
In all three respects described above, imprudent multi-year legislative commitments have produced very expensive impending policy train wrecks. Now that the 2024 General Assembly Session has adjourned, it is truly unfortunate that nothing can be done about these problems until 2025 at the earliest.
Sen. Chris West (chris.west@senate.state.md.us) is a Republican representing District 42 in Baltimore and Carroll counties.
