Senator Bill Folden says it’s more taxes and fees.
Frederick County Senator Bill Folden
Frederick, Md (KM) The 2025 Maryland General Assembly needs to vote on a balanced budget before its session ends next month. Governor Wes Moore, House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson have put together a plan to help close the state’s budget gap of over $3 billion. It relies less on personal income tax increases, and more on spending cuts. There is an increase in taxes on Maryland’s wealthiest citizens, and a reduction or no change when it comes to taxes levied on 94 percent of the state’s population.
There is no business-to-business tax, or a fee on retail deliveries as was discussed previously. . But there is 3 percent tax on data and information technology services.
“We can start by unpacking with just some baby wipes,” says Frederick County Republican State Senator Bill Folden. “It’s terrible.”
Folden, who was a recent guest on WFMD”s “Morning News Express,” says it’s more of the same. “It’s just more fees and burdens on everyday Marylanders and small business owners. It’s just making it more difficult to live in state that we all live in and grew up in for many, and love,” he says.
Senator Folden commented on the part of the plan that taxes at a 3 percent rate data and information technology services. “A lot of people say ‘aw good, the business-to-business tax is gone.’ But the Governor was very strategic in his wording when he said there would be no broad business-to-business tax. And I posted about that saying ‘broad is just another way of saying we’re just going to focus in on a few that are going to get us the most money,'” he said.
“Regardless of what businesses it applies to, fellas, it’s going to affect those industries and it’s going to be passed on to the consumer. There’s no other way for them to survive,” says Folden.
Maryland needs to be more business friendly, and not rely mostly on federal workers who live within the immediate Washington DC area.
When this budget plan comes before the General Assembly, Folden says he expects Democrats will vote for it, including those in the Frederick County Delegation. “If you’re to see the delegation, it’s going to be along party lines,:” he says. “The Democrats vote with what the upper left button says. There’s very few that vote their conscience and are willing to buck the system because they all have their own programs they want to get through.”
As for Senator Folden, he says it’s a “no” vote. “I won’t do it until they do some serious cuts and go and take away the special interest programs that have been on the books, some of them 15 or 20 years, and start carving them out. because they don’t even keep track of the value of the programs in a lot of case,”: he says.
The General Assembly needs to vote on a balanced budget before it adjourns sine die on April 7th, 2025.
By Kevin McManus