Moore’s Austerity Playbook Will Hurt Workers and Undermine Public Services

For Immediate Release - June 25th, 2025

Governor Wes Moore’s announcement of a voluntary employee buyout program and a statewide hiring freeze marks the next step in a familiar and dangerous austerity playbook—one anyone who's lived through a corporate downsizing will recognize. First, the consultants and finance executives promise to save millions by streamlining IT systems. Then come plans to reduce real estate footprints and vehicle fleets. But inevitably, the real “savings” come from shrinking the workforce: hiring freezes, buyouts, and round after round of layoffs.

This approach is not innovative. It’s austerity—and it always comes at the expense of the workers and the communities they serve. Freezing hiring and pushing buyouts in a state system already struggling with chronic understaffing will only worsen delays, degrade services, and increase risks to worker safety. These cuts will overburden the frontline employees who remain, many of whom are already working under dangerous and unsustainable conditions. And it all comes before the inevitable next stage: deeper cuts and layoffs.

Governor Moore and the Democratic leadership had options. For five years, they’ve known that Maryland must raise revenues to meet its commitments—to the Blueprint for education, to healthcare, to public safety, to climate action. But instead of taking on the wealthy, passing progressive and income and wealth taxes and closing corporate tax loopholes, they stalled.

 This year Moore finally pushed some moderate increase in taxes on the most wealthy Marylanders, but the damage of stalling for political gain is already done. Republicans in Annapolis offer no real alternative. They wanted hiring freezes long ago, and in the future they want more layoffs and more cuts to services.

AFSCME Maryland is right: solutions must not come at the cost of public services or the workers who make those services possible. Their call to eliminate costly contracts, in-source key jobs, and close corporate loopholes should be the first step—not an afterthought.

Both parties in power in Annapolis have failed to take meaningful action to protect public sector workers and the services they provide to Marylanders.  Now, workers and taxpaying Marylanders are being told to pay the price for the Annapolis politicians and their failure to act.

As governor, I will take another path. I will expand union protections for all public sector workers, raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations who have long evaded paying their fair share, and reinvest in a state government that people can believe in. A strong public sector is not a burden—it’s the foundation of a fair, functional, and thriving Maryland.