Baltimore City Hall. Photo: Jonmallard, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Baltimore’s city agencies have been told to start next year’s budget by finding about 5% to cut.
Mayor Brandon Scott’s office confirmed that “all city agencies have been tasked with evaluating their current spending to develop an early draft budget proposal that includes a recommended spending reduction of approximately 5%,” Fox45 reported Wednesday night. The request applies to the budget for fiscal 2028, which starts July 1, 2027.
The Baltimore Sun reported the directive Tuesday, writing that the request comes as the city grapples with millions in spending overruns. In a separate story, the Sun reported that Create Baltimore, the city’s arts and events agency, is planning for a “likely” 5% reduction, according to CEO Robyn Murphy.
“Standard practice,” the mayor’s office says
The administration describes the exercise as routine. “The requirement that each agency conduct an independent review of their own anticipated budget and the various factors that may affect it, including the consideration of reductions, is a standard practice,” the mayor’s office said in a statement to Fox45.
A target is not a final budget. Agency proposals are the first step in a process that runs through the spring: the city’s budget office builds the mayor’s plan from them, the Board of Estimates sends a proposed budget to the City Council, and the council holds hearings before final passage in June.
Outside observers read the request as a warning sign. Anirban Basu, the Baltimore economist who runs Sage Policy Group, told Fox45 it was “the first instance indicating the city is really in fiscal distress,” and predicted service cuts if reductions of that size go through.
Where this year’s budget stands
The current-year budget passed the council 14-0 in June and was signed by Scott on June 25. At about $4.9 billion, it avoided tax increases and service cuts, WBAL reported at the time, and added money for youth programs, crisis response alternatives to 911, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and internal door locks in city schools.
It also started a two-year property tax cut. Council President Zeke Cohen said in June that the deal would trim the rate by 1 cent this year and 4 cents next year, a total of 5 cents. That second, larger step is due in the same fiscal 2028 budget agencies are now being asked to shrink. The mayor’s office has not said whether the 5% exercise changes those plans.
What residents could notice
The city has not released agency-by-agency targets or said which services could be affected. Create Baltimore, which runs Artscape and the Baltimore Farmers’ Market, has said publicly that it is planning for one.
The council created a new Department of Neighborhood Safety on a 13-1 vote this week, and that bill now goes to the mayor. How a new department fits into a budget built around cuts is one of the questions likely to come up when the council’s budget hearings begin next spring.
Maya Corbett covers Baltimore for Voice of Baltimore.
