Posted on 02/08/25
| News Source: FOX45
Annapolis, MD - Feb. 8, 2025 - Arguing there are downsides to downsizing, in Governor Wes Moore’s first State of the State address he pledged to fill vacancies and grow state government.
“Building a workforce of dedicated public servants saves us the expense of costly contractors and external vendors, and if properly managed, delivers us better results. Spending $100 million on inefficiencies and patch work politics is not the way to run a government,” Moore said.
A promise he’s already followed through on. On Tuesday, FOX45 reported on data sourced from the Maryland Department of Labor’s website, showing under Governor Wes Moore’s administration, the state’s workforce grew by more than 5,000 employees. Comparatively, during former Governor Larry Hogan’s first two years in office, nearly 2,000 jobs were slashed.
These counts include all of state government, not just the agencies Wes Moore has direct hiring authority over. For example, higher education positions, the judiciary, and the legislature. The principal departments under his executive and administrative control include:
To get a better understanding of what specific agencies and departments have seen substantial growth, FOX45 has been requesting state staffing information from Maryland’s Budget and Management Department for the last three weeks. After initially saying that information was not available to them, on Wednesday, the department provided its latest personnel report. According to the report, Executive Branch jobs have grown by 3,304 employees from June 2022 to June 2024.
Pointing to the state’s $3-billion-dollar deficit, taxpayer advocate David Williams says now was not the time to grow government.
“This is a self-inflicted wound. This didn't have to happen,” said Williams, “Just like a family that's experiencing financial problems, they don't spend more on a new car. They don't spend more on luxuries, and what the governor is doing is hiring more people that the state and taxpayers can't afford.”
Among the agencies seeing the largest staffing boosts: about 700 positions were added to the Department of Health (MDH), 400 to the Department of Transportation (MDOT), 400 to the Department of Human Services (MDHS), 400 to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS), 150 to the State Department of Education (MSDE), and 60 to the Department of the Environment (MDE).
“The one that really stood out was the Department of Transportation. The Department of Transportation is running a huge deficit,” says Williams, “The governor talks about the red line and these big transportation projects, that's not what the state needs. The citizens of Maryland need better roads. They need better bridges.”
According to the 2024 personnel report, the average salary for these jobs is about $78,017, while total benefits cost about $51,355. Which, for 3,304 additional employees, potentially amounts to $427 million annually.
Governor Moore’s office says it’s not about buying a bigger government, it’s about making a better one. In statement, Moore’s office says under Hogan, “vacancy rates reached extraordinary highs, and services were failing to meet the needs of the constituents they represent.” The statement goes on to say, “Governor Moore is finding savings but not at the expense of critical services including public safety, health care and education.”
A claim, Williams says, he’d like to see put to the test.
“Just spending more money and hiring more people doesn't mean you're doing a better,” says Williams, “There needs to be a review of every single state employee to make sure that they have a job that is necessary and that they're actually doing something. This is not about Republican or Democrat. This is about fiscal common sense.”
Governor Moore’s office also notes a government modernization effort, which they say will save the state over $50 million by cutting wasteful spending. They also point to his newly proposed $2-billion-dollar budget cuts. Meanwhile, Republican’s still argue Moore’s plan relies too heavily on tax and fee increases and doesn’t do enough to address the $3-billion-dollar deficit.
FOX45 reached out to the governor’s office requesting a comment for this story on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week. On Friday, they sent the following statement:
In an effort to push a false narrative, FOX 45 has used numbers that don’t accurately reflect the amount of people employed by the Moore-Miller Administration. The Department of Budget and Management provided Rebecca Pryor with information that the number that she was presenting was incorrect and she failed to include that information in her reports, even saying she “didn’t have the time” to look through the information provided, a disservice to the viewers of their “news station.”
The previous administration oversaw a period of time in the state’s history where vacancy rates reached extraordinary highs, and services were failing to meet the needs of the constituents they represent. Governor Moore believes good government serves the people efficiently and thoroughly, and it’s why he has made it his mission to hire more teachers, police officers, and public servants.
Governor Moore has proposed $2 Billion in cuts across the state government, as previously reported by FOX 45 and purposefully not included as context in this reporting. The governor has also put in place a government modernization effort which will save the state over $50 million by cutting wasteful spending, a program FOX 45 has failed to post a story on. Governor Moore is finding savings but not at the expense of critical services including public safety, health care and education.
The US Department of Labor publishes a number of datasets on state economies across a number of its programs. The Maryland Department of Labor makes information from several of these programs available on its website so that job seekers, researchers, and other interested parties do not have to visit multiple sites to understand the current economic landscape in Maryland. Each dataset has a different methodology, including how employment is defined, what information is collected, whether data is adjusted for seasonal hiring trends, and other key differences.
The prior Fox45 coverage points to data from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Although it says the data are “from Maryland’s Department of Labor,” the data are actually from federal BLS modeling and available on the Maryland Department of Labor’s website.
Data from the CES program are not appropriate to use to understand hiring changes within the Executive Branch for several reasons. These include:
CES estimates are modeled and not based on actual employment counts. Employment estimates for the CES program are based on a survey of employers, but those surveys do not include the state as an employer and for state government the estimates are modeled on past employment history trends.
State Government employment estimates include employees outside of the Executive Branch, such as the University System of Maryland (USM), the legislature, and the judiciary. CES data does not include a breakdown by employer within the state government sector.
BLS modeled estimates are not an appropriate dataset to use in place of information on the Maryland Department of Budget and Management’s website to understand hiring within the Executive Branch.
It's not methodologically sound to assume that all of the new positions were hired at average salaries/benefits. In FY23 and FY24, the report notes a total of 1,160 contractual conversions to regular PINS. The salary costs for these conversions are not net new costs.
The direct cost of benefits is $39,536. You cannot include indirect costs because those are already included in the salary. Using Rebecca’s numbers, the costs for additional employees is $388,395,112.
Note, the number Rebecca Pryor is using for employee count is Full Time Equivalents (FTEs), not individuals.
Prior to the Moore administration, many critical positions were left unfilled. When Governor Moore took office, there were just under 6,100 vacancies in the Executive Branch. The agencies where particular effort was made to fill vacancies were those agencies and positions that were critical to public health and safety.