Senate Republicans slam Gov. Wes Moore's voluntary buyout plan
Published in News & Features
Top Republican senators criticized Gov. Wes Moore’s voluntary separation plan for state employees Friday, saying that he originally ignored GOP ideas to thin out Maryland’s workforce during the tough 2025 legislative session.
“Governor Moore is finally recognizing that the Republicans have better ideas when it comes to fiscal responsibility,” state Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey, a representative of the Upper Eastern Shore, said in a statement Friday afternoon.
In late June, the Moore administration announced that it would be reducing the number of state employee positions in the budget, implementing a hiring freeze for most state agencies and offering buyouts for workers who voluntarily choose to leave their state government jobs.
Moore’s buyout program officially launched Thursday. State employees who opt to quit their jobs will receive $20,000, plus an additional $300 for every year of service.
According to a Friday news release from the Senate Republican Caucus, Moore’s voluntary separation plan is a short-term fix that won’t attract participation from the highest-earning state employees because the incentive pay is too low.
Republicans in the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates suggested hiring freezes and the elimination of vacant state employee positions as methods to help close the state’s $3 billion structural deficit that Moore and the General Assembly contended with during the 2025 legislative session.
Sen. J.B. Jennings, a Baltimore County Republican, said that he had asked Moore about implementing a hiring freeze during a Senate Budget and Taxation Committee meeting before the budget bill hit the Senate floor. According to Jennings, Moore rejected the idea.
“It was the Republicans’ idea to downsize state government through hiring freezes, eliminating vacant (positions) and voluntary layoffs,” Hershey said. “But simply because Republicans provided these ideas during the 90-day legislative session, the Democrat leadership was unwilling to accept them and instead chose to raise taxes and fees and force Marylanders to pay more for bloated government.”
The Democrat-controlled legislature declined to adopt Republican ideas regarding the state workforce, opting instead to implement nearly $2 billion in cuts and more than $1 billion in new and increased taxes and fees to balance the budget for fiscal year 2026.
“Wait until next year … Marylanders have not seen the last of Governor Moore’s appetite for higher taxes and increased fees,” said Hershey.
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