December 7th, 2024 by WCBC Radio

Western Maryland’s Annapolis delegation is stepping lightly into the coming General Assembly session. At the annual legislative breakfast sponsored by the Allegany County Chamber of Commerce, the focus was the state’s budget deficit and how it will affect the state’s three westernmost counties.  House Minority Leader Jason Buckel pointed out a major shortfall for Allegany County…

   

“Six jurisdictions in the State of Maryland had negative Gross Domestic Product growth last year – the last balance year. Six out of 24. Does anyone want to guess which one of them was? There were two counties west of the Eastern Shore that had negative GDP growth last year – us and Calvert in Southern Maryland.”

He prodded leaders in the area to do more for county advancement…

  

“There is no reason that we continually lag behind so many of our competitors. There just isn’t. It’s unacceptable and we all have to do better, myself included to try to overcome that. If we don’t grow, if our private sector doesn’t grow, if we don’t create newer and better jobs, the rest of it is icing on the cake. It’s just things that look pretty but don’t really fill you up.”