Fact checked Maryland State of the State Address

For those of you who missed it Gov. O'Malley gave his State of the State address last week. The full text is available here. It's a quick read but I'll sum it up for you... Essentially O'Malley began with the economy, claiming Maryland has to once again overcome challenges and that he understands the plight of Maryland families in facing 1% wage increases while the price of day-to-day staples is increasing as much as 100%.

The Governor is comparing apples to (no, not oranges, more like) jellyfish. There aren't even in the same family of statistics One is a national level number the other a single local commodity. It ain't that simple, and it's misleading to say something like this in your most important speech of the year.

Why the glum outlook? Why the somber tone of the speech as reported by foes and allies alike?
Probably to correct for the over exuberance of completing last November's special session without gridlock. Or maybe to justify the tax increases of the special session by citing such "hard times".

Fact Check

However, he's overstating Maryland's economic problems by comparing national real wage increases of 1% over the past seven years (corresponding to the Bush presidency I suppose) to a single commodity such as bread, milk or gasoline (100%). That's because Maryland's real wages have increased more than 1% over the past seven years especially in the certain counties. And according to Federal Government annual retail gasoline price statistics, the increase in the price of gasoline for the Central Atlantic region since 2000 was 83%, not 100%. That's a lot of rounding (up)!

O'Malley also spent time mentioning budget cuts so as to re-emphasize that cuts in the budget did take place by stating to the legislature that they "restrain spending and restore fiscal responsibility". He failed to mention the many areas of spending increases (this Sun article puts the increase at the bottom so scroll down) however.

Quickly the speech moved on to important by politically less interesting topics such as improving transportation infrastructure, reducing crime (who would oppose that), and then touching on a variety of topics from workforce development to energy conservation.

Had the recent tax increases been tied to law enforcement, infrastructure improvements, environmental conservation and energy conservation I believe more Marylanders have accepted more modest tax increases. I wasn't so much what was done, but how it was done.