Gov. Martin O’Malley repeated his outrage today over the “appalling” threats of Constellation Energy to sue its ratepayers for $386 million the company said it was bullied into giving up.

O’Malley pledged to “spare no expense” in order to stand up for the interests of Marylanders. What level of spending do you think is justified, given the state’s recent fiscal woes? He also said he would be open to moves that would help the state make electricity prices more predictable.

Suggestions on how to do that have abounded.

Sen. E.J. Pipkin, the self-proclaimed “fighter for the ratepayer,” and Republican candidate for Maryland’s hard fought 1st Congressional District seat, said the legislature needs to focus on returning the state back to re-regulating the energy market. What do you think? Will re-regulation be the answer to Maryland’s energy issues?

DANIELLE ULMAN, Business Writer

What’s in a name? Well, at least an indication of tone and meaning, as evidenced by Gov. Martin O’Malley’s education funding announcement on Wednesday.

Maryland’s annual “beg-a-thon,” where school districts from around the state come before the Board of Public Works to compete for school construction dollars, has a new moniker.

In a press release, O’Malley now calls the event a “hope-a-thon,” which allows “school superintendents to have a more meaningful conversation with the Board of Public Works on their jurisdiction’s key school priorities.”

School officials were asking for part of an unallocated $108 million out of $333 million in state aid for public school construction funding planned for fiscal 2009.

How about this new name? Do you think it’s a more accurate representation of the event, or is the BPW off-base?

Above: This newly-built complex in Howard County includes Reservoir High, Lime Kiln Middle, and Fulton Elementary schools. Image courtesy of Johns Hopkins APL.

Gov. O’Malley wants to spend $11 million to improve Broening Highway, an important access road for the Port of Baltimore.

He announced Tuesday morning that he had added the project to the state’s transportation plan that runs from July through 2013. The project is intended to ease truck transportation to and from the port, and improve the connection with Interstate 95, O’Malley said.

No word on plans for the port’s highest-profile project, a deepening of the berth at Seagirt Marine Terminal. That project will take awhile to get moving because it’s expected to cost up to $130 million. Port officials are looking for a public-private partnership to get that one off the ground. (subscriber-only link)

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed budget might have an easy passage through the General Assembly this year, according to Senate Budget and Taxation Chairman Ulysses Currie. He said at a legislative function Monday that he won’t have to cut O’Malley’s budget because it is below spending limits set by lawmakers earlier this month.

What O’Malley needs now is support from the public and from lawmakers, Currie said.

An interesting story written Monday by Tom LoBianco of The Washington Times examines how O’Malley sold his proposed solution for a $1.5 billion budget deficit to the public. He compares it to former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner’s quest to fix his state’s finances in 2004.

Here’s an excerpt from what Tom wrote.

Mr. Warner was hailed in national Democratic circles for doing the near-impossible: increasing taxes and improving his approval rating.

But after Maryland’s special session closed in November, Mr. O’Malley’s public-approval rating dropped — not the outcome called for in the Warner playbook.

An analysis by The Washington Times and interviews with key Virginia leaders shows Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat, followed a more abbreviated version of the Warner plan, and suffered politically as a result.

Maryland’s sales tax on computer services might be heating up this week, as industry advocates seek to repeal the levy before it ever takes effect in July.

House Republicans are planning an announcement Tuesday to announce proposals to repeal the tax and replace the $200 million it is expected to bring in. Minority Leader Anthony O’Donnell said at a Greater Baltimore Committee legislative forum Monday that the Republican plan could close the gap without relying on new taxes. O’Donnell said the state could eliminate up to 500 vacant, funded positions, on top of the 500 Gov. Martin O’Malley has proposed to cut.

HB196, already in the house, would repeal the tax but does not replace the $200 million. It is sponsored by 72 Delegates (out of 141), which would be enough to pass the bill out of the lower chamber. There are other proposals out there to repeal the tax. Senate Minority Leader David Brinkley wants to repeal the tax, but his bill does not include a replacement. Sen. Rob Garagiola wants to replace the tax with a gasoline tax increase.

Top legislative officers have stood firm on the tax, saying that anyone who wants to repeal it needs to come to the table with some alternatives. That’s what Sen. Ulysses Currie, chairman of the powerful Budget and Taxation Committee, said at the GBC event. That could mean taxing other services instead.

Opposition to the tax appears to be gaining steam on the web (go figure). “Fight the Tech Tax,” a coalition of business organizations and Maryland companies led by the Tech Council of Maryland and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce is making a splash on the Web. Their site is circulating around information technology circles all over the country, according to my sources.

The Maryland Computer Services Association, a new industry lobby, is fighting the tax but hasn’t attached itself to one of the proposals yet. They may be waiting to see which incarnation of the repeal has the best chance to pass. Stay tuned.

Update: The Republican announcement has been postponed until Wednesday to avoid a conflict with the memorial arrangements for Sen. J. Robert Hooper.

It looks like we’ll find out soon how effective the state’s living wage law will be. The law, passed during last year’s spring session of the General Assembly, took effect in October, but is still being implemented. It mandates that many state contractors pay what the state considers a sufficient wage to their employees.

That wage is $11.30 in metropolitan areas like Baltimore or $8.50 in more rural parts of the state.

In February, the state regulations on how the law will be put in place can become final after months of discussion.

This means state service contractors (with contracts over $500,000 or with more than 10 employees) will have to certify, among other things:

-How much they are paying their employees

-Whether the employees have health insurance, and whether they agreed to reduce their pay to offset the cost of the coverage.

Are you preparing to make these reports to the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation? Are you ready? Talk to me about your experience with the living wage law.

Find more information about the living wage law here.

Who wouldn’t get behind public safety initiatives that Gov. Martin O’Malley is pushing this legislative session?

That was the message from some members of the business community Wednesday as O’Malley gave his second State of the State Address. O’Malley’s measures to reduce crime include stepping up DNA identification for violent criminals and reforming the Department of Juvenile Services.

Obviously less crime helps economic development, so it makes sense that public safety is a business priority. But it might be a little bit of a tougher sell if O’Malley was after more costly fixes. For example, his office says the DNA initiative would cost around $1.7 million per year. That’s not exactly going to plunge the state into another huge deficit.

Nobody’s going to fault the governor for spending judiciously, but how strong might the public safety mandate be? What do you think would happen if O’Malley began asking for big-ticket public safety items? Where would you draw the line?

Ever wonder, with all of the talk about electricity costs, just how Maryland stacks up?

Me, too. Turns out it’s an awfully tough comparison to find because of all the variations among utility coverage areas.

Finally, in a sparsely attended meeting Tuesday, I got it. We’re the second-highest in the region.

From Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration (he got it from the U.S. Energy Information Agency):

(Average retail prices for residential customers in cents per kilowatt-hour, July 2007)

Delaware – 13.64

MARYLAND – 13.38

Washington, D.C. – 12.72

Florida – 11.18

Georgia — 9.85

North Carolina – 9.56

South Carolina – 9.34

Virginia – 9.26

West Virginia – 6.81

So what do you think? Does this seem reasonable to you or are you taking the next bus to West Virginia? Talk to me.

The General Assembly got some bad news, and then some relatively good news about the state’s economy Monday.

The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and the House Appropriations Committee met with a cadre of legislative analysts to hear about the state’s fiscal situation.

The findings? We’re doing better than last year, when the state faced an estimated $1.5 billon budget deficit that was largely addressed during a special session.

But we’re not out of the woods yet. Gov. Martin O’Malley and lawmakers will have to manage carefully to avoid further deficits in the next few years, analysts said.

But some interesting statistics came out of the briefing. State revenue is heavily dependent on the state of the economy, so analysts watch it slowly for trends in job growth, construction, income, etc. Essentially, Maryland is doing OK compared with some other states, because job growth has stayed up.

Some highlights:

• Payroll employment in the state grew almost 1.5 percent in 2007, compared to the national economy, where the growth was less than 1 percent.

• But, existing home sales fell last year by nearly 40 percent. That’s not a huge surprise, and it’s happened in the past few years as well. But the big news here is that for the first time median home price fell as well.

• And even though the state saw solid job growth figures, the housing swoon is making itself apparent on the labor scene. Average construction employment fell last year, a sharp contrast with 2006, when there were more than 5,000 new hires in the industry. In the financial activities sector, average employment fell by more than 2,000 jobs.

Okay, this will be a test to see how effective Eye on Annapolis can be in connecting me with my favorite reader (you). In my story about Gov. Martin O’Malley’s budget Wednesday, I tried to revisit issues that Daily Record staffers heard about when we wrote our legislative preview edition early this month. In researching those stories, we identified lots of programs that Maryland businesspeople depend on.

But the budget is over 2,000 pages long. I’ll bet it weighs more than ten pounds. Each member of the Annapolis press corps got their copy in a cardboard box because its five volumes are too unwieldy for meek journalists to carry.

There’s no way to cover it all in one day. I will cover state spending issues that affect business throughout the session, so I want to know what I’m missing.

It’s time to talk back folks. Are there tax incentives or government programs that your business depends on? Did you get more than you expected? Less? Let me know and I’ll check it out.

Don’t be shy.