Maybe Maryland should join a support group. We’re certainly not alone when it comes to our tight financial situation, but one major financial player doesn’t think it will be as bad as it might look

In a report issued Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s says government budgets for fiscal 2008 and the upcoming fiscal 2009 are struggling along with the housing and credit markets.

Some findings, courtesy of the report:

• “Broad-based taxes are unlikely; gaming revenues remain popular” (don’t forget to vote in November, people)

• “Spending reductions are substantial across many areas” (cut, cut, cut)

• “Tax relief remains a major theme” (computer services, anyone?)

Still, S&P wrote that it expects most states to have sufficient reserves to get through the tough times. S&P’s bond rating unit showed some confidence in Maryland when it maintained the state’s treasured AAA bond rating last month.

So what do you think Maryland has in common with the rest of the struggling states? What are we doing better or worse?

So what does Maryland’s increasingly bleak revenue picture say about the economy? According to the state’s Board of Revenue Estimates, nothing good.

Since December, when the board last estimated state government revenue, the picture has gotten worse. The board predicted Thursday that the state would get $74.7 million less than it expected during fiscal 2008, which ends in July, and $258.2 million less than it hoped in fiscal 2009.

Here’s a clip from the board’s letter to Gov. Martin O’Malley. Excuse the length, but I think it’s telling.

“The national economy has slowed faster than expected at the time of our December forecast. At that time, consensus opinion was that the United States would skirt a recession. Now, with real GDP growth slowing to 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2007 and 17,000 jobs lost in January, many respected economists believe we are in the midst of a recession, though likely a shallow and short one. As you are aware, trouble in the housing market has spread to credit markets, and both consumer and business confidence have suffered.”

Two of the revenue sources that have suffered most are personal income tax and sales tax. Those are the state’s two largest cash cows, and the board writes that they are also sensitive to economic changes.

So what does this tell you? How telling of a barometer do you feel that the state’s balance sheet is for the wider economy?

The “R” word is being thrown around a lot, and we may not know we’re in a recession until it’s been going on for awhile. I have to wonder whether the definition really matters at this point.

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.