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Governor Martin O’Malley did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) yesterday, and he fared about as well as his health insurance exchange. Politicians and celebrities have all done AMAs, where they answer questions from Reddit users, who in turn assign up or down votes. As of this morning O’Malley’s AMA is rated 61 percent positive with 3,984 upvotes and 2,520 downvotes. O’Malley left and returned to the AMA several times during the day. While the current score appears O’Malley had a successful AMA, in reality O’Malley tanked. Twitchy compiled Twitter responses to O’Malley’s AMA, which included these gems. The Baltimore City Paper noted that early on negative comments “outweighed the positive by a wide margin”   O’Malley received downvotes for his answers on the gas tax, redistricting, guns, and the gas tax.   He received upvotes for his answers on marijuana and schools. One question O’Malley left unanswered specifically referenced last week’s Gallup poll—first covered at the Qui...

Governor Martin O'Malley will leave his successor with a lovely house warming gift of a $404 million structural deficit. Although Governor O’Malley’s fiscal 2015 budget reduced the structural deficit from $506 million to 236 million, the on ongoing imbalance between spending and revenues Maryland’s chronic structural deficit will increase by $168 million in fiscal 2016 according to the 90 Day Report for the 2014 Legislative Session . After each legislative session, The Maryland Depart of Legislative Services produces a 90 Day Report detailing the state budget and major bills passed by the legislature in several policy areas. The 90 Day Report also estimates a $395 million cash shortfall and that though revenues are expected to increase by 4.6 percent between 2015-2016, they would need to rise by 7.1 percent to keep pace with spending. The total fiscal 2015 budget increases by $1.6 billion to $39 billion, a 4.3 percent increase. General fund spending increases $479 million over fisc...