How Our Fiscal Policy Choices Can Remove Barriers Facing Marylanders of Color and Advance Shared Prosperity
Maryland’s budget provides the clearest reflection of our priorities as a state. Choices about where we invest our shared resources can help or hinder children’s education, economic security for families and communities, and public health and safety.
These choices about where we invest our shared resources have the potential to advance or to hinder racial and ethnic equity in Maryland. Even choices that appear neutral on the surface can interact with historical and ongoing forms of discrimination to either obstruct or assist Marylanders of color as they seek to contribute to a thriving state. Our fiscal policy choices similarly have the potential to promote or obstruct equity along other dimensions, such as gender, gender identity, wealth, and disability.
MDCEP’s Budgeting for Opportunity series examines the ways our state’s current fiscal policy choices affect Black, Brown, Indigenous and other communities of color, and outlines detailed recommendations for removing barriers and creating a Maryland that truly offers opportunity for everyone.
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Budgeting for Opportunity Case Study: A Racial Equity Analysis of Medicaid-Funded Home- and Community-Based Services
Racial equity analysis is a powerful tool for giving policymakers the information they need to build opportunity for all. It is also essential for informing the public about the consequences of policymakers’ choices. Good intentions cannot advance equity on their own. For these reasons, policymakers should build in racial equity analysis as a standard part of the budget process. This case study is intended to provide a model of what built-in budget racial equity analysis in state budget processes might look like.
Budgeting for Opportunity: Racial Equity Analysis as a Tool to Advance Justice through Fiscal Policy
Good intentions cannot advance equity on their own. To move Maryland toward a just, prosperous future, policymakers must understand the inequities that characterize the status quo and the historical forces that got us here. They must also have tools for predicting and measuring the impacts of their decisions. Nowhere is that more important than for fiscal policy. From harmful education cuts following the Great Recession to the major benefits of Medicaid expansion, fiscal policy choices have enormous power to advance or obstruct racial justice. No less important are the tax policy choices that determine how much we can invest in Maryland communities and how much each of us contributes.
Budgeting for Opportunity: Maryland’s Workforce Development Policy Can be a Tool to Remove Barriers and Expand Opportunity
Every Marylander should have access to a decent job that pays enough to support a family – regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or any other aspect of their identity. However, the labor market we have today is far from this ideal. Too many jobs offer paltry wages or lack basic protections, and structural barriers disproportionately keep women, workers of color, and workers with disabilities out of good jobs.
Budgeting for Opportunity: Our Shared Investments Can Build Safe, Just, Thriving Communities
It is more critical than ever that Maryland undertake serious review of its spending on incarceration and other parts of the criminal legal system. Our latest report outlines how changing our approach to the state’s criminal legal system would open new opportunities to build stronger communities.
Budgeting For Opportunity: How Our Fiscal Policy Choices Can Remove Barriers Facing Marylanders of Color and Advance Shared ProsperityBudgeting For Opportunity
Maryland’s budget provides the clearest reflection of our priorities as a state. Choices about where we invest our shared resources can help or hinder children’s education, economic security for families and communities, and public health and safety.