Moore announces state hiring freeze and buyout offers amid fiscal ‘storms’

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Maryland’s state government will institute a hiring freeze, offer buyouts and eliminate vacant positions to save about $121 million, Gov. Wes Moore said in a letter sent to state employees Tuesday.

During the recent legislative session, the governor balked at Senate Republicans’ calls for a hiring freeze and other cuts in workforce spending, saying that government vacancies have seriously hindered state services in recent years.

The hiring freeze will take effect July 1, which is the start of the new fiscal year, and it’s expected to last through June 2026.

The governor said his team is still working on details about a new “voluntary separation program” and will announce more about it in the coming weeks.

State employees who work in law enforcement, 24/7 settings like hospitals and correctional facilities, and direct service roles like family investment specialists and parole and probation agents will be among the roles excluded from the hiring freeze, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the plan on the condition of anonymity.

A similar list of jobs will likely be exempted from the voluntary separation program and from the elimination of vacant roles, the official said.

Moore said in his letter Tuesday that next year’s budget — which includes about $2 billion in cuts and more than $1 billion in new or increased taxes and fees — will help the state weather what he has often called the “two storms,” which include future projected deficits and federal policies that have hurt the regional and national economies. But, he said that the budget requires his administration to cut $121 million in personnel spending.

“We are committed to engaging with our public sector unions as we work through these difficult decisions,” Moore said in his letter, the contents of which were first reported by Maryland Matters. “We are moving with care and intentionality to minimize impact on current employees and be transparent through the process.”

Patrick Moran, who is the president of AFSCME Maryland Council 3, which represents more than 26,000 state employees, said in a statement that solutions for navigating the fiscal and economic headwinds “cannot come at the cost of providing quality state services.”

He also indicated that the union had been in touch with the governor’s office about the plans.

During the 2025 session, state Sen. J.B. Jennings, a Republican representing Baltimore and Harford counties, called for the governor to enact an immediate hiring freeze and eliminate unfilled positions, except in departments for public safety and first responders, as part of a plan he said would save the state nearly $90 million.

Jennings said at the time that he was “kind of shocked” the governor had declined to implement a freeze and instead left hiring decisions up to the secretaries leading state agencies.

In a statement Tuesday, Jennings said that while the governor’s decision to enact a hiring freeze and eliminate vacant positions was the right one, it’s a move that should have happened months ago. He said that acting sooner could have helped prevent some of the uncertainty now facing state workers.

Leading Republicans in the Senate also called out Moore’s reversal, saying the move was a quiet admission from the administration that the minority party was right in calling for such policies.

“Better late than never — but let’s not pretend this was the plan all along,” Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey said in a statement.

Moore said in February that vacancies predating his time in office have led to basic state government functions not being performed. The governor mentioned staffing shortages in law enforcement and corrections departments that have threatened people’s safety and in the Department of Labor that led to people waiting up to 16 months to receive unemployment insurance benefits.

Moore and his team have repeatedly blamed shortcomings in state agencies on the number of vacancies left by former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and his team, and he has said that his administration has looked to fill open positions while not increasing overall state spending.

(This story has been updated.)