Today’s gazette covers more on the state’s current “doomsday” budget, including varying views on the severity of cuts (including cuts on county governments and local public safety agencies) and on their effects relative to the fiscal plan that appeared near adoption before unraveling in the session’s final hours.

From the Gazette coverage:

In all, 19 grant programs totaling $20.8 million from the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, or GOCCP, would be eliminated as part of the $512 million in funding reductions included in the state’s default budget. That spending plan will go into effect July 1 unless the legislature finishes work on the budget.

Talk in Annapolis this week suggests legislative leaders are increasingly likely to convene a special session of the General Assembly the week of May 14, but the threat of the doomsday budget still has many worried about its consequences. Others, including Republican legislators, say the doomsday budget might be good for a state that they say spends too much generally.

House Republicans argued last month that at $35.4 billion, the plan is about $700 million larger than the fiscal 2012 budget.

The full Gazette article includes obersvations from several Maryland counties, reflecting on the difficulty of the options ahead.