O'Malley looking to boost Bay trust fund?

While cutting and juggling to close a massive $2 billion budget gap, could Gov. Martin O'Malley be planning to ask the General Assembly to increase funding for a signature Chesapeake Bay restoration fund?

The Washington Post, citing an unnamed administration source, reports that O'Malley will ask for $20 million for the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays 2010 Trust Fund in the state spending plan he's to present to lawmakers in Annapolis today.

That's more than double the fund's current level, but still well short of what it was supposed to be when lawmakers created it more than two years ago.

It may well be a futile gesture, given the desparate fiscal straits the state is in. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller has already said he thinks another of O'Malley's green priorities, land preservation, should be put on the shelf for a year or two while lawmakers use tax revenues dedicated to that purpose to help close the budget gap.

Still, it's likely to be seen by environmental activists as an indication that O'Malley takes seriously the commitment he and other bay state governors have made to accelerate the lagging bay cleanup. The fund was set up to target resources at halting hard-control-runoff of nutrients and other pollutants from land. It helps pay farmers to plant pollution-absorbing cover crops and finances storm-water control projects in urban and suburban areas. For more on it, go here.

Created in November 2007, it was proposed to be $50 million a year, to be paid for with tax revenues on rental cars and motor fuel. It's never come close to that level, as lawmakers whittled away at it and revenues lagged. In 2009, O'Malley asked for $25 million, and it was cut to $10 million, then cut again to $8 million as the state's deficit grew.