BALTIMORE — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says he is not new to the concept of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“If you believe in cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, the answer is that so do I. And that’s what we’ve been doing,” Moore told Semafor during an interview at the BlackRock retirement summit last week in Washington, D.C.

In the interview, Moore reiterated his attempt to position himself as “not the leader of the resistance” against President Donald Trump while discussing his own efforts to improve Maryland’s government functions — such as hiring Chief Performance Officer Asma Mirza in August 2023.

“One of the first hires I made was a chief performance officer,” Moore said. “We’ve been doing DOGE in Maryland long before anyone knew what that word was.”

The Trump administration has consistently framed DOGE as a tool to make widespread cuts to the federal civil service. On Friday, Vice President JD Vance said some federal workers “clearly are collecting a check and not doing a job.”

Moore pointed to reforms in information technology (IT) and real estate as examples of enhancing the performance of his state’s government.

“We’ve pulled together initiatives, doing everything from fleet management to IT consolidation, to looking at procurement reform — we’re doing massive procurement reform looking at real estate,” Moore said. “There’s certain buildings, for example, that are on state rolls. I don’t know why these buildings are on the state rolls, so get them off the balance sheet!”

The governor suggested that not all vacant government positions should be filled blindly and argued for more specified approach to “right-size” the federal civil service. At the same time, he described many DOGE cuts as “seemingly arbitrary and ideological and cruel” given the prevalence of federal workers in Maryland — more than 160,000 federal workers call the Old Line State home.

“If you know there’s over 10,000 vacancies, does that mean you bring on 10,000 working people? The answer is no because I’m not interested in rebuilding someone else’s government,” Moore said. “I’m interested in having a government that actually works. So tell me how to right-size it, and then tell me how you can add measurements and accountability where you can utilize technologies to increase efficiencies and to get rid of waste and fraud.”

Asked about rising pressure from Democratic voters who want their party to “fight back” against DOGE cuts, Moore said he remains focused on “protecting our people.” Such an effort could include greater partnerships between the public and private sectors, such as for healthcare researchers and other high-skilled workers who were laid off or had their funding cut, according to the governor.

“This is a time when I think the private sector also has a chance to go after some real talent that is available, people who are working really important jobs for the federal government who now, pretty arbitrarily, find themselves out of that role,” Moore said.

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