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ANNAPOLIS--Reality is about to hit for programs that find themselves on the cutting room floor among at least $250 million in state budget cuts that Gov. Martin O'Malley will unveil today.

The state Board of Public Works, comprising O'Malley, Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp (D) and Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot (D), will make the cuts from a list of $396.6 million in potential reductions recommended last week by the Department of Budget and Management.

"It's going to cause some pain and discomfort all around," O'Malley (D) told reporters on Tuesday. "It's not because we want to do these thing, but we must. … And we may have to come back in another couple of months and do some more cutting."

Franchot told reporters Tuesday that briefings with budget officials have revealed that O'Malley's proposal is likely to include about $300 million in cuts and an additional $100 million in switches, though a small surplus fund allows him to forgo any immediate cuts beyond $250 million.

Reductions of $37.9 million to school systems where the cost of educating students is highest and a potential six-day unpaid leave requirement for state employees, which would save $48 million, are off the table for now, O'Malley said Tuesday.

O'Malley told county school superintendents at the Public School Superintendents Association of Maryland meeting on Tuesday in Annapolis that he needed more time to vet the two items.

O'Malley said he is hopeful that Maryland will be able to fund the Geographic Cost of Education Index, a formula that gives supplemental state aid to jurisdictions where education costs are highest and also will be able to avoid passing the cost of teacher pensions off on county governments.

"I still believe that at the state level is where it's best to handle that teacher pension [cost]," O'Malley told the superintendents. "But there are some [lawmakers] here in Annapolis who feel that they get zero credit for that and get whacked with that downside of having to make the tough decisions necessary to maintain that."

O'Malley touted a 40 percent increase in funding to community colleges and a tuition freeze that has been in place for three consecutive years.

Among the proposals are cuts of $30 million from the university system and $16.4 million from community college aid.

"All of those things will be receiving a bit of a haircut at the Board of Public Works tomorrow," O'Malley told the superintendents.

Three variables will determine the state's fiscal future, he said: the national election, how quickly the national economy turns around and whether voters on Nov. 4 pass a referendum to legalize slot machine gambling.

Asked by a reporter about studies that found that slots would have a disproportionate negative impact on the poor, O'Malley countered that the revenue would be used to shore up a budget that is increasing health care to 100,000 more Marylanders through Medicaid and increasing education for "children and people of very limited means."

O'Malley was scheduled to meet with to brief lawmakers on House and Senate budget committees on the cuts on Tuesday afternoon.

The legislature's Spending Affordability Committee also was to meet Tuesday afternoon with the House Ways and Means and Appropriations committees and the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee to hear a fiscal briefing from Warren G. Deschenaux, director of the state's Office of Policy Analysis.

Meanwhile, e-mails have been "flooding" into the office of Sen. Nancy J. King (D-Dist. 39) of Montgomery Village from programs who hope to be spared the budget axe.

"People are kind of understanding that the budget is going to be very tight, but they really want to hang on to their budget anyway. Reality hasn't hit yet," said King, a member of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee.

King's committee won't have much say on Wednesday's cuts, which are designed to plug a $432 million hole in the current $15 billion state operating budget. But lawmakers at Tuesday's fiscal briefing are already looking toward fiscal 2010, when analysts have said the budget gap could grow to $1 billion.

On Friday, Franchot (D) released a letter detailing the state's September revenues. Adjusted for the new tax rates passed last fall, growth is below 1 percent "and collections to date have fallen below those pessimistic expectations," Franchot wrote.

King, a former county school board member, said she is worried about the state eventually shifting the cost of pensions on to counties, which would cost Montgomery County $133 million to cover in fiscal 2010, she said.

"There's barely a county that wouldn't go bankrupt by having to pay for pensions," she said. "Once they send that back to the counties, there's no way that's going to get picked up by the state again."

Wednesday's cuts will be the second reductions to the current budget. The board approved $50.1 million in cuts in June to offset the loss of revenue from the General Assembly's repeal of a tax on computer services that was enacted after last fall's special legislative session.