Peter Franchot may be Maryland’s state comptroller, but he’s acting more and more like a committed candidate for governor.

Franchot is staking out his claim as the conservative conscience of Maryland’s Democratic Party, the guardian of taxpayers’ money and the voice of skepticism when it comes to new spending projects.

Hardly a meeting of the Board of Public Works goes by without Franchot expressing concern about new state contracts that he feels could put the government in fiscal jeopardy.

He’s careful not to launch a nasty, frontal assault on the decisions of the O’Malley administration similar to the vicious carpet bombing carried out by his predecessor, William Donald Schaefer, against Govs. Bob Ehrlich and Parris Glendening.

Schaefer went overboard to the point that he severely damaged his credibility and historical legacy. It was a prime reason for his defeat by Franchot in 2006.

Instead, Franchot is copying the tactics of Louis L. Goldstein, the legendary comptroller and showman who held that office for a record 40 years.

Like Goldstein, Franchot regularly warns against overspending. As the economy has weakened in recent months, Franchot has increased his alarmist rhetoric.

That’s sound strategy. If Franchot’s warnings are groundless, few will remember, but if the comptroller proves prophetic it becomes a strong plank in his campaign for governor in 2014.

During difficult economic times, ringing the doom-and-gloom alarm is good politics. And after more than a decade of overspending by the state’s governors and lawmakers, there is plenty for Franchot to sound off about.

He’s warning that Maryland could lose its cherished triple-A bond rating, which could happen as early as next year.

He’s warning that Maryland could exceed its self-imposed capital debt limit.

He now opposes the $1.5 billion State Center redevelopment project in Baltimore because it is not the time to be taking on “a commercial real estate venture of this magnitude in the midst of the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.”

He raised serious concerns before approving a $185 million state health laboratory in Baltimore because it could mean Maryland will “blow through the [state’s debt] ceiling.”

He has warned against raising new taxes during the planned special session of the General Assembly in October because of the precarious nature of the state’s economy.

And he’s urging the legislature to conduct “a complete scrubbing” of state spending and find ways to make do with less.

For a longtime liberal from Montgomery County, that’s a new message. Like Goldstein (and Schaefer for that matter), Franchot is using the comptroller’s office as a bully pulpit to call for cautious, conservative spending by state government.

The office has no power to make that happen. The comptroller collects and counts tax revenue as it pours in. He sits on the state’s pension boards. He is a key member of the Board of Public Works that approves all state contracts.

But when it comes to setting spending policy, that’s the domain of the governor and the legislature, not the comptroller.

Franchot’s conservative posture is a good counterweight to the traditional Democratic approach in Annapolis of overspending. This tendency to ignore the likelihood of economic downturns has placed the state on a slippery financial perch.

Maryland faces structural operating deficits in excess of $1 billion far into the future. Its pension programs are billions of dollars out of balance. Its retiree health care program also is in the red by billions of dollars.

The state is close to “maxing out its credit card,” as Franchot put it.

No one, it seems, wants to consider drastic reductions in government spending. And yet circumstances outside our control are pointing the state in that direction.

Federal government cutbacks, which could be severe, will mean sharply lower aid to the states in key areas. A slumping state economy will mean far less than anticipated tax revenue over the next year or two.

Higher fuel prices add to the state’s budget woes, as do its legal obligations to fund expensive entitlement programs like Medicaid and aid to local public schools.

In a future campaign for governor against dedicated liberals like Attorney General Doug Gansler and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Franchot’s penny-pinching admonitions and alarms over new spending initiatives could prove popular.

He recognizes that old-fashioned liberalism is not in vogue, that even in heavily Democratic Maryland the winds of fiscal conservatism are blowing.

Will Franchot be the Cassandra of Maryland, predicting a bleak fiscal future for the state that comes true? If so, he will be well positioned to enter the 2014 race for governor as one of the favorites.

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In last week’s column I inadvertently misspelled the name of the Washington County farmer who is being chased off 250 acres of state land he now leases. The land abuts the vast Hagerstown prison complex.

Jeremiah Weddle is the farmer losing his lease so that a private company linked to the governor’s former top aide can build a solar farm there. It’s Weddle, not Weedle. Mea culpa.

Barry Rascovar is a State House columnist and communications consultant. His e-mail address is brascovar@hotmail.com.