They’re b-a-a-a-c-k!

Three days into this year’s General Assembly session, nothing exciting has happened. It rarely does in the early weeks.

If you’re looking for fireworks, they start next Wednesday, which is the legal deadline for the governor to present his budget.

Thanks to a prolonged recession and overspending early in his first term, Gov. Martin O’Malley faces billion-dollar structural deficits through the rest of his second term. That poses a double dilemma.

The governor is a believer in expanded government services to help Maryland’s underclass and middle class. But that takes additional revenue, which is difficult to get approved even in good times.

So O’Malley first has to reduce current spending — without decimating programs — as an incentive to legislators to go along with a handful of higher taxes as part of a “balanced” fiscal approach.

He needs more tax revenue to: 1) close the remainder of this year’s budget gap and, 2) provide funds for jobs programs, mainly construction projects.

In Maryland’s four-year election cycle, this is an ideal moment to raise taxes.

We’re nearly three years away from the next election for state legislature and governor — more than enough time for voters to forgive and forget.

Also, new lawmakers who survived their freshman year now have a good grasp of how the legislative process works and are looking to tackle some difficult issues.

The governor is, too, as he tries to carve out a large legacy in Maryland that will help propel him onto the national political stage.

Still, it is difficult to see how either lawmakers or O’Malley will “shoot the moon” on new revenues.

Few of them are courageous enough to take the heat for a full package of revenue increases — though that’s the quickest way to wipe out Maryland’s long-term deficit.

Instead, those running the State House will settle for half a loaf.

There will be a new levy on gasoline to support a raft of transportation projects that create construction jobs. There will be a big increase in the “flush tax” to remove more nitrogen at waste-water treatment plants and thus reduce pollution in the Chesapeake. There will be major increases in fees charged by state agencies.

Two other revenue raisers may work their way into discussions — a revival of the millionaire’s tax on earned income and a surreptitious raising of the state property tax.

Given the governor’s proclivity for modeling his moves after the Obama administration, it would not be shocking to see O’Malley champion a new, permanent income tax bracket for those earning more than $1 million a year.

On the federal level, Republican resistance to a millionaire’s tax is already a theme in Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. O’Malley may want to showcase Maryland as a Democratic state that accomplishes what the president is trying to achieve in Washington.

Increasing the state property tax rate is a trickier maneuver.

Money from this levy supports Maryland’s bond payments. But because of declining property values and high state capital spending, the annuity bond fund will be short at least $132 million this year.

That means O’Malley must divert money from his general budget to pay the state’s remaining bond premiums.

There’s a way around this problem: Raise the state property tax by roughly 2 pennies per $100 of assessed property value. Then the governor can use those millions for other purposes.

To make this happen, O’Malley need not propose a property tax increase in his new budget.

It works this way: When the budget is unveiled, it won’t list any money transferred from the general budget to the annuity bond fund. That will leave the Board of Public Works no choice but to raise the state property tax rate later in the spring to fully cover Maryland’s bond payments.

It’s the fiscally prudent thing to do, but O’Malley will be accused of playing political games.

The state property tax is supposed to be set high enough to bring in sufficient revenue to pay all the state’s bond debts each year. However, this issue has become a political issue over the past decade.

This year, though, the state’s general fund is stretched to the breaking point, and there’s no extra cash to prop up an artificially low property tax rate.

Luckily for the governor, the political heat from such a move would be relatively mild and fleeting. Given the plunge in housing values and the concurrent plunge in assessments, property tax bills for most residents are a good deal less than in the past.

Homeowners will barely notice a couple of pennies added to their property tax rate.

That is about as far as the governor and legislators are likely to go on raising new revenue. You can ignore the idea floated by O’Malley this week to raise the sales tax by a penny. That’s a bit of misdirection that will make his tax proposals this session seem mild by comparison.

It’s a shame there won’t be any move to restructure the income tax to make it progressive or to extend the sales tax to services so it is more equitable. Such moves would solve Maryland’s structural imbalance for decades to come.

But neither legislators nor the governor are in a mood to take on monumental tasks. Halfway measures are about all we can expect.

Barry Rascovar is a State House columnist, communications consultant and a radio commentator on WYPR-FM, 88.1. He can be reached at brascovar@hotmail.com.