Observations From Thursday's Property Tax Hearing

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September 14, 2:28 PM

by Adam Meister, Baltimore Politics Examiner

 

 

The public audience was made up of the usual people you see at tax related events- Paul Warren of Mount Vernon, Keith Losoya of Federal Hill, Charlie Duff of Mount Vernon, Remington Stone of Reservoir Hill, Bill Marker of Pigtown, and many other familiar faces. Oddly enough all of the prominent citizens I just mentioned live in the 11th district (I also live there) along with the chair of the committee Councilman Bill Cole. The 11th district is where the disparity between commercial and residential property taxes is most noticeable and perhaps this plays some sort of role in the obvious interest in property taxes in this district. Areas like Roland Park, Homeland, and Mount Washington in the northern part of Baltimore have many houses that are highly assessed where some people are paying close to $20,000 a year in property taxes. I assume some people in the crowd had to be from these non-11th-district areas but I did not recognize anyone from those areas. I could tell there were quite a few real estate professionals (including Jody  Landers) in the audience along with some representatives from the Mayor's office.

Bill Cole opened the hearing with some quick introductions and said he wanted the hearing to end by 5:30.  He said that he knew not everyone would get to speak but he would make sure that there would be a future hearing where those who wanted to speak could speak. 

Either Deputy Mayor Andrew Frank or Jody  Landers of the Blue Ribbon Committee on Taxes and Fees spoke next.  Andrew Frank opened his talk up with a joke about "Lipstick on a Pig". Although the obvious shot at Republicans and current events was sort of funny it was yet another reminder of the corrupt, bloated, and smug one party system that we currently suffer under in Baltimore. Imagine if there was an actual opposition of some sort in Baltimore politics?  The Deputy mayor basically focused on making excuses for why Sheila Dixon has done nothing when it comes to property tax relief and why things are not really that bad (compared to Indianapolis) and how soon they will do something. Apparently the Mayor's office was totally caught off guard by the real estsate bubble and squandered all of the extra real estate related revenue that was brought in during the boom.  He says the mayor really does care about lowering proeprty taxes though. Well she cares so much that after the Blue Ribbon Report came out and stressed that we must continue to lower the property tax rate by a measly 2 cents a year, she stopped lowering property taxes by 2 cents a year.

Jody Landers stressed that we have to do something. We just can not sit on our hands and have a nice report sitting around. Basically this is what the hearing really boiled down to. You have many interested and angry citizens who want immediate property tax action who feel like Mayor Dixon used the report as a campaign gimmick.  You also have some city council members who want to take action but want assurances from the Mayor's office that if they actually write up legislation that she will approve of it and not let it sit around and rot like the Blue Ribbon Report. The City Council also wants assurances from the Mayor's office that if they pass revenue generating legislation that it will go to property tax relief and not to the general fund (where money gets squandered in an embarrassing fashion). Representatives of the Mayor and City Council members also want the state to pass enabling legislation that will allow them to go through with some of the suggestions in the Blue Ribbon report.  The fact that there is no enabling legislation on certain proposals is used as an excuse by the Mayor's office. The Mayor's office also is in love with slots being the big savior for our property tax problems. The City Council did not seem as keen on this idea.

Ok Back to specifics.  It was brought up that non-profits own 25% of the real estate in Baltimore. That is a huge chunk of real estate (I believe $11Billion work) that can not be taxed!   And you wonder why there are so many churches in Baltimore. I think we should figure out a way to extract some money from nonprofits. They use the same streets and sidewalks as we do.

When I was running for city council back in 2007 I suggested that Baltimore create a $300 vacant house fee. Well it appears that the City Council, Blue Ribbon Report, and the Mayor want to create some type of vacant house fee to generate revenue that will go toward lowering property taxes. This seemed to be the one big thing that everyone agreed on.

Jim Kraft of the 1st district really stood out at this hearing.  He went one on one with the Mayor's rep (I think it was still Andrew Frank, I could not see from where I was sitting).   If you are not a big fan of the Mayor then you probably will like Kraft. He seems to have major reservations about the Mayor's policies.  He ripped on how the Mayor stopped the 2 cent tax cut in response to the blue ribbon report. It was nice to see some sort of elected vocal opposition to the Mayor.

Jody Landers (who along with Councilwoman Helen Holton were the only members of the Blue Ribbon Committee there) reminded everyone that the the Blue Ribbon Committee was not allowed to come up with spending cuts for city government.  Although cuts can be "painful" the government is going to have to find parts of the budget to cut in order to lower property taxes and bring in new residents and make older ones more comfortable.

Councilman Bill Henry of the 4th district also preformed well. He said that he has drafted legislation for all the recommendations from the Blue Ribbon report. He does not want to present anything to City Council until he knows the Mayor will sign the legislation. Again it is pretty obvious that Mayor Sheila Dixon is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) obstacles to lowering our property taxes.

There were other council people present also. Council President Rawlings-Blake did not say much although she did put some blame on the Mayor's office. Jack Young did not say a word.  Helen Holton went on a mini-tirade of sorts. I really don't know what the heck her real point was. I think she just wanted to say something and pretend to sound like she understood the problem. It seemed like a big gimmick and an attempt to get a quote in to the paper.   Never fear though In the past I heard rumors about how Holton wants to run for comptroller one day.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Only three groups of citizens got the chance to speak.  I posted about two of those groups in the days leading up to the hearing. Stephen Walters presented an idea that involved Baltimore drastically cutting taxes in the next four years. He said similar things worked in Boston and San Francisco. I love this idea. If we force ourselves to cut taxes and tell the development world that property taxes will be quite low in 4 years then development will increase and we will be forced to figure out ways to cut fat from the budget. Because of increased development we may generate so much revenue that we will not have to worry about cutting anything that most of us will miss.

Paul Warren and Keith Losoya represented the Baltimore Tea party. Their suggestions revolved around the state of Maryland fixing their assessment practices and making businesses pay their fair share of property taxes. The piece on WBAL and the editorial in the Sun basically explain their main points. Paul Warren said that Baltimore needs to "reverse appeal" the outrageous under-assessments of many commercial properties. I like this suggestion. It could end up generating millions in property taxes and not cost homeowners anything.  The Tea part plan and the Walters plan could both be implemented since they do overlap and basically cover separate aspects of the larger problem

Bill Marker made the final presentation. For years (I first spoke with him about this in 2003) he has been trying to pitch his "One Maryland" plan to anyone who will listen. He feels that instead of every county paying a different property tax rate that there should just be one property tax rate in the state of Maryland. This would lower our property tax rate considerably and would help some other poor counties. The problem that Bill Cole pointed out is that representatives from Montgomery county are not going to like something like this at all. They would end up subsidizing places like Baltimore City.

It was a little past 5:30 when Bill Cole said the hearing was over but there would be another. Unbelievably enough this was the first public hearing between officials from the Mayor's office, City Council members, and citizens to discuss what steps to take next in regards to the Blue Ribbon Report's recommendations. I would suggest to all of you reading this who are interested in these issues to contact Bill Cole, Mayor Dixon, and activists like the Tea Party guys, Bill Marker, and Stephen Walters.

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