Baltimore mayor pledges no property tax hike 

Posted: 7:00 pm Mon, February 22, 2010
By Robbie Whelan
Daily Record Business Writer

After 19 days as mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Monday addressed city leaders in her first state of the city address, which dealt mainly with the city’s budget problems, but also touched on issues important to the business community, including an assurance that the city’s property tax rate would not rise.

Baltimore faces a $120 million budget deficit for fiscal 2011, and Rawlings-Blake faces the daunting task of presenting a plan for preliminary fat-trimming measures by late March. A final budget must be approved by the City Council by midnight, June 30.

“The Great Recession has created the most difficult budget environment in memory,” she told the assembled audience of council members, union officials, mayoral staff, city agency heads and members of the media. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and representatives from the offices of Sen. Benjamin Cardin and Rep. John P. Sarbanes, both Democrats as well, were also in the audience. “By making everything a priority, nothing is a priority. Our limited resources have been spread too thin, in too many areas. As a result, we now inherit a devastating $120 million deficit.”

Rawlings-Blake’s first weeks as mayor after Sheila Dixon’s guilty plea and resignation were disrupted by a massive snow storm that dumped more than three feet of snow on the region and left many city residents unable to leave their homes for days. The mayor declared a “Phase III” emergency for a half-day, banning all non-city-approved emergency vehicles from city roads.

“Together we survived and conquered the Great Blizzard of 2010, not just by the work of government, but also through the work of private citizens and neighbors helping one another,” she said, before recognizing five firefighters seated in the rear of the chamber who rescued a woman trapped in a blazing row house in Northeast Baltimore on Feb. 11, during the storm.

The firefighters showed no reaction when she mentioned a study being done by the Greater Baltimore Committee to assess the city’s $64 million in police and firefighters pension liabilities, which she called “a retirement promise that only exists on paper.”

After the speech, City Councilman Robert Curran, whose district includes the site of the fire, said that the city transportation department’s response to the blizzard was “detached from reality.” Very few of the streets that the department said were being plowed were actually being plowed expediently, he said.

“Citizens get the first gold star for opening up their streets, for community associations hiring contractors [to remove snow],” he said. “The next accolades should go to the 3-1-1 operators,” he added, referring to the city’s non-emergency complaint hotline. He did not credit the mayor for coordinating snow-removal and safety efforts.

Early in the speech, the mayor touted the extension of the city’s Newly Constructed Dwelling Property Tax Credit, which provides incentives for developers to eliminate blight.

She also pledged to balance the budget without raising property taxes in the city, an issue important to real estate developers and investors in the city. Baltimore taxes real property at a rate of $2.268 per $100 of assessed value, more than twice the rate of any other jurisdiction in Maryland. Nearly 60 percent of the city’s general fund comes from real property tax revenues.

Rawlings-Blake noted that the city’s entire budget deficit is equal to a 36-cent hike in the property tax rate, but she told the City Council that “if we work together, we can pledge we will not raise property taxes to fix this budget gap.”

Councilman Bill Henry, one of the council members who gave Rawlings-Blake multiple standing ovations when she entered the chamber, said after the speech that plugging budget holes without raising property taxes was a realistic goal.

“It’s a fairly ‘yes-or-no’ thing to commit to,” he said. “The difficulty she puts herself and the rest of [the Council] in is that money doesn’t grow on trees.  … The question is, who’s not going to get money for programs they think are important?”