Comptroller Peter Franchot campaigned on issues out of his control ? health care, the environment, improving student performance. We opposed his candidacy because he favored issues outside the core mission of his job as Maryland?s chief tax collector. And we often disagree with him.
But he was 100 percent right to oppose the special session. And he is 100 percent right in warning Marylanders about the impact of the tax increases passed during the session.
“Don?t take a tax package out of thin air or create it in private and amend it behind closed doors and pass it at 2 in the morning,” said Franchot in an interview with The Examiner Friday. “Then perhaps we would not have adopted something like the $200 million sales tax on computer services. We?re going to enforce it, but it?s a bad idea. … Because it taxes the knowledge-based economy, whichis our strength … ”
Those comments show rare insight into how the economy actually works as opposed to how Gov. Martin O?Malley and fellow travelers in the state legislature want it to work.
Franchot favored debating a tax increase in the regular session, to begin next month, to give legislators and taxpayers time to respond to the tax proposals favored by O?Malley.
Like Franchot, more Democrats should have opposed the taxes on principled grounds. Kudos to him for not being a “robot,” unlike so many of his former colleagues in the state legislature.
Where he goes wrong is in his opposition to slots. Marylanders will vote on whether to allow them in an upcoming referendum as a result of the special session.
He said opposing them is a “fiscal issue” and that “we should be emphasizing the knowledge-based economy.”
Allowing slots and promoting a knowledge-based economy are not mutually exclusive. They can work together. The hundreds of millions estimated to pour into the state treasury now going to surrounding states can be used to improve public schools and pave roads to make Maryland a more attractive place to do business. And in a state surrounded by slots, he dooms us to all the social problems they cause with none of the revenue.
As comptroller, he should know better and stop using his office to thwart a reform that would so clearly benefit the state treasury and as a grandstand for pet issues.
Instead, he must pour his energy into analyzing the tax plan and how it will affect Maryland business. Maryland?s taxpayers need more than opposition, they need regular, well-researched reports on how taxes and regulation impact the state?s economy from the chief tax collector. If he had produced those earlier, we might not be facing a record tax increase starting next month.
