Baltimore City Council Member Jim Kraft, D-1, gets it. He knows the city cannot thrive if the state?s highest property taxes are allowed to stand. He also has guts. Last week he said he planned to introduce legislation to cut the city?s rate by 20 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. His move comes at a time when Mayor Sheila Dixon said property taxes should be frozen.
Mayor Dixon said she believed in the freeze because of a deteriorating economic climate ? an assertion that does not square with the recent findings of her own Blue Ribbon Committee on Taxes and Fees.
Kraft?s Democratic colleague in the governor?s office and most other Democrats throughout the state see raising taxes as the only solution to falling tax revenue. They think like folks who have never met a credit card they didn?t like or a purchase they could possibly defer.
Kraft wants to ? gasp ? cut city spending. “We have to look very carefully at all agencies to generate savings,” he said. “That?s going to be my goal.”
His plan would reduce propertytaxes by $50 million. It would save $200 each year for a homeowner with a property assessed at $100,000 or $1,000 for someone with one of those newly rehabbed $500,000 row homes. It would still leave property taxes higher than every other jurisdiction in the state, but it would significantly reduce the gap and provide real relief. (For a full list of local property taxes, go to dat.state.md.us/sdatweb/taxrate.html)
We know Kraft can find places to trim to make the cut work. If a $7 million surplus from 2007 can magically appear as it did recently, we wonder what other hidden bucks lurk in the O?Malley Spendthrift Gang?s budget. As we?ve noted before, cutting raises for city employees and trimming the city work force would be a great (read “easy”) place to start to find extra money. Raises ? combined with a pledge not to fire anyone ? are adding an extra $30 million to the 2009 budget at the same time many employees in the private sector are facing layoffs ? not raises.
The worst of all solutions is to spend the $7 million. If our elected officials want respect, nay, our support, they must lead by example. At a time when a larger and larger portion of household spending must be allocated to paying for basics such as ever more expensive gas and food, it is only fitting for the city to give back to taxpayers money it did not use.
Besides, cutting property taxes can only help to expand the tax base as it makes living in Baltimore City more attractive. As a city that has been shedding residents for more than 50 years without losing any of its responsibilities to pay for infrastructure and the needy, adding taxpaying citizens should be a top priority. Fellow City Council members should support Kraft?s proposal and give Baltimore, a tax drain on the state, a chance to thrive for the long term. It?s hard to imagine they would not.
