Baltimore City’s distribution of tax credits is both inefficient and highly skewed in favor of wealthier neighborhoods, according to a review of the city’s tax credit programs by the city’s Bureau of the Budget and Management Research. Developers and homeowners in economically strong neighborhoods such as Canton and Riverside received a disproportionate share of the $126.7 million granted by the city in property tax breaks this year, the report found, while many historically neglected neighborhoods received little of that investment.
Hospitality businesses that want to build or expand construction on their Baltimore County waterfront properties could soon be exempt from state waterway protection regulations, per legislation under the County Council’s consideration. An attorney with a nonprofit that’s focused on restoring the Chesapeake Bay’s health says the proposed bill flouts Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Protection law, designed to prevent additional runoff — and other pollution — from flowing into the nation’s largest estuary.
Baltimore is spending its $641 million in federal COVID-19 aid as quickly as similar cities elsewhere, officials told City Council Tuesday, responding to council member criticisms the money isn’t being spent with enough urgency nor being used to resume core services curtailed during the pandemic. Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs director Shamiah Kerney told members of City Council’s Ways and Means Committee during a quarterly update that Baltimore is keeping pace with other similarly sized cities in the disbursement of money from the American Rescue Plan Act, the sweeping federal stimulus package aimed at boosting the economic recovery from the pandemic in communities across the country.
Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick), the GOP nominee for governor, joined the chorus of Republicans who condemned the FBI’s execution of a search warrant Monday at Mar-a-Lago, former President Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., home. The reaction of the man Cox is hoping to replace, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, was more nuanced. In a series of Facebook posts late Monday and Tuesday, Cox said “this FBI raid of Trump’s home is nothing short of communist stasi police state tactics.”
A series of cascading errors by Baltimore’s finance department and city vendors led the Bureau of Revenue Collections to inadvertently send the wrong entity a check for $2 million, nearly $60,000 of which has not been recovered, according to a new report from the Office of the Inspector General. The chronicle begins after a third-party vendor responsible for processing numerous city payments bungled a payment meant to satisfy a company’s roughly $1 million property tax bill, accidentally paying Baltimore on behalf of a different organization, the owner of which held about $1,600 in outstanding property tax.
Wes Moore is careful to say that he’s not in the Maryland governor’s race to make history. But if the Democratic candidate is elected, he’d do just that: Moore would be the first Black man to serve as governor of Maryland. “It’s not lost on any of us, this idea that we’re all attempting to do something that hasn’t been done before, that I think the state is ready for,” said Moore, 43, who is facing Republican nominee Dan Cox, a one-term state delegate who is white. A handful of minor party and independent candidates will also be on the ballot.
Michael Huber, Mayor Brandon Scott’s chief of staff, will leave his influential role as City Hall’s top advisor in early September to lead Johns Hopkins University’s government relations team. His departure is the most significant in a first term dotted with high-profile exits, including department directors, several deputy mayors and mayor’s office staff. The attorney has served as Scott’s right hand for three years, providing a source of stability for the mayor across different political offices and the tumult of the pandemic.
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