Fees

Roberto Pagan-Franco didn't have a bank account for decades. His employer paid him in cash or with a check that the Baltimore resident took to a check-cashing store. A few years ago he lost his job after a severe illness and for a time was homeless. Not exactly the type of customer you'd expect a big bank to court. But Pagan-Franco enrolled in a PNC Bank program that targets consumers who otherwise might be shut out of the banking system. And today, the 54-year-old has checking and savings accounts at PNC and is in the process of getting a credit card.

Individually, the poor are not all that tempting to thieves. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month's rent. Mug a janitor and you'll be lucky to get bus fare to flee the crime scene. But the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them. The trick, however, is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators. Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, understand this.

The woman who says she represents North American Power is not telling the truth about the benefits of buying electricity from her company. "You can save up to 10, 15, 20 percent of your bill, depending on your usage," she says in a telemarketing call to my house. But the rate she eventually quotes is only about 7 percent less than the standard price offered by Baltimore Gas & Electric — something the average customer would have no way of knowing. And of course the percentage savings won't vary even if my "usage" goes up to that of a steel mill.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates has approved the final variable of a formula that will dictate the amount developers in South Baltimore pay for road improvements. The new formula replaces time-consuming traffic impact studies and ad hoc negotiations between developers and the city, which for years have determined what builders pay to mitigate the traffic produced by their developments. "Sometimes [developers would] end up spending more on the traffic impact study than on the mitigation fees themselves," said Jamie Kendrick, the city's deputy director of transportation.

Haven't paid your city property taxes? Then you're on the city's list of owners whose properties could end up in tax sale this May, along with nearly 27,000 others who (as of last week) were behind on taxes, water bills or other city tabs. That's more than 10 percent of city properties, located in neighborhoods as varied as Poppleton and the Inner Harbor . If previous years are any judge, many owners will pay up quickly and avoid tax sale altogether. Here's an interactive map that shows where all the properties are. You can click on the dots for more details, including the address, who owns and how much the city says they owe. (Keep in mind that some may have paid already -- and at least one is an error .)

One of the country's largest national prepaid cell phone carriers is making free phones and 64 minutes of monthly air time available to nearly 400,000 low-income Maryland residents under a new effort it brought to the state this week. TracFone Wireless Inc., which has 10 million customers nationwide for its prepaid cell phone plans, can offer the free service because it obtains a $10-per-customer subsidy through a federal program whose goal is to improve land-line and wireless phone access, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

The Maryland attorney general's office has reached a settlement of more than $500,000 with Debtscape Inc., a Linthicum credit counseling agency that was accused of improperly charging fees to consumers years ago. More than 1,000 Marylanders who used Debtscape services from 1999 to October 2003 could be due refunds, Philip D.Ziperman, an assistant attorney general, said yesterday. Because of the size of the settlement, Debtscape is making monthly payments to the state, which eventually will make refunds to consumers over the next four to five years.

If Gov. Martin O'Malley refuses to veto the bloated taxes and fees legislation, it will prove that Maryland has become the kind of tyrannical government our Founding Fathers escaped to America to avoid. We came to America to be free, not to be taxed to death. Ken J. Bower, Edgewood

Funny how Gov. Martin O'Malley used an anti-fee campaign to defeat Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. — only to see his Democratic allies in the House of Delegates steamroll the state into more fees than ever before. This proves that the governor and the Democrats in the 2011 General Assembly don't care about overburdened Marylanders or feel the pain these high fees would cause. These fees were not "tough choices. " Raising fees was the stupidest onslaught against Maryland citizens in the history of the state.

Reporter Annie Linskey is right to characterize the last-minute budget deal that allows Maryland auto dealers to double and triple the processing fees they charge buyers as "a giveaway to car dealers" ("Businesses see breaks from General Assembly," April 18). That giveaway will be a serious blow to Maryland consumers, however, because they will foot the bill for the $100 million windfall the fee hike brings to the state's car dealers next year. As our economy struggles to emerge from the worst recession of the last 70 years, many low- and moderate-income Marylanders are struggling to afford the cars they need to find jobs, obtain child care and travel to the places that offer products at affordable prices.

The Orioles and Nationals are awaiting a decision on how much more money Washington will receive in annual rights fees from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which televises both teams' games. The decision from a Major League Baseball committee could come as soon as the next few weeks, according to an official familiar with the process. The Nationals receive at least $29 million per year from MASN, said the official, who declined to be identified while the decision is pending.

Prepaid debit cards are everywhere these days — and so are their fees. The cards allow you to load cash onto them and are accepted by businesses just like other types of plastic. But you might have to pay a fee to activate the card, make ATM withdrawals, check your balance, talk to customer service or reload money onto the card. Monthly fees can be as high as $14.95, and you could be dinged up to $5.95 if you haven't used the card in a while. "This is sort of a gift card with lots of fees," says Ruth Susswein, a spokeswoman with Consumer Action, which recently published a survey on prepaid card fees.

Thank you for your reporting and keeping the citizens aware of the General Assembly's activity in regards to taxes, fees and revenues, and subsequent speculation on how tax and fee revenues will be managed. The eyes of the nation's finance reporting were on the behavior of the Maryland governor and his proposed tax increases. While other states are developing processes to reduce citizen and business tax burdens, Maryland is the subject of reporting in financial publications. As a state, we're fortunate the General Assembly was able to hold the tax increase line and not increase taxes and fees.

In a legislative session marked by discord over taxes and gambling, lawmakers came together to pass three major bills aimed at boosting Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts. They failed to agree, however, on other environmental priorities - a bill to subsidize building wind turbines off Ocean City, and a measure requiring natural gas companies to pay for studying the impacts of drilling for energy in western Maryland. The General Assembly approved two bay billls that were priorities of the O'Malley administration bills, one doubling the 'flush fee' to pay for upgrading sewage treatment plants and another limiting rural development on septic systems.  A third late-moving bill pushed by environmentalists would require Baltimore city and nine suburban counties to levy local fees to pay for curbing polluted runoff from their streets and parking lots.

In a move aimed at helping Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts, the General Assembly adopted a bill late last night mandating that Maryland's largest localities, including Baltimore city and its suburbs, levy fees on their residents to pay for controlling polluted runoff from streets, parking lots and buildings. HB987 cleared the Senate after a protracted debate and repeated efforts by opponents to limit the requirement.  All failed, though senators did exempt state, county and municipal governments and volunteer fire companies from having to pay any fees.

While others found much to criticize about this year's General Assembly, environmental activists hailed it Tuesday as the most significant in decades for advancing long-running efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay. In a year when lawmakers balked at raising taxes or fees for other purposes, they approved the doubling of a "flush fee" for fixing up Maryland's sewage treatment plants and ordered the state's largest communities to levy fees on...

Mandating a runoff fee that is the same for all homeowners in a jurisdiction is patently inequitable taxation ("Fees statewide proposed to cut runoff pollution," Mar. 3). There is no justification for charging the same amount for a large property in Mt. Washington or Roland Park and a small one in Pigtown that might have less than a tenth the area. No matter how small the fee, it is unjustly applied. It would make far more sense to make a minor addition to the property assessment worksheet and generate the needed revenue for runoff remediation through a calculation that bears some rational relationship to the size and physical characteristics of the properties producing runoff.

How many of us would like to be taxed twice on the same money and then thank the politicians responsible? The answer is the same number of people who favor the new bank fees being imposed on the nations' largest banks by the Obama Administration ("They still don't get it," Jan. 14). The American taxpayer "bailed out" the banks (even those banks which did not wish to take government money) and other large companies when their poor planning and decision making resulted in the recession.

The General Assembly gave final approval today to Gov.Martin O'Malley's two Chesapeake Bay priority bills - one doubling the so-called "flush fee" to help pay for bay restoration efforts, and the other limiting development using septic systems. By a vote of 89-48, the Senate concurred this morning on relatively minor House amendments to the Bay Restoration Fund bill, HB446 , which would increase from $2.50 to $5 monthly the charge levied on most Maryland households and businesses to pay for upgrading the state's largest wastewater treatement plants.

A "sleeper" bill that would require Baltimore city and the state's nine largest counties to levy fees on property owners to pay for controlling storm-water pollution won preliminary Senate approval  this evening, though whether it will pass in the General Assembly's waning hours remains to be seen. The measure, HB987 , which has failed to pass in prior years, gained traction late in the 90-day legislative session after the O'Malley administration and lawmakers agreed to scale back a proposed increase in the so-called "flush fee"to help pay for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup.  That bill, which gained final approval today, would double the $2.50 monthly fee paid by all utility customers and septic tank owners.  The money raised would help finish upgrading the state's largest sewage treatment plants, while also funneling aid to farmers to control runoff from their fields.