Fees

The following is the Friends of Harford testimony before the Harford County Council in support of Bill 13-12. levying a storm water remediation fee. A copy was provided for publication. Friends of Harford supports the purpose and philosophy behind Bill 13-12 "Storm water Remediation Fee" because past storm water management practices have proven inadequate to protect our properties, our streams, the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay. Just as these past inadequacies accumulated over time, so too will correcting them take time -- and money.

I absolutely love tented weddings. I think they are a perfect medley of casual and sophisticated. I am really excited to be hosting my own tented wedding but for any couples out there considering this route, I have a few “hindsight” points you should consider. *For most venues, you will be responsible for providing every single piece of furniture, down to the dance floor. What kind of chairs do you want? Where are you renting your tables and linens from? If you are having a band, you may need to rent a stage.

Baltimore County homeowners would pay a fee between $18 and $36 a year for stormwater management under a plan to meet new state requirements designed to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. Legislation to impose the fee was introduced Monday, with a County Council vote scheduled April 15. The fee structure, proposed by the administration of County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, is an attempt to comply with a law the General Assembly passed last...

With only minor changes, the House of Delegates on Wednesday gave initial approval to Gov. Martin O'Malley's $37 billion budget, the governor's first spending plan in several years that doesn't propose significant cuts. While a final vote in the House is expected Friday, Wednesday's actions signaled the last cuts the chamber will make before the budget proposal moves to the Senate. Delegates cut about $80 million in state spending, scaling back one of O'Malley's initiatives to improve digital learning in classrooms and nixing another that would have created a $5 million fund for innovative ideas.

The City Council gave final approval Monday to a bill that would allow companies such as Ticketmaster to continue to charge unlimited fees when selling tickets to events in Baltimore. The 15-member council voted without discussion in favor of the bill, which exempts Ticketmaster and other ticket sellers from Baltimore's long-standing anti-scalping law. Only council members Bill Henry, James B. Kraft and Mary Pat Clarke voted "no. " The law will sunset in September. By then, council members say, they will have had enough time to draft permanent legislation.

It's safe to say that Ticketmaster doesn't have many fans. The service, which handles ticket sales for venues large and small across the nation, charges fees on its transactions that seem to bear little relationship to either the cost of the tickets or the actual work the company does. We completely sympathize, then, with the Baltimore concert-goer who took the company to court and successfully argued that its fees violate a 1948 Baltimore law limiting extra charges to 50 cents per ticket.

How fitting to read about the extra fees charged from Ticketmaster just as my newspaper included a "code" to use when ordering tickets for Ringling Brothers Circus ("A chance to break free of Ticketmaster," Feb. 26). The code didn't work on their site so I called Ticketmaster. At first we thought the code wouldn't go into effect until Sunday but an agent double checked and said there was no such code. I then went back on the computer to the Ticketmaster site to see how much tickets would be without The Sun code.

A City Council committee approved a bill Thursday that would allow companies such as Ticketmaster to continue to charge unlimited fees in selling tickets to events in Baltimore. The council's finance committee voted 3-1 in favor of the bill, which would exempt Ticketmaster and other ticket sellers from Baltimore's long-standing anti-scalping law. If approved by the full council next month, the bill would allow the ticket-selling companies to continue to charge unlimited user, service and "convenience" fees.

Environmental matters dominated the attention of the Anne Arundel County Council this week, as members voted to add restrictions on development in the county's so-called "critical area" near tidal waters of the Chesapeake Bay and hosted a spirited public debate on the question of imposing countywide storm-water management fees. By a 5-2 vote at their Feb. 19 meeting, council members approved the first measure, which supporters said brings the county's critical area code in line with amended state regulations.