Tax Base

County and town officials will meet today and tomorrow to talk about attracting industry to Carroll and about whether the county offers adequate services for its residents.The county commissioners and mayors from Carroll's eight towns will meet at Carroll Community College for their third such gathering in three years.About 80 people have signed up to attend the all-day meetings.Today's sessions will focus on economic development.County officials say they want to close the gap between the residential tax base, which has more than doubled in the past eight years, and the commercial/industrial tax base, which has grown about 50 percent in that period.

COMMISSIONER W. Benjamin Brown has provided us a new definition of "undesirable" -- a family with an income between $45,000 and $55,000 seeking to live in Carroll County. These objectionable people have the audacity to use more in public services than they would pay in property taxes, according to the first-term commissioner. He made the comment in response to a report by builders and others encouraging more affordable housing in Carroll.Since the county's median household income is about $48,000, more than half of the county's population must be considered a bunch of freeloaders by Mr. Brown's definition.

Mayor Schmoke bit the bullet last week and ordered major reductions in city services from libraries to schools to firehouses to meet a $27 million loss in state aid. But while the city's long-term budget crunch was pitched into crisis by this year's recession, the crisis won't pass even when the economy recovers.That's because the structural trends giving rise to Baltimore's fiscal squeeze -- a shrinking tax base, middle-class flight and the end of federal aid -- will remain essentially unchanged.

For years, Howard County Budget Administrator Raymond S. Wacks had a favorite chart for showing the county's fiscal fortunes: Tracking the growth of Howard's property tax base, the chart peaked during the boom of the 1980s, then slid downward throughout the '90s.Until now.Wacks unveiled the newest version of that chart to the County Council yesterday morning. Instead of trailing off downward, the end of the chart spikes suddenly -- signaling optimism about Howard's fiscal future for the first time this decade.

The incoming mayor, Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, could have a tremendous impact on improving the city's housing market by committing to lowering property taxes and pushing for a land bank authority to help the city get control of vacant homes, said Joseph T. "Jody" Landers III, executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. The city has seen its tax base erode as it struggles to compete with the declining home prices and lower tax rate of the surrounding counties, Landers said.

Like a 40-something softball player with bad knees, Baltimore County is limping toward the 21st century without the economic energy of its suburban metropolitan mates.That slowdown, and the stagnation of the county's tax base, form a troubling backdrop to the painful layoffs of 392 employees and the closings of libraries, senior centers and clinics announced Feb. 11.Had the county not done some thing to reduce the size of government now, said Budget Director Fred Homan, it would surely face more spending cuts or higher taxes in the future.

Much of a proposal to rezone 1,069 mostly rural acres for industrial and commercial use remains viable despite its rejection by the Planning Commission, the Carroll County Commissioners said yesterday.Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown said Planning Commission members may be willing to reconsider some of those sites when they review mini-plans to guide growth in south Carroll and Westminster.The Planning Commission voted Jan. 29 to reject all but 90 of the 1,069 acres for inclusion in a revised master plan to guide the county's growth.

A REVOLUTION is under way in Carroll County. A new set of county commissioners, elected in 2002 after a hard-fought campaign against the county's laissez-faire growth stance, has been enacting rules to induce a more sustainable pace of development in the once rural, now booming suburb. The commissioners - Julia Walsh Gouge, Perry L. Jones Jr. and Dean L. Minnich - have passed new plans to protect Carroll's strained water supply, to rebalance its tax base by limiting conversion of industrial land to commercial use, and to deny approvals for homebuilding at earlier stages of school crowding.

Carroll's industrial tax revenue is nearing 13 percent of the county's tax base, an all-time high for the county but still one of the lowest in Maryland, county officials said. Figures recently released by Carroll's budget office put the percentage at 12.43 at the start of fiscal 2002 on July 1. With many new businesses set to open this fall, Jack Lyburn, county economic development director, expects the percentage to climb to 13 percent or higher by January. "Unless a project is 100 percent done and occupied, we cannot count it in the percentage," said Lyburn, who initially predicted in April that the county would reach 13 percent by July.

In his thought-provoking March 25 column ("What's wrong with a little class warfare?") Dan Rodricks quoted a recent Economic Policy Institute report as stating that "The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker pay rose from 24:1 in 1965 to 262:1 in 2005." This rapidly swelling pay divide certainly raises some serious concerns. In the first place, pay disproportions of this magnitude may serve to undermine worker morale and motivation and thereby further America's already growing decline in world competitiveness.