Tax Hike

Votes show who supported tobacco use prevention programsI would like to correct a misconception about the Maryland Senate's recent tobacco tax battle and filibuster. It was widely reported that Senate Republicans forced the governor to put money in his tobacco tax bill for tobacco use prevention and smoking cessation programs. This could not be further from the truth.Having attended many meetings during the tobacco tax filibuster, I can attest that it was the senators who supported a tobacco tax hike who fought hard to get the Senate's leadership and the governor to accept the amendment requiring the state to spend at least $21 million a year on smoking prevention and cessation.

CALL IT THE Night of the Long Knives, the Day of Reckoning, the Victory of Vendetta.Any way you look at it, Carroll County came out on the short end of the fiscal 2000 budget and the three-month General Assembly session that last week approved it.With the county's all-Republican delegation snorting fire and brimstone, the well-insulated Democratic majority simply yawned. There was no need to respond.The same for Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who has been the local demon since canceling the statewide police training center abuilding near Sykesville.

WHAT HAS BEEN the fastest-growing federal tax imposed on middle-income Americans over the past 20 years?No, it's not the income tax. And it's not the payroll tax. It's the federal gasoline tax. The federal penalty for driving in 1980 was a tax of 4 cents a gallon. But the tax climbed by 5 cents a gallon under President Reagan in 1982; by another 5 cents a gallon under President Bush in 1989; and, most recently, by an additional 4.3 cents a gallon under President Clinton in 1993.Steep climbFor those who are counting, that's more than a four fold increase in 16 years.

BALTIMORE'S dire fiscal situation is real. The city has lost 60,000 residents in the last seven years -- 14,000 in 1996 alone -- and too many of them were middle-income taxpayers whose departure has left the city a revenue beggar.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke last year threatened a severe cut in services unless the city's piggyback income tax was raised to offset an $8 million shortfall in the general fund budget. The tax hike was avoided largely through an early-retirement program that shrank the city work force.

THE COUNTY'S fiscal picture is brighter than it seemed just a few weeks ago, when the chief executive's spending affordability committee recommended a tax hike or boosting user fees to stave off budgetary plight. It was one of two advisory panels that urged County Executive Charles I. Ecker to raise more revenue.But residents who feared higher real estate and income taxes have no reason to worry after all. Mr. Ecker's proposed budget for fiscal 1998 would provide enough money to boost salaries for county employees, hire additional police and go beyond the minimum level of state-mandated spending for education -- without a tax hike.

IT WOULDN'T be budget season without someone floating a proposal to raise the city income tax that's collected "piggyback" with the state levy. Set at 50 percent of the state rate, the city tax hasn't changed since being installed in 1967. Given Baltimore's dramatic decline in population and tax base since then, it makes sense to adjust the piggyback to help offset revenue losses. But people won't accept a tax boost just to maintain the status quo, and that's all politicians are promising.

BY ENACTING AN early retirement plan that could reduce Baltimore's municipal bureaucracy by 1,500 workers, the City Council has shown imagination and foresight. The city's financial shape -- from a loss of population to a narrowing property tax base -- is such that local government no longer can be run as before.Yet at a time when the administration of Kurt L. Schmoke should take a frank and thorough look at Baltimore's prospects beyond the year 2000, the three-term mayor shows more visible concern about overdosing addicts than the city's long-term fiscal condition.

IT MUST BE understood by the public and especially the City Council that the proposed $2 billion spending plan submitted by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is only a recommendation. Despite or because of his call for a 10 percent income tax increase, his ideas as to where budget cuts should occur are nowhere set in stone.Especially keep that in mind in regard to the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Branches might be closed under the mayor's budget. The Pratt asked for $21.2 million, but his budget gives it only $19.7 million if the income tax is raised; $18.2 million if it isn't.

When Bengals owner Mike Brown passed up the Baltimore offer last June to stay in Cincinnati for a stadium deal that included a sales tax hike, he seemed idealistic at best and foolhardy at worst.Even though he said at the time of his decision to stay, "I know it sounds quaint, but I thought it was the right thing to do," it seemed far-fetched that voters in a conservative city like Cincinnati were going to vote for a sales tax hike to pay for stadiums for the Bengals and baseball's Reds. Even property-tax relief included in the bill didn't seem likely to save it.It didn't help that Reds owner Marge Schott wouldn't endorse the proposal and questioned why the Bengals needed a new stadium to play 10 games a year.

HOWARD COUNTY Executive Charles I. Ecker appears bound and determined to impose some type of tax increase on county residents. If he doesn't go with a property tax hike, it seems he will at least have county residents pay by the bag to have their garbage collected.The garbage fee may not be a bad idea. People would be paying for the type of service they want. Those who load up the trash collectors would pay accordingly, those who don't would pay less. However, the fact that residents, not business, would pay the fee make it a less equitable way to fund general government needs.

Through a long campaign, President-elect Barack Obama made a mantra of his pledge to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut them for the struggling middle class. But now it seems likely that the rich won't be paying more, at least for a year or two, because any tax hike would be bad for the country's morale in the current economic struggle. That's what Mr. Obama's aides have suggested. That may be a campaign promise not kept, but ducking the tax issue is a convenient bit of recession theory that fits seamlessly with what appears to be the Bush administration's economic game plan.

Red Line compact is worth celebrating I enjoyed Jean Marbella's column "All Aboard: Green Line, Red Line, Yellow Line, home" (Sept. 14), which mentioned the signing of the Red Line Community Compact on Sept. 12. But it's unfortunate The Baltimore Sun didn't pay more attention to this significant event. Mayor Sheila Dixon, state Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari and many other signers of the compact have recognized that the Red Line will be more than just a transit line from Point A to Point B. As an infrastructure project involving an investment of more than $1 billion, the Red Line will leverage neighborhood revitalization.

Sales tax hike is a lousy way to handle deficit Increasing the Maryland sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent is not a good idea ("Budgeting with blinders," editorial, Dec. 18). The Maryland sales tax is highly regressive and unfair to lower- and limited-income families and the elderly. And for major purchases, it is relatively easy for many Maryland residents to take their business to nearby Delaware (where there is no sales tax) or cross the river into Virginia, where the sales tax is already lower than in Maryland.

Votes show who supported tobacco use prevention programsI would like to correct a misconception about the Maryland Senate's recent tobacco tax battle and filibuster. It was widely reported that Senate Republicans forced the governor to put money in his tobacco tax bill for tobacco use prevention and smoking cessation programs. This could not be further from the truth.Having attended many meetings during the tobacco tax filibuster, I can attest that it was the senators who supported a tobacco tax hike who fought hard to get the Senate's leadership and the governor to accept the amendment requiring the state to spend at least $21 million a year on smoking prevention and cessation.

CALL IT THE Night of the Long Knives, the Day of Reckoning, the Victory of Vendetta.Any way you look at it, Carroll County came out on the short end of the fiscal 2000 budget and the three-month General Assembly session that last week approved it.With the county's all-Republican delegation snorting fire and brimstone, the well-insulated Democratic majority simply yawned. There was no need to respond.The same for Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who has been the local demon since canceling the statewide police training center abuilding near Sykesville.

WHAT HAS BEEN the fastest-growing federal tax imposed on middle-income Americans over the past 20 years?No, it's not the income tax. And it's not the payroll tax. It's the federal gasoline tax. The federal penalty for driving in 1980 was a tax of 4 cents a gallon. But the tax climbed by 5 cents a gallon under President Reagan in 1982; by another 5 cents a gallon under President Bush in 1989; and, most recently, by an additional 4.3 cents a gallon under President Clinton in 1993.Steep climbFor those who are counting, that's more than a four fold increase in 16 years.

IT WOULDN'T be budget season without someone floating a proposal to raise the city income tax that's collected "piggyback" with the state levy. Set at 50 percent of the state rate, the city tax hasn't changed since being installed in 1967. Given Baltimore's dramatic decline in population and tax base since then, it makes sense to adjust the piggyback to help offset revenue losses. But people won't accept a tax boost just to maintain the status quo, and that's all politicians are promising.

THE COUNTY'S fiscal picture is brighter than it seemed just a few weeks ago, when the chief executive's spending affordability committee recommended a tax hike or boosting user fees to stave off budgetary plight. It was one of two advisory panels that urged County Executive Charles I. Ecker to raise more revenue.But residents who feared higher real estate and income taxes have no reason to worry after all. Mr. Ecker's proposed budget for fiscal 1998 would provide enough money to boost salaries for county employees, hire additional police and go beyond the minimum level of state-mandated spending for education -- without a tax hike.

BALTIMORE'S dire fiscal situation is real. The city has lost 60,000 residents in the last seven years -- 14,000 in 1996 alone -- and too many of them were middle-income taxpayers whose departure has left the city a revenue beggar.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke last year threatened a severe cut in services unless the city's piggyback income tax was raised to offset an $8 million shortfall in the general fund budget. The tax hike was avoided largely through an early-retirement program that shrank the city work force.

BY ENACTING AN early retirement plan that could reduce Baltimore's municipal bureaucracy by 1,500 workers, the City Council has shown imagination and foresight. The city's financial shape -- from a loss of population to a narrowing property tax base -- is such that local government no longer can be run as before.Yet at a time when the administration of Kurt L. Schmoke should take a frank and thorough look at Baltimore's prospects beyond the year 2000, the three-term mayor shows more visible concern about overdosing addicts than the city's long-term fiscal condition.