Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson expressed cynicism on Friday for a Baltimore City property tax relief plan.
Mayor Brandon Scott wants the state to remit 2% of the Baltimore City local sales tax so that the city could fund its vacant housing strategy and also cut a $1,000 check to residents for property tax relief.
Ferguson said during a Friday news conference that those are bold ideas but not likely to happen this session due to the state’s nearly $3 billion budget shortfall.
“I think this is going to be a very, very challenging year to siphon off some of the state sales tax for specific jurisdictions,” Ferguson told reporters. “Not because it's not a thoughtful approach… this is going to be a year where we're counting every dollar, and the flexibility just doesn't exist to the level it had previously.”
In an email to WYPR, Scott said his administration has been “engaging” with the Senate President and the Governor “well before” his plan was publicly introduced in December 2023.
Governor Wes Moore released a budget plan earlier this week that includes some tax changes and cuts to service in order to plug a nearly three-billion dollar state budget shortfall.
Moore has not publicly weighed-in on Scott’s fight for the local sales tax.
Baltimore City’s property tax rate is assessed at $2.24 per $100 of assessed value– more than double anywhere else in the state. Those high property taxes were the source of a ballot referendum last year (which was eventually challenged and tossed out by the state supreme court) and are often cited as a reason for Baltimoreans leaving the city for surrounding counties.
In Maryland, the state keeps all 6% of Baltimore’s local sales tax. According to Mayor Scott, during the height of urban flight in the 1970’s, cities and states created local sales tax to help urban areas maintain revenue. During a December interview with WYPR, Scott estimated that 80% of large American cities operate this way — making Baltimore a notable outlier.
“If the state will allow us to keep 1% of the local sales tax, that would allow me to immediately give every single homeowner in the city $1,000 off their property taxes,” said Scott, who has noted that easing the pressure of property taxes could be a critical tool in retaining the city’s Black middle class.
“Selfishly, that would be beneficial for me as a homeowner in the city,” said Ferguson, in response to the mayor’s plan on Friday.
Despite the Senate President’s comments, the mayor said local sales tax remittance remains a top priority in Annapolis. In a late afternoon Friday email, Scott wrote that the city’s delegation chairs in the House and Senate plan to introduce the bill on administration’s behalf.
