THE COMEGYS--MARYLAND MUNICIPAL LEAGUE TAXING SCHEME REVEALED

The new president of the Maryland Municipal League, Gary Comegys, appears to be directing (with the aid of a political consultant) its effort to obtain state “enabling legislation” to allow towns and cities to impose many new taxes and fees. We recently reported that the Salisbury City Council has endorsed this goal by passing a resolution requesting action by the General Assembly to provide much greater taxing power. This post provides further information about the scheme being foist on an unsuspecting public by the “MML”.

The game plan is quite sophisticated – to use the recent reduction in State funding of municipal funding of roads and police as a foil for getting the authority to impose new city taxes and fees. The playbook is smooth also.

This summer, at its annual meeting, the MML’s members – cities and towns – adopted a resolution that asks the General Assembly to both restore the funding for streets and police, which is impossible for the next few years because of the State’s fiscal crisis and structural deficit, and also to pass “enabling legislation to significantly broaden the authority of incorporated municipalities to raise own-source revenues.” Phase II of the scheme is to get every town and city to quietly pass a “me, too” resolution, as Salisbury has just done, without any meaningful public input or awareness until afterwards. If all of the munis do so, the MML can present many separate resolutions to the General Assembly, thereby making it seem that everyone wants to pay more City taxes and fees. That would lend support to a compromise in which the State does not provide any funding but does confer the power to impose more city taxes and fees.

And consider the verbiage in the resolutions – “raise own-source revenue” – with no mention of “taxes” or “fees” and no suggestion of what the source or sources of the revenue would be. But a blurb that Comegys recently distributed to the MML’s members fills in the blanks by specifying “Local Option Tax, Municipal Recordation Fee, Municipal Transfer Tax, Building Excise Tax, Hotel/Motel Tax, Admissions and Amusement Tax Cap Increase, Energy Consumption Tax, and Local Restaurant Tax.” In case you wonder about a “local option tax”, that term is normally used to refer to a local “piggyback” add-on to an existing state tax, such the income tax or sales tax. In short, the Comegys–MML scheme is to obtain (and, of course, to exercise at the city level) very extensive new taxes to extract “own-source revenue” from the residents, businesses and property owners in the city.

The city officials and MML will no doubt claim that they just want to have the tax authority available to use only in the event of a “rainy day” emergency. But the language of the resolutions and other statements makes clear that it would be used immediately – and that’s surely the case in Salisbury, where a new fee or charge of some kind seems to surface every week or so.

However, Comegys may have gone public too soon with the carefully concocted scheme by doing so before the election this fall. Candidates for the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates will be asked point blank whether they will vote to allow new or higher taxes of any kind anywhere. It also seems that Comegys has acted deliberately – the MML has recently distributed to city officials a special communication package with “outreach tips” and “sample candidate questions.” The questions are very slick – again designed to avoid any discussion of “taxes” and “fees” – so that a candidate might give an affirmative response to please the person who asks the question. The document suggests that he/she first recite a “preamble” whining about the reduced state funding for roads and police, followed by several scripted questions, including these:

“Will you support legislation to provide additional revenue raising authority to municipalities?”

“Would you support legislation to provide municipalities with enabling taxing authority that is comparable to current county revenue raising authority?”

Given the current economic morass and anti-tax sentiment, the MML and Comegys may have zigged when they should have zagged; perhaps they can blame that consultant. In any event it seems inevitable that the proposed taxes will fall squarely on the backs of residents of Salisbury and other cities that impose some or all of these taxes, with the exception of a hotel/motel tax.

Send this information to the each General Assembly candidate that you support. Any candidate who accepts or agrees with the Comegys-MML tax scheme in disguise should and deserves to lose for obvious reasons.