Baltimore City council members have finished a week and a half of hearings on Mayor Brandon Scott’s $4.6B budget proposal for next fiscal year. It includes additional funding that will allow for the opening of three new pools and recreation centers but also has to close an $85M budget gap. It’s doing that with some additional fees and fines that are rather controversial.
Here to give us a summary of what’s going on with the budget so far and to go through a few important highlights is WYPR’s Emily Hofstaedter.
Hey, thanks for getting us through this.
Emily: Always a pleasure.
Matt: We’ve talked about some of these fines and fees before but since that’s a sticking point, let’s start there.
Emily: Absolutely, well we have to fill an eighty-five million dollar budget gap and the mayor’s office has repeatedly said that modernizing city services and rates will be essential to do that. So for instance, increasing landfill tipping fees to $135 dollars per ton, that hasn’t been raised since 1993 and when you’re looking at per tons of waste, that isn’t going to hit the average resident much on a daily basis. But we’re also seeing increases for ambulance services for non-Medicaid users and an increase to the city’s taxi tax, which includes rideshares, and while it’s true that these haven’t been updated in many years, some councilmembers, and the Council President, are concerned about the impact these small increases could have on Baltimoreans. The mayor’s administration has said that the taxi tax is for the companies but Councilmember Isaac Schleifer wasn’t really buying that.
Isaac “Yitzy”Schleifer: “The taxi thing, that's a direct thing that they 100% I guarantee you will pass on directly to it. They will add it to the line item, and it will say Baltimore city tax. That's what they already do. And they will increase the number proportionately.”
Council President Zeke Cohen has said multiple times that these are hitting residents at a time of increasing water bills and skyrocketing energy bills.
Matt: Ultimately this is the mayor’s budget, do you think these fines and fees will go through despite the council pushback?
Emily: The council has until June 26th to pass the budget and right now there are a lot of active conversations going on about amendments after they closed up budget hearings last week. My understanding from talking to sources is that the mayor is pretty firm on the need for those fines and fees and the council president is not quite ready to concede those.
Matt: You reported on an emotional hearing last week, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs or MIMA. Why does the council think that budget should be increased.
Emily: Yeah, let’s go back to that for a second.
Odette Ramos: “We need that commitment today. Today. And the fact that that wasn’t given in this budget is shameful.”
That was Councilmember Odette Ramos after the MIMA agency director shared how her office is helping children whose parents have been deported. MIMA doesn’t do direct service provision, they act largely as a connector between foreign born residents and services. The council is asking their budget to be doubled so that they can coordinate more for legal services as the Trump administration ramps up deportation enforcement efforts. Mayor Scott’s team has committed to more funding for MIMA, we don’t know yet if it will be the full $2M the council wants. Can I take a moment to talk about an agency I didn’t get to cover last week?
Matt: How can I say “no”?
The Office of the Inspector General, headed by Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming. As the city’s independent watchdog agency, her office has spent the last year investigating deep seated and dangerous culture and facility issues at the Department of Public Works. That investigation is leading to changes that are reflected in the city’s budget but she says her personnel hasn’t been increased since 2022 and she says she’s got over 800 complaints her office is working on. She specifically wants dedicated inspectors just for investigations at the public works department and transportation department, which as she points out, trash and roads affect every city resident. There’s a lot of support in the council for that money to be added and again, I know that conversation is happening with the mayor in the background.
Matt: There’s been one bogeyman hanging over this process, the federal government, tell us about that.
Emily: The budget right now relies on $200 million in federal funding. This administration has been quick to pull money, so there is definitely some anxiety there. Already there’s a six million hole in income tax projections due to local laid federal workers. In budget dealings Mayor Scott has said multiple times to the council that it’s not each other we need to be fighting, it's the Trump administration so I would say as we balance this budget, there is the feeling that a proverbial bomb could go off any moment.
Matt: That’s all we have time for, we will hear more from you in the next few days as budget amendments come in. That’s WYPR’s Emily Hofstaedter.
