Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski focused on schools, public safety and health in his FY 2020 budget proposal on Monday, April 15.
Declaring Baltimore County “at a crossroads” with a budget deficit and many needs to be addressed to maintain quality of life, he proposed an income tax increase, from 2.83 to 3.2 percent.
“For a resident earning $50,000 per year, this amounts to about $15 more per month,” Olszewski said. “The last time the income tax was raised was in 1992. The cold war had just ended, Bill Clinton was elected president, a gallon of gas cost just over $1, and our county’s education budget was about $356 million – less than half of the current [school system’s] budget.”
The county executive said that the tax increase would “bring Baltimore County in line with the income tax rate in our state’s other large, diverse jurisdictions.”
Residents would not be the only ones pitching in more dollars.
“We’re also asking developers to pay their share,” Olszewski said. “In other counties, developers pay impact fees on new homes and businesses” for infrastructure to accommodate growth. Said Olszewski: “In partnership with the council, we’ll be working to enact a surcharge on new development in line with what other counties impose.”
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Elizabeth Janney over at the Patch