Agreeing to an increase in the Downtown Partnership surcharge is the least large commercial property-owners can do, considering all the tax breaks that have been given out for locating there. On Sunday I wrote about the need to get more revenue from one undertaxed set of businesses in the city: universities and hospitals that fall under the nonprofit section of the tax code.
Developers getting millions in downtown tax breaks are another group. The downtown business district is riddled with hotels and office buildings that aren't paying their share of property taxes to the city. Developers and the Baltimore Development Corp. argue that the projects wouldn't have been "economically viable" without the welfare. In any case, bumping up the partnership surcharge is one way to get the projects to contribute a little more to the environment that supports them.
The increased surcharge will hit every downtown commercial property, not just the ones getting tax breaks. I propose a special "Paterakis tax" to allow the partnership to get extra money from the welfare queens.
UPDATE: Harbor East isn't even in the Downtown Partnership zone, so the Paterakis projects over there aren't even paying partnership surcharges. Harbor East certainly benefits from all the upgrades to the old city business center, and it ought to be folded into the partnership zone.
PS. Harbor East is in the Waterfront Mangement District, where the surcharge is 17 cents per $100 of value. That's more than the Downtown Partnership assessment is now but less than what the DTP tax would rise to.