As he promised in his inaugural address, Harford County Executive Barry Glassman has sent legislation to the county council authorizing collection of a new tax and the repeal of an existing one.
Introduction of Bill 14-35, Creation - Hotel Occupancy Tax, and of Bill 14-36, Repeal - Stormwater Remediation Fee, is posted on the agenda for Tuesday's council meeting. Details were not available, as the council has a policy of not releasing legislation until it has been introduced.
During his inaugural speech on Dec. 1, Glassman laid out his plans for introducing a lodging tax and repealing an 18-month-old stormwater fee, ridiculed by detractors as a rain tax. He said he would be introducing legislation for both within a week, mentioning them right after he detailed his plan for reorganizing and streamlining county government that was sent to the county council the following day.
On the lodging tax, Glassman said it would allow "Harford County to join every other Maryland jurisdiction in capturing lost revenue from folks who travel through our county."
"We will use the revenue from a proposed hotel/lodging fee to assist our municipalities, our non-profits and museums, and to fund the privatization of tourism in Harford County," he said in his speech.
The debate over the need for such a tax has dominated the county's relationship with state legislators for going on two decades because such taxing authority must first come from the Maryland General Assembly, where Glassman served as a delegate and then senator from 1999 through this year.
A breakthrough came last winter in the waning days of the 2014 legislative session, when State Senate President Thomas "Mike" Miller placed the taxing authority for any charter county into a budget reconciliation bill that was subsequently enacted.
Credit has gone to former Harford delegate Rosemary Hatem Bonsack for helping initiate the measure and to Glassman, as well, for moving it through the Senate and working with Miller.
When the state legislation was approved, Glassman made it clear that the collection of any future tax would be subject to county council approval.
"The next administration will be able to sit down with the various partners in the county hotel industries and municipalities and draft a local bill," he said at the time. "It provides the framework to sit down and do a local lodging fee."
"Part of my plan for the county is to re-work our efforts and kind of modernize it," he also explained. "Adopting this would play into a much larger reorganization and marketing for the county. It plays into what I see as the county modernizing into the future."
In declaring his intention to repeal the rain tax during his inaugural address, Glassman said:
"In other words, rain will no longer be taxed in Harford County. I, like most Harford farmers and landowners, have always been committed to our land and water resources. We will not abandon that commitment. Rather, the county will continue working on our goals as dictated by the EPA, with flexible planning and using existing capital funds."
Glassman also was marching in lockstep with one of his guests in the audience, Gov.-Elect Larry Hogan, who has vowed, once he takes office in January, to get rid of the mandates that forced the fee on the state's largest counties in the first place.
Harford enacted a stormwater fee in 2013. Then-county executive David Craig originally proposed that it be $125 for each residential dwelling (to include farms) and $7 per every 500 square feet of impervious surface on commercial and industrial property; however, the council scaled the fees back to 10 percent of what Craig proposed: $12.50 for each dwelling and 70 cents per every 500 square feet of impervious commercial and industrial surfaces.
Craig, who at the time noted his original proposal fees "were calculated as being necessary for complying with federal and state stormwater requirements," signed off on the legislation which also had a rider attached creating a task force to study the entire issue and the cost of meeting state and federal clean water mandates.
Craig had put that cost at $10 million a year. The 90 percent reduction that he proposed meant that once the county began collecting the new tax on July 1, 2013, it generated $1,053,561 for the 12 months coinciding with the 2014 fiscal year that ended on June 30.
The money was channeled into a special revenue fund in the budget and, according to the comprehensive annual financial report for fiscal 2014, the county spent $1,262,462 on stormwater remediation during the period, leaving a deficit of $209,000.