It seems that hardly a month goes by that I'm not hearing of great new ideas from Annapolis on how to raise new revenue with higher taxes. Gas tax, cigarette tax, flush tax, and on and on. The citizens of this state have nothing left to give.
What I never seem to hear from anyone in state government is how they are going to trim costs, for example, by eliminating individuals or departments that have long outlived their usefulness.
One obvious candidate would be the Maryland Transportation Authority Police. Back in the day, I recall driving in the family car through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, which was regarded as Interstate 95 back then. The tunnel police stood watch over traffic in the tubes, monitoring cars and trucks from their little enclosures or walking the catwalks. That task long ago was replaced by cameras, and so I wonder why we continue to finance this organization. I have searched the Internet and have found no comparable police force in Pennsylvania, Virginia or Delaware.
Why then does Maryland require an exclusive police force to protect our bridges and tunnels, Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Port of Baltimore and Motor Vehicle Administration offices? Why do they need their own website, their own training academy, and a fleet of high dollar "stealth" vehicles in addition to marked cars? Their website brags of being the seventh largest law enforcement organization in the state with more than 600 employees and officers. Why do they provide law enforcement at the MVA?
I drive I-95 almost every day and see these officers sitting on the side of the road from White Marsh to Lansdowne and on occasion, writing a speeding ticket which generally seems to require three or four of their vehicles. I have seen them as far north as the Gunpowder River, miles from any toll facility.
There is absolutely nothing that this organization does that cannot and probably is already performed by the Maryland State Police. We do not need an independent police force for bridges and tunnels and to guard the MVA, port and BWI. This group should be folded into the state police and the majority of these 600 jobs eliminated. Instead, the state decided to raise tolls and add even more burden onto the taxpayers of Maryland.
Doug Ebbert, Bel Air