Special Taxing District Meeting

Delegate Sossi and Delegate Smigiel hosted a special meeting yesterday the Rising Sun Public Library to discuss Special Taxing Districts. By now most of us are aware of the saga in the Cecil Whig about the in-fighting within the Cecil County Delegation about the Special Taxing Districts. The five county commissioners requested that the Delegation submit a bill to enable the county to designate Special Taxing Districts if they wished. This is were the problem started, the commissioners wanted residential areas to be included within the bill. Delegates Sossi and Smigiel, along with Senator Pipkin determined that they would not include residential areas within the bill. This is not what the commissioners wanted.

Some of the delegation wanted the vote to be delayed because not all members would be present. But the vote proceeded anyway and failed. It was decided by the majority of the delegation at a later date to have the vote again, when all of the members could be present. This in itself created a problem because according to Delegate Smigiel, when a vote fails, it is never voted on again during the same session. The led to even a bigger problem, what is a majority? When the smoke cleared, the vote was 4 in favor and 3 against. Delegate Smigiel stated that it failed to get a majority because with a delegation of 8, 5 would make a majority. Others disagreed and said that it passed because when 7 people vote, 4 becomes a majority. I would have to agree with that. Any vote and or election that I have participated in, it is the majority of the votes cast that wins, not the majority of potential votes.

So the end result was that the just the members of the delegation that voted in the affirmative, put forth their bills in the senate and legislation. This will most likely kill the bills, because most committee chairs are reluctant to move bills out of committee that do not have the full blessing of the delegation of the county that would be impacted by it.

I attended the meeting to find out what the Special Taxing Districts were and why they would be bad for the county. Delegate Smigiel stated that Special Taxing Districts for residential areas would lead to out of control growth. When asked if he had information to back up that claim, he could not present any. We heard that Middletown, Delaware was a good example for why the Special Taxing Districts would lead to out of control growth. Again there was no proof presented to back that claim, in fact, a lady that was at the meeting stated that she contacted Middletown and New Castle County officials and was told that Special Taxing Districts had no impact on Middletown. We were then told that these Districts were so bad, that bill had been submitted in both houses to repeal the authority for Special Taxing Districts in residential areas in Maryland. When I checked this morning, I could find no record of such a bill submitted by a Delegate and the Senate bill (SB381) only had one sponsor, Senator Rosapepe.

After leaving that meeting, I felt like that I was not convinced that the Special Taxing Districts would be such a bad thing for Cecil County. Zoning is definitely not working in controlling the growth and directing the growth to the areas that it should. I think that the thing that convince me that it could not such a bad thing is that Commissioner Demmler supported it. None one could ever claim that Becky would support out of control growth. I always try to keep an open mind and will listen to additional arguments, but until convince otherwise, I believe that the Special Taxing Districts is a tool that should be made available to the county.