Call this the sequel to my post captioned “The Impact Fee Study That Never Was.” That post described how the Baltimore County Council made a serious mistake during the enactment of Bill No. 16-19 by creating a discrepancy between the bill as enacted and the legal prerequisites for enacting the bill described in the official explanations of both the bill and its state enabling act.

The Fiscal and Policy Note prepared by the General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services and the Fiscal Note prepared by the Baltimore County auditor stated that the council had to conduct an impact fee study before imposing an impact fee. Nevertheless, Bill No. 16-19 was passed without an impact fee study being done.

The council made things unnecessarily complicated because of its apparent ignorance of a change in the law.

This post deals with related issues, the first of which is what appears to be the motivation for both Bill No. 16-19 and its state enabling act, Chapter 657 of the 2019 Laws of Maryland. In my first post, I quoted Councilman David Marks’ statement of his understanding of the inherent difference between development impact fees and development excise taxes:

“Impact fees are different than excise taxes in that revenue must be spent in a localized manner — in other words, money collected from a development must be used for schools, roads, and infrastructure near the affected community. Money from an excise tax can be spent anywhere.”

He went on to explain the reason for his decision to eschew the county’s longstanding authority to adopt a development excise tax in favor of his bill enacting a development impact “fee” as follows:

“Mr. Olszewski has shown himself to be a thoughtful and collaborative leader, but there is a historical mistrust in Baltimore County, and not just between communities and developers as Mr. Plymyer asserts. There is real fear that a partisan county executive will use his or her power to reward loyal communities or punish adversaries. That is exactly why my legislation requiring localized spending of impact fee revenue is better.” [Emphasis added.]

I explained in my first post how Mr. Marks appeared to fail to understand how a 2018 decision by the Court of Appeals, Dabbs v. Anne Arundel County, had changed the law regarding impact fees. As a consequence of that change in the law, if all that Mr. Marks wanted to do was restrict the use of school impact funds to the school district from which they were collected, he could have done that by a simple amendment to the development excise tax bill introduced at the request of the county executive, Bill No. 23-19.

Going the route of an amendment to Bill No. 23-19 would have eliminated the need for the General Assembly to enact Chapter 657 of the 2019 Laws of Maryland and for the council to enact Bill No. 16-19. More importantly, it would have avoided the legal mess caused by the apparent confusion over the need for an impact fee study. 

There is a better way to deal with the council’s fear of the county executive.

If the motivation for Bill No. 16-19 was indeed fear of the power of the county executive over the Board of Education budget, then isn’t it better to address the power imbalance directly, rather than to make a hash of a major piece of legislation? Here is what I am talking about:

The Baltimore County Council is the only county council in Maryland that lacks the power to restore any denial or reduction made by a county executive in the budget submitted by the local board of education. (The Baltimore City Council also lacks the power to do so.) Under § 5-102(c) of the Education Article of the State Code, the power to restore any denial or reduction made by the county executive in the budget submitted by the BOE will be given to the council if approved by the voters of the county as a charter amendment.

Council members, why don’t you pass a resolution putting that measure on the ballot in 2020? Let the voters decide. If the voters approve the charter amendment, then the council rather than the county executive would have the final say on which capital projects proposed by the BOE get funded. If the voters reject the amendment, then the voters have told you that they trust the county executive over you, and you just live with that fact and stop passing screwed-up bills like Bill No. 16-19.

There is another interpretative issue arising from the absence of an impact fee study.

In my first post I explained how the failure by the council to do an impact fee study despite both the Fiscal and Policy Note prepared by the General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services and the Fiscal Note prepared by the county auditor stating that one was required created a legal ambiguity. There is an additional issue arising from that ambiguity that I did not mention.

One of the shortcomings of “traditional” (pre-Dabbs) school impact fees is that they can be used only for schools directly affected by the new residential development, and then only for adding or expanding school capacity – they cannot be used for remedying existing deficiencies, such as remodeling or maintenance. This means that the impact fee revenues can sit unused for years if collected in a school district in which no capital projects to add or expand student capacity are needed, even if the overall impact of new residential development in the county has created the need for adding or expanding capacity elsewhere.

One of the issues to be sorted out by the county in light of the ambiguity created by Bill No. 16-19 is whether it was the council’s intent, despite Dabbs, to limit expenditure of the fees to projects that add or expand school capacity. Again, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it was. That includes the council’s preamble to the bill, in which it states that:

“Development impact fees have been imposed in other jurisdictions in Maryland that pay for additional or expanded . . . public school and public safety facilities, and debt service on bonds issued for additional or expanded infrastructure and facilities.” [Emphasis added.]

Is the County going to argue that, despite the language in the preamble, it can use impact fee revenues for routine maintenance and remodeling? That is another area of confusion that could and should have been avoided.

CONCLUSION

There’s no good explanation for what the council did. If the Fiscal and Policy Note prepared by the General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services and the Fiscal Note prepared by the county auditor were correct, and the council intended to impose an impact fee bound by the rational nexus standard, then an impact fee study should have been done before passing Bill No. 16-19.

If, on the other hand, the Department of Legislative Services and the county auditor simply were unaware of the Dabbs case and made a mistake about the requirement for an impact fee story, the council should not have passed Bill No. 16-19 before asking the auditor to issue a revised note eliminating her statement that an impact fee study was required. It would be an unacceptable level of sloppiness for the council to knowingly pass a bill that was inconsistent with the legal prerequisites as stated in the legislative record.

Of course, if the county auditor (and county council) were unaware of the Dabbs decision, that raises another question. The Dabbs decision was issued on April 10, 2018. The county auditor issued her report on Bill No. 16-19 on May 23, 2019. By then, one would assume that the county attorney, or someone, was aware of Dabbs and would have brought it to her attention. And if not, why not?

This situation has all the earmarks of “haste makes waste” and the failure to apply sufficient time and expertise to a major piece of legislation. And that is never a good excuse.