Maryland Rain Tax Case Study

Maryland Rain Tax A recent public policy change that has impacted my state of Maryland and many of its citizens through ten counties is the Maryland Rain Tax. This rain tax has been a controversial proposal since it was proposed on April 2013 by Governor Martin O’Malley. The tax’s purpose is to require local governments to charge a storm-water remediation fee to pay for removing pollutants from rainwater before it reaches the Chesapeake Bay. (Johnson & Wiggins, 2015). This tax law was highly criticized because it would enforce a fee only against a handful of counties and its citizens and not the whole state of Maryland. The general public outcry was due to its picking and choosing of which counties were going to be charged this fee. This …show more content…
I personally was expecting a formal explanation and fiscal justification for the revenue because local officials must determine and set the dollar amount their citizens will pay as they did with our county from $14 to $43. As mentioned above a budget was placed for this restoration project and regulations along with dedicated funds were dedicated.
The rain tax is different in every Maryland County and it is determined by the amount of square feet used to calculate the Equivalent Residential Unit and Impervious Unit: the unit of measurement to base the total fee per ERU or IU. One unit of ERU in the city of Baltimore is 1,050 sq. ft., while one ERU in Anne Arundel County is 2,940 sq. ft. Out of all the areas impacted by this fee, only two uses the square footage amount per IU. (Brown, 2014).
Many of the local government entities fear that this tax fee impact local businesses tremendously and that they will move to surrounding counties that have not been impacted financially with this tax. I believe that businesses were and still are impacted the most and this is a negative impact for the community. On the other hand, this tax does raise the money to fund the EPA mandated program but it’s at the citizen’s