MoCo tax revenues sharply down

[Anonymous]

anyone with any sense will leave this county before it is too late and watch the clowns squirm and take absolutely 0 accountability and play the race card over and over again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

So...misleading thread headline. Odd to label it that tax revenues are "sharply down".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cut school spending. It is out of control. Why can kids in Taiwan blow Moco kids out of the water in math and only need a $.38 abacus to learn? Everyone is paying for MCPS bloated salaries and pensions. It isn’t like kids are doing better in school.

Surprise, surprise, the Taxpayer League showed up. Please go away, many of us want to improve the community and know that it takes money - a rising tide raises all boats.

MCPS needs to improve STAT, because they are a mess, and without improvement, no businesses/companies will come here. The 3 most important thing fortune 500 companies look for to put a headquarters or campus are 1. An educated population, which we have, 2. An excellent school system for their employees kids to go to school - we are falling short and falling fast here and 3. Affordable housing with easy commutes for their staff to get to work - another area where Montgomery County is failing.

Nova is far more attractive to businesses and has been outcompeting moco for a generation. You’re delusional thinking moco is competitive. Many moco businesses are tied to federal health spending that’s declining. The politicians need to open their eyes.

[Anonymous]

Baltimorification of MoCo. Stifling pprogressive policies that kill or discourage businesses. More and more poverty imported. People increasingly rely on govt jobs and govt handouts. Pols panic at massive budget holes. Their only solution is to increase taxes. Increased taxes encourage flight and the tax base craters. The vicious cycle continues between tax increases and flight because the pols and MoCo's liberal base can't fathom that their crappy ideas are destroying the county into Baltimore 2.0.

Maryland, in general is also crappily run. Massive budget problems. Have fun with increased income tax too. That's all Dems ever doing and can think of. Tax tax tax. It is never a spending issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

Inflated assessments would not have caused a projection problem if Andrew Friedson hadn’t led a shift from constant yield to constant rate. He presents himself as a budget hawk but has voted for nearly all the spending (including the pay raises that are the biggest threat to fiscal sustainability). The change in how property taxes are set allowed the county to binge spend while property values went up and allowed the county to rely on shaky projections of property values in the out years.

Constant rate is far more common across the US. I doubt many people even realized we weren't operating off constant rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

So...misleading thread headline. Odd to label it that tax revenues are "sharply down".

Shocker

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

Inflated assessments would not have caused a projection problem if Andrew Friedson hadn’t led a shift from constant yield to constant rate. He presents himself as a budget hawk but has voted for nearly all the spending (including the pay raises that are the biggest threat to fiscal sustainability). The change in how property taxes are set allowed the county to binge spend while property values went up and allowed the county to rely on shaky projections of property values in the out years.

Constant rate is far more common across the US. I doubt many people even realized we weren't operating off constant rate.

That doesn’t make it good policy. One reason we had constant yield was to reign in the county government’s tendency to overspend in good times. Under the old system, increasing revenue apace with growth in the assessable base would have required a unanimous vote. Under Friedson’s system, those increases happed automatically. His reputation as a fiscal hawk and budget genius is entirely unearned. He was smart enough to protect his biggest donors by giving them full tax abatements, so you have to give him credit for that at least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

Inflated assessments would not have caused a projection problem if Andrew Friedson hadn’t led a shift from constant yield to constant rate. He presents himself as a budget hawk but has voted for nearly all the spending (including the pay raises that are the biggest threat to fiscal sustainability). The change in how property taxes are set allowed the county to binge spend while property values went up and allowed the county to rely on shaky projections of property values in the out years.

Constant rate is far more common across the US. I doubt many people even realized we weren't operating off constant rate.

That doesn’t make it good policy. One reason we had constant yield was to reign in the county government’s tendency to overspend in good times. Under the old system, increasing revenue apace with growth in the assessable base would have required a unanimous vote. Under Friedson’s system, those increases happed automatically. His reputation as a fiscal hawk and budget genius is entirely unearned. He was smart enough to protect his biggest donors by giving them full tax abatements, so you have to give him credit for that at least.

Constant yield doesn't address inflation, so you end up needing to adjust every year anyway.

And requiring unanimous votes for anything was and is a terrible idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

Inflated assessments would not have caused a projection problem if Andrew Friedson hadn’t led a shift from constant yield to constant rate. He presents himself as a budget hawk but has voted for nearly all the spending (including the pay raises that are the biggest threat to fiscal sustainability). The change in how property taxes are set allowed the county to binge spend while property values went up and allowed the county to rely on shaky projections of property values in the out years.

Constant rate is far more common across the US. I doubt many people even realized we weren't operating off constant rate.

That doesn’t make it good policy. One reason we had constant yield was to reign in the county government’s tendency to overspend in good times. Under the old system, increasing revenue apace with growth in the assessable base would have required a unanimous vote. Under Friedson’s system, those increases happed automatically. His reputation as a fiscal hawk and budget genius is entirely unearned. He was smart enough to protect his biggest donors by giving them full tax abatements, so you have to give him credit for that at least.

Constant yield doesn't address inflation, so you end up needing to adjust every year anyway.

And requiring unanimous votes for anything was and is a terrible idea.

You seem to know about as much about this as Andrew Friedson. Old Section 305 of the county charter limited the rate of increase to inflation (plus new construction) absent a super majority voting to approve a higher yield (not unanimous approval). But nice try. Friedson’s “fix” requires unanimous approval of a higher rate but he didn’t account for a state law passed almost a decade earlier that vitiated the unanimity requirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

Inflated assessments would not have caused a projection problem if Andrew Friedson hadn’t led a shift from constant yield to constant rate. He presents himself as a budget hawk but has voted for nearly all the spending (including the pay raises that are the biggest threat to fiscal sustainability). The change in how property taxes are set allowed the county to binge spend while property values went up and allowed the county to rely on shaky projections of property values in the out years.

Constant rate is far more common across the US. I doubt many people even realized we weren't operating off constant rate.

That doesn’t make it good policy. One reason we had constant yield was to reign in the county government’s tendency to overspend in good times. Under the old system, increasing revenue apace with growth in the assessable base would have required a unanimous vote. Under Friedson’s system, those increases happed automatically. His reputation as a fiscal hawk and budget genius is entirely unearned. He was smart enough to protect his biggest donors by giving them full tax abatements, so you have to give him credit for that at least.

Constant yield doesn't address inflation, so you end up needing to adjust every year anyway.

And requiring unanimous votes for anything was and is a terrible idea.

You seem to know about as much about this as Andrew Friedson. Old Section 305 of the county charter limited the rate of increase to inflation (plus new construction) absent a super majority voting to approve a higher yield (not unanimous approval). But nice try. Friedson’s “fix” requires unanimous approval of a higher rate but he didn’t account for a state law passed almost a decade earlier that vitiated the unanimity requirement.

So it doesn't require a unanimous vote? That's good. You never want to set up a situation where one madman can screw everyone over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless I am somehow misreading the charts…tax revenue is up but not as much as projected.

Correct?

Right. Mostly property tax revenue projections, which had been based on inflated values and assessments.

Inflated assessments would not have caused a projection problem if Andrew Friedson hadn’t led a shift from constant yield to constant rate. He presents himself as a budget hawk but has voted for nearly all the spending (including the pay raises that are the biggest threat to fiscal sustainability). The change in how property taxes are set allowed the county to binge spend while property values went up and allowed the county to rely on shaky projections of property values in the out years.

Constant rate is far more common across the US. I doubt many people even realized we weren't operating off constant rate.

That doesn’t make it good policy. One reason we had constant yield was to reign in the county government’s tendency to overspend in good times. Under the old system, increasing revenue apace with growth in the assessable base would have required a unanimous vote. Under Friedson’s system, those increases happed automatically. His reputation as a fiscal hawk and budget genius is entirely unearned. He was smart enough to protect his biggest donors by giving them full tax abatements, so you have to give him credit for that at least.

Constant yield doesn't address inflation, so you end up needing to adjust every year anyway.

And requiring unanimous votes for anything was and is a terrible idea.

You seem to know about as much about this as Andrew Friedson. Old Section 305 of the county charter limited the rate of increase to inflation (plus new construction) absent a super majority voting to approve a higher yield (not unanimous approval). But nice try. Friedson’s “fix” requires unanimous approval of a higher rate but he didn’t account for a state law passed almost a decade earlier that vitiated the unanimity requirement.

So it doesn't require a unanimous vote? That's good. You never want to set up a situation where one madman can screw everyone over.

The old constant yield approach did not require a unanimous vote to increase the yield. The new Friedson constant rate approach requires a unanimous vote to increase the rate (so he promised at the time). We later learned that the schools portion of the tax can be increased without a unanimous vote, so we now have a system in which taxes can go up faster than inflation automatically with no political accountability and a simple majority can raise the rate. Then Friedson got bills passed to exempt his donors from property taxes entirely. Thanks, Andrew.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It looks like another round of big tax hikes are coming.

https://x.com/adampagnucco/status/1998054101116977546?s=42

If revenues are down, what other alternative is there BUT to raise taxes, idiot?

Typical maga - trying to take an obvious scenario and twist it around not some political talking point. What a dummy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It looks like another round of big tax hikes are coming.

https://x.com/adampagnucco/status/1998054101116977546?s=42

If revenues are down, what other alternative is there BUT to raise taxes, idiot?

Typical maga - trying to take an obvious scenario and twist it around not some political talking point. What a dummy.

Revenue isn’t going down. It’s just not going up as fast as forecast. The property valuation bubble is deflating and the council has exempted a bunch of properties from taxes over the past few years. If values are going down and new construction is paying $0, then you won’t collect as much revenue as you expected. But revenue is still expected to grow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It looks like another round of big tax hikes are coming.

https://x.com/adampagnucco/status/1998054101116977546?s=42

If revenues are down, what other alternative is there BUT to raise taxes, idiot?

Typical maga - trying to take an obvious scenario and twist it around not some political talking point. What a dummy.

Revenue isn’t going down. It’s just not going up as fast as forecast. The property valuation bubble is deflating and the council has exempted a bunch of properties from taxes over the past few years. If values are going down and new construction is paying $0, then you won’t collect as much revenue as you expected. But revenue is still expected to grow.

The bottom line is that revenue isn’t keeping up with spending. Hence the prediction that another round of tax hikes is coming.