Greens Respond to Indictments, Corruption

It's getting hard to keep track of the Baltimore lawmakers/powerplayers who are facing trial. Here's a Green perspective.

Bill Barry commented on his campaign against John Paterakis and the City Council's support of private development projects funded with public money:

If you were involved in my campaign in 2007 for the City Council, you should remember one of the main issues that made me mad as hell: the unlimited giveaway of our tax dollars to wealthy developers.

I especially focused on a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) of $ 33 million given to longtime player, John Paterakis for the Harbor East project. A PILOT simply means that he should pay taxes on his real estate ventures but won’t, thanks to the generosity of City Council members, and the shadow government, The Baltimore Development Corporation.

Well, the deal has been finalized, and, according to stories in The Baltimore Sun and The Daily Record, the City Council recognized the current recession by adding another $1 million to the giveaway, so that Paterakis is now getting a PILOT for $ 34 million. This PILOT is one of many scattered across the city, with millions more tax dollars uncollected.

And not a peep of protest, or a “no” vote from a single member of The Big D (Developers Doormat) Party in the Baltimore City Council.

So what? So if,

Your property tax went up (as mine did), or

Your neighborhood is losing a fire station, a rec center or police coverage, or

Your neighborhood school is a wreck, as many are, or

You work for the city and are faced with wage/benefit cuts, or

Your favorite non-profit or community group needs some public financial support,

You’re out of luck. Money that should be collected in taxes, to be spent on public services, has been given away to a millionaire.

Please send a thank you message in appreciation to your council representative.

What we didn’t know in 2007, however, was the lurid tabloid background to this particular PILOT. One of the Paterakis partners was Ronald H. Lipscomb, briefly a boy toy for Mayor Sheila Dixon, and now about to do the plead-and-turn dance as part of the investigation about Dixon.

Yeah, but this PILOT kept workers in the city, right? The goal was to persuade Legg Mason to maintain its center city workforce of 550. OK, so Legg Mason moved to Inner Harbor East but, according to a story in The Sun by Hanah Cho, “Legg's relocation will leave a big dent in the old central business district. The huge vacancy at 100 Light Street, where Legg occupied 22 of the 35 floors, has not been filled. For surrounding businesses at Legg's former home, the loss means more bad news during trying economic times.”

My point is that when times were flush, PILOTs were like stealing from us. Now that we’re in a recession, they are criminal.

And Vince Tola responds to those who consider our city council's legal problems business as usual:

For many, it’s painful to have their mayor be indicted multiple times. Indeed, as the first African-American female mayor of Baltimore City, most Baltimoreans (more than 60% of voters in 2007) had high hopes for Sheila Dixon.

Some supporters complain that with all the good that John Paterakis has done for our city and with all of the major problems that the city faces, why should we even worry about a few thousand dollars worth of gift cards?

I would counter that these indictments speak to the root problem of our political system. For some time, we have allowed a culture of corruption to become business as usual. Many simply assume that the "real work" of government should get done outside of the public view, where deals are made behind closed doors, political favors are exchanged, and big money means big influence. It’s this system that produces tax breaks for developers and hotels while schools crumble and neighborhoods are neglected. It’s exactly this kind of system that produced deregulation, the most damaging failure for consumers in recent history, and still, the politicians refuse to re-regulate.

The problem did not start with Sheila Dixon, nor is it limited to Mayor Dixon and her allies. However, let us use this use this opportunity to say NO MORE. No more secrecy. No more favors. We want honest, transparent government. We want meaningful citizen participation at every level. The public interest must hold sway over government, not private corporations and politically-connected boyfriends.