Early voting in Maryland begins on Thursday and voters in Baltimore City have plenty to decide, even if Democrats again routinely sweep all the city's elected offices. In addition to president, Congress, mayor, City Council, various judges, and statewide ballot question 1, voters in the city have eight local ballot questions to decide, questions A through H. WYPR’s Matt Bush spoke with Emily Hofstaedter, who covers Baltimore City Hall for WYPR, about all those ballot questions.
Matt Bush: Question F deals with the development of the Inner Harbor, and will count for this election after a state Supreme Court ruling, while Question H would cut the size of City Council almost in half, a move that is being funded solely by Baltimore County resident and Sinclair Media founder David Smith, who also owns the Baltimore Sun. You covered both of those pretty extensively for us, so we're going to focus on a few of these other questions that city voters will determine in this election, too. Question G deals with reparations. Explain that one for us because it's a very wordy amendment.
Emily Hofstaedter: It asks residents if they want to decide to create a city fund that would use state money to help communities that were disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. Maryland has a 9% tax on recreational marijuana sales. Thirty-five percent of that is set aside for the state's community repair and reinvestment fund, and Baltimore will be getting a large, as-of-yet unknown chunk of that money. This question, championed by Council President Nick Mosby, keeps that money essentially in a ‘lockbox’, to use his words, to be used for those very specific reinvestment purposes and not get put into the general fund somehow. So that will be overseen by a council-appointed commission.
MB: Then there's Question E and it's a very, very technical one. And it's also one that has been a long time coming for the city of Baltimore. It's about the police department. What does it do?
EH: So you might remember, [city voters] voted for local control of [the] police department in the last election, 2022. We're inching our way closer to fully having that, which we haven't had since the Civil War. That question asks voters if they think the mayor and City Council should have full responsibility over the police commissioner. This is part of the process of establishing that full control. Previously, the commissioner was exempt from that oversight. It became a back and forth between the state assembly and Baltimore city. The General Assembly altered state law in this last session to make sure there's no prohibitive language that would keep Baltimore from having full control over the commissioner. So in that charter amendment, it also sets out the very basic structure of the department, such as the very basic main duties of officers and procedures for creating certain districts — police districts.
MB: And again, for voters, when they go in to see this, they'll be voting for the amendment or against the amendment in all these cases and all these ballot questions that the city is facing. It's either for or against.
Now we go to questions A through D. They're all bond issues. So can you briefly summarize each of those for us?
EH: Each of these would allow the city to borrow money for various capital projects from the affordable housing loan. There's one for schools, for instance, that allows the city to take out money for buildings and athletic facilities. Another for more general public infrastructure. One of the main things that could be funded by that is the new library in Park Heights. These are on the ballot every year, more or less, but of note, [the city is] asking to borrow quite a bit more this year than in years past, $90 million more this year across the board for all four questions total than back in 2022.
MB: Any reason for the increase in borrowing this year?
EH: Yeah, the city likes where their credit is right now, and they think they can be proactive.