While the Council claims the motivation is safety, their own internal numbers show that during the period studied from 2021 to 2022, the total number of injurious and fatal crashes increased despite the mass deployment of such ticketing cameras countywide up to that point. The County's economy has been moribund for most of this century, and the flight of the rich to lower tax jurisdictions in the area has robbed the County's coffers of huge chunks of revenue that it previously enjoyed.
At the same time, the Council has passed numerous tax cuts for the developer sugar daddies who fund their campaigns. This has further reduced County revenues, even as the Council has increased spending each year. The Council has found that, so far, County residents have not rebelled at the ballot box regardless of the number or size of the tax increases passed, or additional taxes levied.
As a result, since the last decade, the Council has aggressively begun to shift the tax burden from developers onto the shoulders of residents. They have raised property taxes each year with the exception of FY-2015, in which they allowed a "tax cut" of approximately $12 for the average homeowner. A new energy tax, a massive new "recordation tax" on home sellers, and a new "rain tax" were among the new levies added to what was already the highest tax and fee burden in the Washington, D.C. Metro area.
Speed cameras and red light cameras were also deployed in a concerted effort to raise revenues. Having just passed a new tax cut for developers earlier this year that will cost the County's coffers billions of dollars over the next 20 years, it's no surprise that the Council is desperate to shake their constituents upside down even harder with this massive expansion of the camera program.
Using traffic enforcement ticketing as a revenue source has been shown to be one of the most-regressive taxation methods. Such tickets - with ever-increasing fine amounts up to $425 per ticket as of October 1 - can be devastating to those on the lower income end of the scale. That fits in line with the energy, rain, cell phone, and recordation taxes, all of which are also extremely regressive.
This trend will unsurprisingly continue in Montgomery County, as the Council has grown increasingly confident that there are no political consequences to raising taxes on residents by any amount tried so far. Insiders have reported that Council members have privately referred to residents as "losers" and "suckers" whom they can hit up for almost any new tax or tax hike they can imagine. The Council has dropped more and more taxation anvils onto residents in recent years, and no storied "tax revolt" has materialized.
Instead, the Council has found it has a "green light" to use the same sort of tactics that landed elected officials in Bell, California in prison a little over a decade ago. Like Montgomery officials, the Bell officials passed massive property tax hikes on residents (check), engaged in questionable land deals that were money winners for developers but money losers for taxpayers (check), added new levies such as a "sewer tax" (check), and ordered aggressive traffic ticketing (check), while raising their own salaries to outlandish new heights. Four Bell City Councilmembers and one Bell Mayor were sentenced to prison terms, as were the City Manager and Assistant City Manager.
Photo courtesy Capital Online Auctions
Kimmel has long been a pugnacious and vitriolic critic of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, devoting many minutes of his program to attacks on both nightly. But he has never faced any serious consequences until now, and parent company Disney seemed quite content with Kimmel's shift from a late night comedy show to a hardcore political broadcast that trashed half of his potential viewing audience. What changed?
Nexstar hopes to successfully pull off a merger with Tysons-based Tegna, which would bring more local TV stations into its nationwide portfolio, including local CBS affiliate WUSA 9. Disney and Sinclair may also have potential tie-ups down the road, which would similarly need the approval of a Trump or future GOP administration. As a result, this time they had to show some action on Kimmel's controversial remarks.
Whether Kimmel will actually be canceled by ABC remains to be seen, but his return would certainly risk the ire of Trump. Disney will have to decide if defending the declining career of Kimmel would be worth potentially-major financial consequences for the entertainment giant in the future. Kimmel's ratings have plunged 11% as of the last reporting period, dropping him to third place in his time slot.
The ABC 7 Kirk tribute will be only one of the local events remembering the slain TPUSA founder this weekend. A candlelight prayer vigil for Kirk in Montgomery County is set for this Saturday night in Rockville.
Photo courtesy Salem Media Group
Police describe the suspect only as a Black male of unknown age. No surveillance camera footage has been made available as of this writing. If you can identify the suspect, or have any other information about this incident, call police at (301) 279-8000.
Silver Spring already sustained one of the biggest body blows to the Montgomery County economy in history, when one of the County's few remaining Fortune 500 companies, Discovery Communications, moved its headquarters to dual facilities in New York City and Tennessee. Infamously, Discovery's suitors quietly closed the deal while the Montgomery County Council was debating a ban on circus animals. The ban passed, but so did the opportunity to retain Discovery.
Once again, Montgomery County's highest-in-the-region tax and fee burden has bitten the County in the [pocketbook]. Another recent and devastating blow is the new Maryland "tech tax," a 3% levy on all IT services in the state that was championed to passage by Governor Wes Moore, before he left for an Italian vacation at the lake villa of George Clooney. Imagine what that tax would add up to annually for a tech firm like Rocket Money! And that's on top of that already biggest tax burden, courtesy of the County Council and Maryland General Assembly. What company in their right mind would not move if they could? Heckuva job, Brownie!
