WSJ: The Democrats Who Ruined Baltimore

Returning from a vacation in the Baltimore suburbs and seeing this article was rather timely

The WSJ article HERE describes in very good detail how Baltimore got in the “city wide ghetto” shape its in now. Cities like Indianapolis could have gone down this road easily if Bart Peterson were allowed continued rule unchecked by an unruly City-County Council led by Monroe “Sweet Pea” Gray.

[More After The Fold]Under Democrat rule, Baltimore has turned into one large decaying pile of rubbish. Like Indianapolis, Baltimore put a ton of money into public projects like Camden Yards, M&T Bank Stadium, and some high dollar condos along the Inner Harbor while soaking taxpayers to the point where surrounding counties such as Baltimore (Baltimore County and Baltimore City are separate political entities - one is not within the other), Anne Arundel, Harford, and Carroll are growing faster than the infrastructure can support. If you substitute Lucas Oil Stadium and the failed Market Square Towers project you catch what I mean by “like Indianapolis”.

Unlike Baltimore, whose mayor is now in such deep doo-doo with the Feds that she might find herself a cellmate of Tony Rezko, Indianapolis voters fixed one problem by voting out the failed administration of Bart Peterson and replacing with strong leadership of Mayor Greg Ballard.

Another bit in the WSJ article caught my attention - “To the extent that [DEMOCRAT] city officials recognize the problem, they seem to confuse symptoms with the root cause of the economy’s disease. For them, poverty, street crime or bad schools are the problem. Their solution is always more social spending and still-higher taxes, together with targeted tax breaks and subsidies aimed at bringing “big footprint” development projects downtown.” Now does this sound familiar?

Also this piece - “The evergreen rationale for high property-tax rates is that a city can’t afford low ones. When she announced her spending plan for the year, [Baltimore Mayor Sheila] Dixon insisted that “people think there’s fat within the budget, [but] it’s very lean.” Left unsaid: The city spends 61% more per person than the surrounding county. And in reality, cutting property taxes would only temporarily cut property tax receipts. Making Baltimore friendly to capital investment would unlock a flood of new (unsubsidized) investment that would restore revenues and facilitate an organic, widespread renewal of the city.” Does anyone remember former City-County Councilman Ron “The Cop Slapper” Gibson making his statement that “We did the best we could” with respect to the 2007 City-County Budget. Also Peterson’s statements backed by Gibson that if the budget was not passed as written, garbage wouldn’t get picked up because the budget was as lean as possible.

Fast forward to the present and my GOP Council sources are informing me there’s a lot of surprises leftover from the Peterson administration and this year’s budget process could get messy.

Though Baltimore City politics isn’t ALL bad. If it weren’t for their arrogance the Colts would never have left Baltimore and made the trip west on I-70 moving here to Indianapolis.