The Hits Keep Coming

At least Anne Arundel taxpayers keep feeling the burn. Now, John Leopold is proposing a tax increase :

The Anne Arundel County executive is proposing a new tax on cars rented in the county - including at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport - that would raise "several million dollars" a year to counterbalance the county's gloomy budget outlook.

County Executive John R. Leopold, who offered the estimate of potential revenue, said he plans to present a letter this morning to the leaders of Anne Arundel's legislative delegation seeking permission from the General Assembly to impose the tax. The letter also is signed by the four Republicans and three Democrats on the County Council.

"It is an option I need to have," said Leopold, a Republican, who ran on a no-new-taxes plank in the fall elections. He said that such a tax would be directed toward tourists and have a "very minor peripheral impact" on county residents.

Leopold and others stressed that he would consider imposing such a tax if all efforts to find efficiencies were exhausted and necessary services could not be maintained without additional revenue.

And Democratic state officials are not happy about this:

The proposal drew harsh criticism from state and airport officials who said they think the county has overstepped its bounds.

"Anne Arundel County needs to be very careful not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg," Maryland Transportation Secretary John Porcari said. "Other counties would give an eye and the tooth to have the airport."

Tim Campbell, executive director of the Maryland Aviation Administration, which oversees BWI, viewed the idea as another way to tax the airport.

"It's something we would not favor, frankly," he said. "The rental car facilities provide a great financial support of airport operations. We just don't think it's appropriate for the county to tax the airport."

On top of it, it is not necessarily going to impact only tourists. It is also going to impact regular county taxpayers who need to rent vehicles for whatever reason As the Capital notes:

Phil Hall, manager of an Enterprise Rental Car branch in Annapolis, said 70 percent of his business comes from insurance rentals after car accidents, so a tax aimed at tourists wouldn't affect his customers dramatically.

"The taxes on rental cars are already high in the state of Maryland," Mr. Hall said. "That alone just takes customers by surprise."

Maybe they need a truck to move furniture. Maybe they want to rent an SUV for a weekend drive to Ocean City. Maybe they're like me and have had to rent a car because their regular vehicle is undergoing repairs. There are a multitude of reasons why people rent cars. It sure is easy to point at the airport and use that as an excuse to pass some sort of tax and claim that it won't impact county residents. But such an argument is highly disingenuous. Sure, the proposed legislation exempts insurance rentals for now, but does anybody really believe that it's going to stay that way forever?

Yes, the same anti-tax John Leopold from the 2006 campaign is now proposing a tax increase of considerable magnitude.

When is this going to end?