As lawmakers consider Gov. Moore’s Fair Wage Act, inflation indexing has emerged as the central point of contention. Indexing would mean that the minimum wage automatically adjusts once a year to maintain its true purchasing power. While powerful interests have lined up against indexing, the right path remains clear: Inflation indexing is critical to avoid leaving workers behind. Inflation indexing is a tool to maintain the status quo after the full $15 minimum wage phases in. Without indexing, while the dollar value of the minimum wage stays constant over time, its purchasing power continuously declines due to inflation. In other words, without indexing, workers must constantly watch their standard of living erode, day by day. Failing to index also further tilts an already lopsided balance of power. Without indexing, low-road employers that seek to maximize profits through low wages get an automatic, continuous reduction to their responsibilities in real terms.…

State budget documents revealed a sharp increase in the number of public school students qualifying for free and reduced-price school meals after the state changed the method it uses to determine eligibility. More than 110,000 students in Maryland’s public schools qualified for free and reduced-price meals when the school year began last fall. – a 34% increase from the previous year. This measure is important not only for ensuring students from low-income families are able to get food at school so they are well prepared to learn, but also because this figure is used as a measurement of poverty in a given school in the school funding formula. Source: Department of Legislative Services, Office of Policy Analysis. Fiscal Briefing. January 25, 2023 Every jurisdiction, except Baltimore City (-1.2%), Wicomico County (1.5%) and Somerset County (5.5%), saw a significant percent increase in the number students enrolled for free and reduced-price meals.…

As the first standardized test scores reported since the start of the COVID pandemic show more Maryland students struggling with math and reading, it is more important than ever that the state maintain the commitments it made to students through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation, which gained final passage in 2021. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” showed a decline in fourth and eighth grade reading and mathematics scores for most states compared to 2019 with the dip in mathematics scores being the largest ever recorded. Maryland was among the majority of states that saw a decline in scores, which confirmed the toll the pandemic has taken on student learning.  However, while the decline in scores for 2022 can be in part attributed to the pandemic, it is important to note that there has been a national downward trend since…

In order to provide greater opportunity for all city residents and address the lack of affordable housing, Baltimore City needs an effective policy requiring developers to include a certain number of affordable apartments or houses in new development projects. This week, the City Council is considering a new “inclusionary housing” policy to replace a law that expired in June and had largely been ineffective at generating new affordable units. Inclusionary housing laws generally require developers of certain projects to set aside a percentage of new units to be more affordable and help create more socioeconomically integrated communities. The old law was enacted in 2007 and only generated 37 housing units in the 14 years it was in place. Loopholes and waivers city officials granted to developers rendered the law to be largely ineffective, so the majority of new housing projects did not provide affordable units and were built in communities…

When children are facing a crisis, it is critical that Maryland’s foster care programs provide them with stable, safe and supervised care. Recent media reports of foster youth being housed in unlicensed facilities suggest that the state is not living up to this basic standard. The report indicates that foster children were placed in hotels, a commercial office building in downtown Baltimore and in some cases were left in emergency departments and other sections of hospitals even though they had no medical reason for being there. So far, we know that in the first six months of this year, 11 children have spent at least one night at the Baltimore City Department of Social Services office building while 56 have been placed there for a total of 200 hours. According to the Baltimore Banner analysis, each year 80-100 children in state custody stay in hospitals longer than medically needed, mainly…

Recent Census Bureau data demonstrate that it is possible to reduce poverty and prevent hardship through government action—support that is especially needed in Maryland as the poverty rate in the state increased significantly between 2019 and 2021. While relief measures such as the federal and state Child Tax Credits and the eligibility expansion of the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) helped mitigate hardship associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers must extend and restore such measures to reduce the economic burden that continues to harm Maryland families and children. Percentage of Marylanders living in poverty increased compare to pre-pandemic levels Alarmingly, the percentage of people living in poverty in Maryland increased from 9.0% in 2019 to 10.3% in 2021. Specifically, poverty rates for children under 5 years old saw the greatest change from 11.7% in 2019 to 15.2% in 2021, with children living in single female-headed households seeing the largest…

Last month, a Baltimore City Council committee voted down a bill to study and create a report on the impact of tax increment financing (TIF) to the City’s overall economic development and if such financial tools can be used equitably in underserved communities. The bill would have required several city agencies, including the Finance Department and Department of Housing and Community Development, to collaborate and conduct the study. Despite there being no opposition from the agencies, the bill failed. Its defeat comes as groups such as the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore continue to propose new TIF districts. Additional tax breaks for developers and big businesses would be a bad deal for city residents and could reinforce the city’s longstanding patterns of racial segregation and under-investment in predominately Black and Brown communities. Earlier this year the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore’s proposed an area-wide TIF district that would cover the central business…

The Board of Revenue Estimates’ September update showed continuing fiscal strength alongside economic uncertainty. Our healthy revenue outlook and substantial stockpile of cash offer an opportunity to strengthen support for the things Maryland communities need to thrive. At the same time, policymakers should ensure we are able to make a long-term commitment to Maryland families by cleaning up our tax code and asking more of the wealthy few. The Board of Revenue Estimates revised expected general fund revenues for the state’s current budget year (July 2022 to June 2023) upward by $1.2 billion, a more than 5% increase above the previous estimate. This comes on the heels of final data on last year’s budget showing general fund revenues $1.6 billion above expectations, with a $1.1 billion unassigned surplus (cash not set aside for continuing spending or put toward savings). !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r…

The federal child tax credit (CTC) improves quality of life for millions of children across the United States, and expansions under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) demonstrated the power of a more robust CTC to protect kids from hardship. A proposal from Utah Sen. Mitt Romney would redesign the CTC and reinstate certain lapsed benefits of the ARPA expansion. However, the plan has serious shortcomings that would hit children in Maryland harder than those in many other states: The Romney plan would benefit only about half as many Maryland children in low- and middle-income families as the ARPA expansion. The Romney plan would actually increase total tax responsibilities for low- and middle-income families in Maryland. Nationwide, Black families would see their average taxes slightly increase under the Romney plan, compared to a sizable reduction under the ARPA expansion. While the Romney plan is not entirely without merit, lawmakers should…

Content note: This post references data points related to suicide. Maryland ranks 19th in child well-being according to the 2022 KIDS COUNT® Data Book, just released by The Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Kids Count data book, released annually (this is the 33rd edition), is a 50-state report of recent household data developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that analyzes how children and families are faring. Each year, the Data Book presents national and state data from 16 indicators in four domains —economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors — and ranks the states according to how children are faring overall. The data in this year’s report are a mix of pre-pandemic and more recent figures. Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Minnesota rank first, second and third in overall well-being in the 2022 Data Book; Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico ranked 48th, 49th and 50th. The report this…