![\"hogan-raintaxrepeal\"](\"http:\/\/www.yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/hogan-raintaxrepeal.jpg\")
<\/a>But I’ve got a major beef with his current push to take credit for repealing the “rain tax.” \u00a0He did not repeal the tax. He repealed the state mandate<\/a> that the affected counties had to charge a fee. \u00a0The federal mandate<\/a> that those specific counties continue to come up with money to fund the storm water clean up still continues. Three counties have either never enacted the fee in the first place, or repealed their “rain tax” fee. \u00a0Baltimore County reduced its fee by a third<\/a>. \u00a0But so far, none of the other counties have tried to repeal their fees. In my home county of Prince George’s, the County Executive Rushern Baker has already said that he will not attempt to reduce or repeal the fee in PG County. \u00a0He told the Baltimore Sun<\/a> that he’d have to slash things like education to come up with the federally mandated funds. So it is disingenuous for Governor Hogan and his team to sit in Annapolis and brag about “repealing the rain tax.”<\/p>\nThen there’s the purple line fiasco. The Governor rightly rejected the Red line in Baltimore as the money-pit that it is, but he said the Purple line would go forward, provided Montgomery and PG County pony up more cash. \u00a0Really, he should have just vetoed it outright. \u00a0The counties now have to decide if they think it’s worth it to raise taxes in order to pay for it, because neither county has any extra cash to throw at this project<\/a>. \u00a0Montgomery County is dealing with the fall out from a double-taxation lawsuit they lost. PG County barely got a budget passed after they raised property taxes for the first time since 1979, possibly in violation of TRIM. It’s once again disingenuous for Governor Hogan and his team to say they approved the Purple Line. \u00a0In reality, it’s been approved conditionally, and those conditions are very unlikely to be met without counties raising taxes on their citizens. \u00a0\u00a0I’m hoping this is just some sort of strategic move on his part to try to save the state some money and appease some voters while turning public sentiment against the idea.<\/p>\n All in all, I like Governor Hogan, and I think he’s doing the best job he can. \u00a0His handling of the Baltimore Riots was spot on, despite all the shade Mayor Rawlings-Blake tries to throw at him for it. \u00a0I wish him nothing but the best of luck in getting cooperation out of the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. \u00a0He tried to get the automatic increase in the gas tax<\/a> stopped, but couldn’t get it through the General Assembly. I just wish that he would take this opportunity to educate the people about the federal mandates that kill the state and local budgets. \u00a0I also hope that his wording of the “rain tax repeal” doesn’t come back to bite him in the rear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love Governor Hogan, and I think he’s doing a great job in Maryland. \u00a0I love that he’s been able to balance the budget without raising our taxes again. Reducing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,23,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maryland-politics","category-taxes-2","category-broke"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/hogan-raintaxrepeal.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuriar.com\/conservakat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}