[khm]

Baltimore has a police force out of their control (it's in state hands) but they still have to pay for it. This has resulted in massive retention and recruitment issues, and some of the cops who did stick around were on the take -- specifically the Gun Trace Task Force, home of the locally-famous Jump Out Boys.

Baltimore is an independent city, so it can't rely on county assistance for anything. Furthermore, state law prevents Baltimore (and only Baltimore) from annexing suburbs to increase the tax base, which is how literally every city in America grows. This results in obvious financial problems, as the city cannot expand its income to keep up with costs of services to the impoverished people who remain after the exit of the steel industry and the tremendously reduced longshoreman cadre.

Into all of this, some asshole carmakers decided to sell machines which are ready theft targets, able to be started by anyone who can get their hands on a USB stick. The spike in thefts of these products has a material effect on police availability. Where is Baltimore supposed to get the funding to meet this increase in demand for city services? They can't annex taxable land. They can't control policing policies.

What would you do?

[dionidium]

> Furthermore, state law prevents Baltimore (and only Baltimore) from annexing suburbs to increase the tax base

St. Louis is the other major independent city. The state doesn't restrict its ability to annex suburbs, but it hardly matters. It doesn't happen, anyway, and it almost certainly wouldn't in Baltimore, either. Who wants either city's problems?

[TuringNYC]

One case where I can see a suburb welcoming an annexation is when pension problems get out of hand. There are hundreds of small municipalities which have promised policemen, firemen, and others huge pensions. Many of these pensions are underfunded and only survive by "borrowing" from the budget and/or "borrowing" from future generations' pension assets.

It is unclear whether the PBGC (https://www.pbgc.gov/) will bail out the small municipalities. But i'd bet that Illinois, California, LA, NYC get bailouts. In such a situation, it would make sense for a municipality to join in with a "too-big-to-fail" entity.

I'm not a local government expert, but i'm seen enough bailouts to think these are decent guesses.

[maeil]

> Where is Baltimore supposed to get the funding to meet this increase in demand for city services?

That is for American politics to figure out. This is an American political issue and blaming Korean car makers is absurd.

[KennyBlanken]

They have to include the anti-theft systems in the vast majority of other countries. They made the conscious choice to save a few dollars per car not including it in US models...with predictable impact on US society...because it wasn't required here. Because car companies have fought legislation to mandate it, via lobbyists.

How would you feel if in the rest of the world kids pajamas were made of fabric that didn't burn easily / melt onto skin, but in the US due to lax regulation, companies were making them out of cheaper fabric that is practically tinder and easily melts to the skin, but slightly cheaper?

Would you still bleat about how it's "American politics" and not reprehensible, immoral cost-cutting?

[pb7]

Interestingly, isn't this exactly what happens when American tech companies get fined and/or are forced to implement certain regulations in Europe?

[matthewdgreen]

Once you’ve had a gun pointed at you from a car, taken down the license plate, then been told there’s nothing they can do because the car was stolen —- you’ll realize that car theft isn’t some individual problem. We’ve had the tech to solve this problem for decades, but car manufacturers decided to save a few bucks.

[IceHegel]

I’m all for making cars harder to steal, but I don’t think constructing the problem as unsolvable and out of the cities hands is all that compelling either.

[SoftTalker]

Just realize that making cars harder to steal means a locksmith can't help you if you lose your key. You'll have to have the car towed to the dealer and pay $500 - $1,500 to get a new key coded to the vehicle.

[scoofy]

>Furthermore, state law prevents Baltimore (and only Baltimore) from annexing suburbs to increase the tax base, which is how literally every city in America grows.

Not doing that is a very good thing in the long run: https://www.strongtowns.org/

[leetcrew]

they could start by shutting down the free car wash at president and fayette...

in all seriousness, this is a problem I've thought about a lot, and I have no idea what the answer is. baltimore has a lot of the building blocks for a wonderful place to live, but it is a deeply sick city.

it has infrastructure built for a million plus, but less than 600k actually living in the city limits and fewer than that paying any meaningful amount of taxes. and like you say, what tax base exists is fleeing across the county line every year.

it's a cool and affordable (for the east coast) city to live in through your mid to late twenties. but between the crime, high taxes that kick in early, and abysmal public school system, there's a very strong incentive to leave once you have kids and can't afford private school. while boring af, the county is simply way more appealing for middle to upper-middle income families, which ought to be the core of the tax base.

with BPD having utterly failed to earn trust with the community and a political class more interested in grandstanding and stuffing their own pockets than doing anything that might be called "governance", I really don't see how the city pulls out of this nosedive anytime soon.

[onos]

High crime, bad public schools, and high taxes… sounds like a common set of problems being faced by many us cities.

[dgfitz]

I’ll cite sources if needed, but googling “Baltimore corruption” will explain the financial issues facing the city.

[nxm]

A Baltimore mom recently learned her high school senior had a 0.13 GPA yet ranked 62/120 in his class. The student had flunked all but three classes during his first three years of high school.

-4th highest per pupil spend in the country. Definition of money not well spent?

[KennyBlanken]

In almost every republican-controlled state legislature they are pushing bills to do the same thing to their major cities, trying to put large metropolitan city police forces under state control.

It's a weird move from a party that claims to be about "small" government and local control.

They're so busy trying to "own" the libs that they have forgotten, or simply don't care, that those cities are usually generating tax revenue that supports the outlying rural areas.

[georgeplusplus]

I wouldn't threaten cops with a choice to get a covid vaccine or keeping their jobs. Which you left out.

But yeah let's blame carmarkers for shitty behavior by one of the worst cities in the country.

[lostlogin]

An underperforming department with huge corruption and brutality problems and you pick this as the issue to focus on?

On the upside, cleaning shop is needed and this helped get that started.