Frederick County Council To Hold Hearing On Possible Legislation For 2026 General Assembly

One bill would cover data centers.Frederick, Md (KM) Three initiatives that could come before the 2026 Maryland General Assembly will undergo a public hearing next week before the Frederick County Council. Board President Brad Young says one would change state law, and allow the county to impost a personal  property tax on data centers.”Data centers are a hot topic right now,” says Young. “Obviously, these are large buildings with millions of dollars of computers and other items that are inside. In other counties, tax on those is a personal property tax. That is something Councilmember {Steve} McKay has requested that the Legislature address.”Another bill would make changes to the Disabled Veterans Property Tax Credit. “This one will ask the Legislature to allow us to set the income limit at which the person would quality for it,” says Young. “Because property prices in Frederick County have gone up so much, we want to make sure that we’re not missing out on veterans–disabled veterans–that could qualify for the credit, and we want the ability to set that locally.”And a third piece of legislation would allow fire companies which hold gambling activities, such as bingo, to help raise money,  to accept credit cards. “This is something that came about during the pandemic when much of the fund raising went on line, and they found it very problematic that folks could not use credit cards for that,” Young says.That bill was proposed by Councilman Mason Carter.A hearing on these three proposed bills is scheduled for Tuesday, September 2nd at Winchester Hall in Frederick beginning at 7:00 PM.Citizens who can’t be there in person, but want to offer their input can call 1-855-925-2801, and type in meeting code 8365. Callers can press the number “2” on their phone to leave a voice mail message, or number “3” on their phone and be put in a queue to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting.Residents can also send written comments to councilmembers@frederickcountymd.gov.At this point, Young says there’s no date scheduled for the Council to vote on whether to move forward with these bills. “The Legislature doesn’t meet until January. And we are still at this point could have additional ones {bills} that come forth. But right now these are the only three that have been presented.  So I would suspect that we will act on them in the next couple of weeks after the public hearing,” he says.By Kevin McManus