Since 2016, Baltimore’s major nonprofit institutions have been contributing money to city government coffers to make up for an awkward fact – they don’t pay any property taxes.

To a coalition of community advocates, neighborhood groups and union leaders, the amount these entities kick in doesn’t come close to representing their fair share.

The designated group of 14  “anchor institutions” – including Johns Hopkins University, Mercy Medical Center, Loyola University and the University of Maryland Medical System – use more than $47 million every year for fire and police protection, street and road maintenance and the like, according to a study by the Baltimore Department of Finance.

But these same institutions contribute only $6 million annually to the city under the current agreement, coalition leaders noted at a rally early this week in Wyman Park.

If they paid out more, the coalition argues, municipal revenues would grow and help fund the essential services and cultural amenities that residents across the city depend on.

“These property taxes [would] pay for the Enoch Pratt Free Library, for after-school programs for our youth, for DPW, for our roads, for our public safety and for all of the important services that keep Baltimore city strong,” said Cristina Duncan Evans, teacher chair of the Baltimore Teachers Union, addressing a small crowd gathered at Tubman Grove.

Owning collectively more than $5 billion worth of property in the city, the institutions would – if taxed – contribute about $120 million a year in revenues,  Evans said.

Her group, With Us For Us, is promoting a first legislative step – passage of a City Council bill that would create a task force to renegotiate that 2016 PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) agreement with anchor institutions, which is up for renewal in 2026.

Duncan said the inequity is illustrated vividly by Baltimore’s haves vs. have-nots landscape.

“We can see this in places across our city where the upgrades are happening, where the new buildings are popping up, where our anchor institutions are creating beautiful and increasingly exclusive enclaves – instead of investing in [the rest of] Baltimore City,” she said.

Hopkins Responds

With Us For Us is targeting a wider group of nonprofits, not just Johns Hopkins, Duncan said. But it was hard not to see a message in the choice of the rally site – a stone’s throw from the Homewood campus of the city’s preeminent academic institution.

Asked to respond to the WUFU campaign, a Hopkins representative pointed to payments that extend beyond the $3.2 million it makes in annual PILOT contributions.

“Johns Hopkins pays approximately $8 million in water and sewer charges, almost $19.7 million in other annual taxes and fees and $26 million in income taxes for nearly 17,000 employees who are city residents,” the statement said.

With more than 41,000 employees, Johns Hopkins University and Hospital and Health System is the city’s largest private employer.

The university also pointed to the more than $83 million in financial assistance that its hospitals provide each year to uninsured and underinsured patients.

Overall, Hopkins estimates it brings billions of dollars to the city, including “$1.05 billion paid to Baltimore suppliers and contractors since fiscal year 2016.”

“Growing Baltimore’s tax base and driving economic activity in our city are the most important roles we can continue to serve for our hometown,” the statement concluded, making no specific mention of Bill 25-0036 introduced by Councilwoman Phylicia Porter last month.

Co-sponsored by President Zeke Cohen and a majority of the Council, the bill calls for a 17-member task force that would draft a standard payment formula for each institution, depending on use of services and other factors.

Signs at the rally called on Mayor Brandon Scott to “Stand With Us and For Us.” The mayor’s press office has not returned a request for comment on the bill.

“They have the money”

Speakers at the rally pressed hospitals and universities to do more.

“We know that they have money – that their CEOs make millions and they pay expensive lobbyists,” said Antonia Brooks, a technician at one of the hospitals in the PILOT agreement.

Meanwhile, the people who keep hospitals running are overworked, underpaid and experience burnout as the cost of living rises, said Brooks, who said she is a lifetime East Baltimore resident whose job is to support patients on ventilators and aid them with their mobility.

Hopkins graduate student Melissa Kissling, pointing to the university’s endowment and budget surplus, echoed Brooks’ point.

“They work with an amount of money that guarantees security and power and in any fair system that comes with the responsibility to make positive impacts,” Kissling said.

In the Time of Trump

Meanwhile, colleges and universities are suffering financial pressures of their own, with the Trump administration ordering drastic reductions in federal research and other funding.

Hopkins is facing hundreds of millions in direct and indirect funding cuts that have already killed off international aid programs, triggered layoffs and thrown research projects into limbo.

So is WUFU’s timing off?

The university’s statement on the PILOT bill didn’t raise this issue, but the coalition speakers did, arguing that average citizens are more vulnerable than big institutions to harsh mandates from Washington.

“We all know somebody who’s been impacted by the cuts to federal funding, and it’s a life or death choice where people don’t always have an endowment to fall back on,” Duncan said.

She asked coalition members and people in the crowd if they or anyone they knew in their family had been hurt by federal funding cuts or other Trump actions.

More than half of those present raised their hands.