A just-passed Baltimore County Council resolution demonstrates how deference to the wishes of a single lawmaker in whose district a land-use matter is located – known as “councilmanic courtesy” – is used to serve interests other than those of the general public.

It’s also an example of how members of the council make up the rules as they go along for the sake of political expediency.

Those two phenomena, working in combination, produce some very poor decisions. Like Resolution 39-26.

The resolution was introduced by Councilman Pat Young on October 5 and was passed by the council two weeks later on a 6-0 vote with almost no discussion.

Young will be leaving the council in December after one term in office and two previous terms as a member of the House of Delegates.

The resolution created the Wilkens Avenue Commercial Revitalization District (CRD) in Young’s district, which includes Catonsville. In my opinion, the resolution clearly violated the law governing CRDs.

The end result of that violation is a very large potential tax break for Catonsville developer Stephen Whalen, a major backer of Young’s political campaigns.

A month before the unanimous passage of the resolution, Whalen gave three councilmen $6,500 in donations – $2,500 to Mike Ertel, $3,000 to Julian E. Jones Jr., and $1,000 to David Marks.

Over the previous year, the developer gave an additional $1,500 to Ertel, $563 to Jones, and $2,500 to Marks.

Councilman Izzy Patoka was another benefactor of Whalen’s generosity – he picked up $3,000 from Whalen since 2025, according to State Elections Board records.

Introducing a Decoy

The purpose of a CRD under county law is to designate existing commercial areas “in need of redevelopment, rehabilitation, or revitalization” for a variety of reasons.

Owners of property within a CRD are eligible to receive benefits under the county’s commercial revitalization program. Those benefits include grants, no-interest loans and a revitalization property tax credit for certain improvements. Properties lying in whole or in part within a CRD are exempt from both the development impact fee for residential construction and the development impact surcharge for nonresidential construction.

Resolution 39-26 caught my attention because the district includes the Wilkens Beltway Plaza shopping center, and there is nothing about the Wilkens Beltway Plaza that needs “redevelopment, rehabilitation, or revitalization.”

The plaza is a thriving and well-maintained shopping center, located within a stable residential neighborhood. It is fully leased with a wait list, and the anchor store, a Giant supermarket, recently completed a multi-million dollar renovation and expansion.

I believe that inclusion of the shopping center in the CRD was a decoy, an attempt to draw attention away from the real reason Young introduced the resolution.

The real reason would become clear after the resolution was amended – and it had nothing to do with revitalizing the Wilkens Avenue commercial corridor.

A Last-Minute Amendment

I submitted written testimony in opposition to the resolution, as did Paul Dongarra, the Democratic candidate for the council from District 1.

I pointed out the legal problems with the resolution, including placing Wilkens Beltway Plaza in the CRD. Dongarra emphasized that there are commercial corridors in District 1 that actually need revitalization.

The council passed the resolution on October 19 after amending the resolution to rename the district the “Institute Node Commercial Revitalization District.”

The amendment did something else. It added two new areas to the district, both of which are sites of Whalen projects.

Benefiting Three Whalen Projects

Before the resolution was amended, the proposed district consisted of three non-contiguous areas. The first area includes the Wilkens Beltway Plaza, a CVS across the street, and the property behind the CVS on Maiden Choice Lane.

The second area is the proposed site of The Promenade at Catonsville, a Whalen project. The 1.2 million-square-foot, mixed-use development, with up to 100 luxury condominiums, would be located on what is now 18 acres of woodland owned by Whalen Properties just outside the Baltimore Beltway.

The third area is property in the vicinity of Wilkens and Walker Avenues, most of which is tax-exempt property owned by the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).

The amendment added two more areas to the district.

The first is on the other side of the Beltway from the Promenade in a residential neighborhood along West Kenwood Avenue. It is the site of a project by Whalen to construct a medical office building, sometimes referred to as Phase 1 of the Promenade.

The second area added by the amendment is a predominantly wooded tract along Rolling Road. just south of the Southwest Park and Ride. Whalen initially planned to build 164 luxury apartments on the site, which is close to the trailhead of the popular Soapstone Trail in Patuxent State Park.

Last year, the West Kenwood Avenue property was the subject of another controversial exercise of councilmanic courtesy by Young. The Banner reported how Whalen “got a pass” on zoning code violations because of a change to county zoning law made in a bill introduced by Young. The story also detailed the contributions made by Whalen and his family to Young’s campaign account.

The 2025 controversy was not the first involving Whalen and a council member from District 1.

In 2013, Whalen pleaded guilty to illegally funneling money to former councilman Tom Quirk’s campaign and exceeding political contribution limits. He was fined $53,000. There was no evidence that Quirk was aware of the violations.

The three Whalen development projects in the CRD have been in the talking and planning stages for years. None are in existing commercial areas.

As far as I can tell, the goal of the CRD is to jumpstart those specific projects – not to “redevelop, rehabilitate or revitalize” a commercial area or anything else.

The Institution Node CRD

The creation of “Institution Nodes” was another half-baked measure sponsored by Young that sailed through the council via councilmanic courtesy.

The 2030 Master Plan approved by the council in 2024 identifies a number of different “Place Types,” including “Nodes.” They are described in the master plan as “core retrofit areas,” which means areas of the county that should be “the primary focus for redevelopment and investment over the next decade.”

The plan as prepared by the county’s Department of Planning and approved by the Planning Board contained four types of nodes, Urban Node, Regional Commercial Node, Neighborhood Node and Mobility Node.

Young sponsored an amendment to the plan, adopted by the council, that added a fifth node called the Institution (variously spelled Institutional) Node.

Although Young seemed to indicate at the October 19 hearing that only one node was created, there are two and both are in District 1. That confusion is reflected in the plan itself, a product of hasty draftsmanship like the alternative spellings of the node name.

The first node includes the UMBC campus and the Spring Grove property owned by UMBC. The second includes the Catonsville campus of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) about a mile away.

Only the UMBC node is in the CRD. All three Whalen properties are in the UMBC node.

No Broader Vision

If Young contends that the location of properties inside an Institution Node alone justifies misuse of a CRD, he has two problems, beginning with disregarding a provision in his amendment to the master plan.

The purpose of an Institution Node is not made clear in the master plan. The “detail sheets” in the plan for the other four types of nodes provide detailed goals and objectives and strategies on how to achieve them.

Unsurprisingly, the detail sheet for the Institution Node tacked on to the plan by Young’s amendment does not.

Instead, the plan states that the Institution Node represents a “significant potential for development retrofitting of areas between and surrounding UMBC and the Spring Grove property” and that the “County and UMBC should partner to develop a lasting vision that recognizes the area’s significant economic potential.”

In other words, the master plan contemplates a process and an outcome: A collaborative effort between the County and UMBC that results in a shared vision that is reduced to writing so that development within the node can be guided by it. (Hopefully, the vision calls for some non-luxury housing.)

County Director of Planning Steve Lafferty confirmed that the contemplated process has not even been initiated. No vision or any type of plan has been developed.

Deciding which development projects in the node to give tax breaks in the absence of a plan gave Young and the council no more pause than did the requirements of county law governing a CRD.

Speaking to the Developer

Resolution 39-26 was passed in a heated rush with no questions and no testimony other than by the sponsor – not even by representatives from the Department of Planning and the Department of Economic and Workforce Development, who could have shed some light on the appropriate use of a CRD.

The council blew past legal requirements for establishing CRDs and past language in the 2030 Baltimore County Master Plan calling for a “lasting vision” for development within the UMBC Institution Node to be crafted in partnership with the university.

In retrospect, I believe that the reason for establishing the Institution Node was the same as the reason for establishing the CRD – to find a way to target favored development projects for tax breaks.

The council made no attempt to ascertain the cost to the county of subsidizing Whalen’s development projects, including the Promenade. How can the council possibly believe that granting a revitalization property tax and waiving development impact fees and surcharges for a 1.2 million square foot mixed use development without trying to determine the cost of doing so was the proper course of action?

Before the October 19 vote approving Resolution 39-26, one of the recipients of Whalen’s campaign largess, Councilman Izzy Patoka said he had read Dongarra’s testimony.

But he decided to vote in favor of the resolution, Izzy Patoka said, after speaking with unnamed stakeholders and with “the developer that’s involved with this.”

While developers get special attention, the Baltimore County Council tends to make up its own rules as it goes along and pays little attention to legal standards and processes and lawfully adopted land-use plans.

Resolution 39-26 is a perfect example.

• David A. Plymyer retired as Anne Arundel County Attorney after 31 years in the county law office. He can be reached at dplymyer@comcast.net and Twitter @dplymyer.