The House Republican Caucus has tallied the total amount of taxes and fees laid upon Marylanders since Governor Moore took office: 338 new or increased taxes and fees. Of those, 38 were the direct product of the 2024 Legislative Session — including a new paint tax, a tax on rideshare trips, increases in the cigarette tax, and substantial increases in vehicle registration fees. I voted against each one of these bills, and I voted against the operating budget that fueled the spending behind them.
Put this in perspective. From 2007 to 2014, the O'Malley Administration raised 84 taxes, tolls, and fees over a full eight years. We were barely halfway through the Moore Administration's second year and the count of new or increased taxes and fees had already climbed to nearly four times that number. This is not belt-tightening. It is a fundamental shift toward asking Maryland families to pay more, year after year, for a government that keeps growing.
“When you wage a war on cars, you wage a war on the middle class — because the middle class is who drives the cars.”
I call this the war on drivers because so much of the burden lands on the cars working people depend on to get to their jobs, drop their kids at school, and run their small businesses. When you wage a war on cars, you are really waging a war on the middle class — because the middle class is who drives those cars. A single mom commuting from Middle River, a contractor in Perry Hall, a senior in Parkville on a fixed income — none of them can simply opt out of registering their vehicle or filling their tank.
What troubles me just as much as the dollar amount is how it's being done. The vast majority of these increases did not come through open votes on the House floor where the public can watch and hold us accountable. They came through regulation — quietly approved through state agencies and the Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review (AELR) process. The Motor Vehicle Administration alone brought forward dozens of increases to driver's license charges and related fees. Under the way that process works, most Marylanders never learn a fee has gone up until they have to pay it.
I want to be straight with my constituents about the debate around the number. Critics have pushed back on the 338 figure, noting that some items are recurring increases counted across multiple years rather than 338 brand-new taxes. That's a fair point worth understanding — but it doesn't change the core truth families feel every month: the cost of living under this government keeps rising, the budget has roughly doubled over the last decade, and the trajectory is unsustainable. Whether you count it one way or another, Marylanders are paying more.
My answer is the conservative one, and it doesn't change with the political winds: curtail the spending, prioritize the budget around core services, and stop reaching into the pockets of working families to paper over Annapolis's appetite for growth. I will keep voting no on tax and fee hikes, keep demanding real spending discipline, and keep shining a light on the increases that the majority would rather slip through in regulation. Marylanders deserve a government that lives within its means — the same way every family in District 7A has to.
