Rising property values don't necessarily mean higher tax bills if the property tax rate falls to match. You will see terms like "no new revenue rate" that refle

Rising property values don't necessarily mean higher tax bills if the property tax rate falls to match. You will see terms like "no new revenue rate" that reflect this. The point of the article is not "Baltimore should raise more taxes" -- raising more revenue is a political decision, and that is not actually under SDAT's purview. SDAT's job is simply to assess property at market value. What to do with that value is for the elected officials (and the voters who elect them) to decide. If property A is undervalued relative to property B, property B faces an unfair burden of taxes, and property A receives an unfair tax break. That's all this report is trying to say -- all property should be assessed at its market value, as the law requires. Any exemptions, discounts, write-offs, and the tax rate itself, are political decisions. Those should be made explicitly by elected officials, not implicitly by unequal valuations.