Municipality brought action seeking declaratory judgment that tax setoff laws were unconstitutional because they treated different municipalities differently.
The Circuit Court dismissed the action. Municipality appealed. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed. Municipality’s petition for writ of certiorari was granted.
The Court of Appeals held that statutes providing for mandatory real property tax setoffs did not violate uniformity requirement in Constitution.
Statutes providing for mandatory real property tax setoffs did not regulate matters of purely local concern, and therefore they did not violate Constitutional provision requiring General Assembly to act in relation to government or affairs of any municipal corporation only by general laws that in their terms and in their effect applied uniformly, since tax setoff statutes strongly affected county residents who resided outside of municipality.
The requirement of the Constitutional provision requiring General Assembly to act in relation to government or affairs of any municipal corporation only by general laws that in their terms and in their effect apply uniformly does not apply to statutes providing for mandatory real property tax setoffs because those statutes do not relate to purely local affairs.