An Anne Arundel County judge on Monday nullified a ballot question asking Baltimore voters to rezone part of the Inner Harbor, effectively killing an ambitious redevelopment proposal along the city’s waterfront in the process.
The initiative, titled “Question F,” will still appear on city ballots this November, but the results for that vote will not be certified, Judge Cathleen Vitale, a former Republican state lawmaker, ruled.
The Attorney General’s Office, which is representing the State Board of Elections, can appeal the decision to the Maryland Supreme Court. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mayor Brandon Scott’s office said through a spokesperson that the administration expects the state to appeal and is confident the Supreme Court will reverse Vitale.
“This legal challenge is a spurious attempt by opponents of the project to derail it by any means necessary,” the spokesperson said.
In March, the City Council passed legislation that would ask voters to determine whether to allow MCB Real Estate, a private company, to raze the existing Harborplace pavilions, reconfigure the nearby intersection and construct five new buildings — a mix of retail, office and residential space — along a completely reimagined waterfront promenade. The tallest would be two towers stretching 25 and 32 stories and containing up to 900 residential units.
P. David Bramble, a Baltimore native, heads MCB Real Estate and had city and state backing for his grand plans. The total cost of Bramble’s proposal is estimated to be around $900 million, with $400 million coming from taxpayers in a hypothetical mix of state and federal funds that have yet to be fully secured. A spokesperson for MCB declined to comment on Monday’s ruling.
A group of Baltimoreans had opposed the ballot initiative and filed a petition on Sep. 5 asking the court to weigh in on whether it could proceed. Thiru Vignarajah, a former deputy attorney general and frequent candidate in Baltimore elections, represented the group.
“It really is remarkable,” Anthony ‘Tony’ Ambridge, a former Baltimore City councilman and the lead petitioner of the opposition group, said afterwards. “Never in my fifty years of experience have I seen the system work.”
Ambridge sat and watched the proceedings from a leather office chair to Vignarajah’s left, away from the attorney’s table but on the other side of the barrier from the gallery.
“This is the king’s chair,” he jokingly said when a colleague asked about the seat. “Don’t tell the guy from the state, but this is the fixer’s chair.”
It seemed apparent from the outset of Monday’s hearing that Vitale would side with the petitioners — a group of older, affluent Baltimoreans who laughed when the judge did and whispered to one another throughout.
Vitale determined the city’s proposed ballot question was improper because it did not go to the “form and structure” of government, and instead dealt with zoning and planning. City and county charters are like the U.S. Constitution in that they enshrine certain rights and set up how government is run.
The original creation of public space around the Inner Harbor was done in 1978, also by charter amendment. The area is known in the city’s charter as “Inner Harbor Park,” which it describes as “from the World Trade Center around the shoreline of the Inner Harbor and including Rash Field.” Because it is protected as public parkland, it would need to be rezoned to allow for residential development and off-street parking.
Vitale questioned whether the original protection enshrined in the charter was the correct legal mechanism — she believes it was not — and, because two wrongs do not make a right, she had no choice but to nullify the redevelopment question.
“This was a specific permitting-slash-zoning decision meant to benefit a particular developer for a particular project on a particular piece of land in a particular neighborhood,” Vignarajah said afterward of the proposed ballot question.
Baltimore City Councilman Eric Costello, who introduced the charter amendment legislation to the council on Bramble’s behalf, called Vitale’s ruling an “outrage and an affront.”
In an afternoon social media post, Costello said the judge “undercut” Baltimore’s authority to legislate. The decision, he added, amounts to “voter suppression at its worst.”
“Either the provision can be on the ballot,” he said, “or it cannot.”
As part of her ruling, Vitale also said the way the question was written was too confusing for voters and that, even if the proposal had been proper charter material, she would have ruled to strike or amend it on those grounds.
As written, the city’s question reads as follows: “Question F is for the purpose of amending the provision dedicating for public park uses the portion of the city that lies along the Northwest and South Shores of the Inner Harbor, south of Pratt Street to the water’s edge, east of Light Street to the water’s edge, and north of the Key Highway to the water’s edge, from the World Trade Center around the shoreline of the Inner Harbor including Rash Field with a maximum of 4.5 acres north of an easterly extension of the south side of Conway Street plus access thereto to be used for eating places, commercial uses, multifamily residential development and off-street parking with the areas used for multifamily dwellings and off-street parking as excluded from the area dedicated as a public park or for public benefit.”
Vitale said she tried to make sense of the boundaries using Google, but could not determine the exact area the city solicitor’s office was referencing when they sent the language to the State Board of Elections.
“What are they talking about?” Vitale asked, seemingly rhetorically and with much laughter from the petitioners.
The hearing lasted nearly four hours, with much of the time taken up by Vignarajah’s arguments. He argued minutia of statute and case law. He pitched hypothetical scenarios about anti-abortion referendums. He brought a poster board with Question F’s language as a prop. And, most importantly for him, he won.
“I literally think [law] students are going to read this case,” Vignarajah told the judge, saying it will go down as a “textbook” example of how not to write a ballot question.
Banner reporters Giacomo Bologna and Hallie Miller contributed reporting.
