Baltimore officials today approved a new five-year schedule of payments that large nonprofit institutions will make to the city – an arrangement branded “a backroom deal” by critics when it was announced by Mayor Brandon Scott earlier this month.

Under the plan, 14 tax-exempt universities and hospitals, the biggest of which is Johns Hopkins, agree to make annual payments to the city to cover the cost of municipal services. The yearly payments would start at $6 million next July and escalate to $12 million by 2030, for a total of $48 million over five years.

The amount is s a far cry from the plan crafted by community advocates, labor unions and neighborhood groups that had called for a task force to recommend “a fair, standardized formula” for how the group of Baltimore hospitals, colleges and universities should compensate the city for their use of municipal services.

Scott’s deal with the so-called “anchor institutions” locks in payments that the With Us For Us (WUFU) Coalition says falls short by $205 million from the value of city services the universities and hospitals would use over the course of the five years.

City Council President Zeke Cohen – who supported the With Us For Us plan and a City Council bill to carry it out – acknowledged the agreement before the Board Estimates was a comedown.

“There is frustration and disappointment out there that it could have been better,” he said, indicating he was powerless to stop the plan given Mayor Scott’s control of the spending board.

• 14 Baltimore anchor institutions urged to contribute more to help the city (4/24/25)

“We are in a situation where, as long as the this board continues to be determined by one person having three out of the five votes, we will continue to see this situation play out again and again and again,” he said.

“I know there is frustration in community,” Cohen continued. “About a lack of community process, about folks feeling like their voices were not reflected, about how we get to these kind of deals and this idea that more voices should be part of the conversation.”

In the end, the deal was approved on a unanimous voice vote by Cohen and the four other board members:

Comptroller Bill Henry, Public Works Director Matthew Garbark, Deputy Solicitor Stephen Salsbury (sitting in for City Solicitor Ebony Thompson, who was attending a Fintech conference) and City Administrator Faith Leach (representing Scott, who was in Savannah, Georgia).

Ten hospitals and four universities are covered by the PILOT:

Grace Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Bayview Medical Center, Good Samaritan Hospital, MedStar Harbor Hospital, MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, Mercy Medical Center, Sinai Hospital, Ascension St. Agnes Hospital, University of Maryland Medical Center Downtown Campus, University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus.

Also: Johns Hopkins University, Loyola University Maryland, Maryland Institute College of Art, Notre Dame of Maryland University.

“Difficult moment” for Nonprofits

In brief remarks before casting her vote on behalf of Scott, Leach lauded the public campaign for a better deal and fairer process, saying, “I received an email every single day for three months, four months.”

She did not explain the mayor’s decision to blow past public input and to strike a deal before a much-anticipated Council hearing.

• Tensions flare as councilwoman walks out on hearing about payments by tax-exempt institutions (9/9/25)

The agreement represents an increase over the current PILOT arrangement, set to expire in mid-2026, which generated $6 million annually.

But Leach did allude to pushback from universities and hospitals struggling to cope with Trump administration funding cuts and grant cancellations.

“It is a very difficult moment and a very difficult time in our city’s history because of what is happening down the road from us,” she said, referring to Washington, D.C.

Cohen asked how the city and nonprofits came up with the numbers for the deal they struck. He got a minimalist reply from the law department’s Matthew Bradford:

“The parties considered multiple things. The previous assessment amounts, other taxes and fees the institutions pay, services the institutions provide to city residents, and services the city provides to those institutions and the uncertain financial climate.”

“I’m not aware of any sort of formulaic way in which these were derived,” he added.

Increase “pales in comparison”

Outside of City Hall, months of work by a number of parties had gone into researching possible formulas to overhaul Baltimore’s PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) program for “eds and meds.”

The WUFU Coalition authored a 12-page white paper analyzing the financials of wealthy private institutions in Baltimore versus their PILOT payments. There were also reviews of the ways other cities approached seeking contributions from nonprofit institutions.

More than 600 people sent emails to Council members and canvased their neighborhoods on behalf of a bill supported by Cohen and other city legislators to establish a “Fair Share Task Force” to review the PILOT program. The bill was never heard by the Budget Committee after its chief sponsor and the mayor’s office could not agree on amendments.

In 2024, the comptroller’s office completed a report on the issue as well after the Finance Department suggested tapping into more tax revenue from nonprofits.

“One of the things they included in that [ten-year] financial plan was a desire to increase the amount of money that we collected from nonprofits to something closer to $50 million,” Henry noted today.

In the end, though, the agreement struck between Scott’s office and the Maryland Hospital Association and Maryland Independent College and University Association was much less – and “pales in comparison to those of New Haven, Conn., which negotiated a $135 million deal over 6 years, and Boston, which received $35.7 million from its institutions in 2023 alone,” according to WUFU.

Henry said he hoped the city would “move towards the more open and transparent process” in the future.

“The next time we do this, if we don’t do it in a different way, that’s when I suspect that we’ll be seeing pitch forks in the streets and things on fire,” he said.