Bethel Finance: Boat fee free-for-all in Maryland

www.bethelfinance.com
We report this week on a Maryland Department of Natural Resources proposal to increase what it costs to register a boat in Maryland. It's the marine equivalent of getting it an up-to-date license plate, and right now it costs only a dollar a month to keep a boat's registration current, with a $24-for-two-years fee, unchanged since 1983.

The heights DNR now wants to take fees to are eye-popping, frankly. Beginning this fall, DNR wants a graduated fee structure, with pleasure boats 16 feet or shorter paying a $25 fee; $75 charged to boats between 16 feet and 32 feet; $125 for boats up to 45 feet; $250 for stopping short of the 65-foot mark; and $350 for vessels longer than 65 feet.

Come October 2014, all those rates would double, so that no boater would pay less than $50, and the biggest boats would carry a $700 registration charge.

So the costs would double from their present level, at a minimum, and the biggest boats would be charged 29 times as much.

DNR says the need for more revenue is great, in part because the federally-funded Army Corps of Engineers is soon turning over dredging responsibility for many waterways to the state.

DNR sees a need for $41 million in boating projects -- dredging, docks and so on -- and expects this fee change to raise $15 million.

But we just can't wrap our head around the huge disparity in the cost of boating making this change would create with respect to Maryland's neighboring states.

We looked it up: Virginia charges between $27 and $45 for a three-year sticker, based on boat size. Your boat has to be more than 40 feet long to be charged the most. In Delaware, there's also a size-based ladder, in which short boats pay $10 a year and boats longer than 65 feet pay the most, $60 a year. In Pennsylvania, a two-year sticker costs between $26 and $52.

If Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware can budget for their waterways' care without charging boaters hundreds of dollars to register, why can't Maryland manage to do the same?

It clearly makes sense to charge bigger boats a higher fee, since they require deeper channels and sturdier ramps, docks and piers. So Maryland should adopt a ladder of fees that makes the big boats pay the most. And if the Army Corps is trying to get out of the dredging business, our Congressional delegation should protest. But there's no common-sense precedent for charging pleasure boaters the sky-high fees DNR is proposing.