While Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced reforms to the City’s tax billing system, members of the City Council called for a system audit.  These actions are a result of a Baltimore Sun investigation that found that tax billing errors cost the City $11 million over the past decade. From the recent Baltimore Sun article:

The city finance department laid out a plan it said will “crack down” on the mistakes by automating more of the process and relying less on the state government — where many errors originated — to calculate bills. But some council members said they’ve lost so much faith in the city’s ability to properly collect taxes that they called on the mayor to consider hiring a private firm to take over the work.

Finance Director Harry E. Black said the city has taken over the job of calculating tax credits from the state. Finance officials also have instituted internal audits of “all tax credit accounts” to identify errors, and expect a new automated system to be fully functioning by March, he said.