Like too many other American cities, particularly up and down the East Coast, Baltimore has been experiencing more than its fair share of troubles over the past few years. Problems with gang violence, particularly among the city's youth have been endemic, worsened in many instances by entrenched corruption in the municipal government. Population levels have been falling as people flee the area for presumably safer communities elsewhere. All of these negative factors have been compounded by adverse weather systems, straining budgets to their limits. But now Baltimore is striking back. Which of these problems will they tackle first? None of them, of course. Instead, Charm City has determined that they can address the city's woes by banning gas-powered leaf blowers. No, that wasn't a typo. (Baltimore Sun)

The Baltimore City Council voted 10-5 to ban gas-powered leaf blowers Monday night.

The ordinance takes effect Dec. 15, when all city agencies and contractors will permanently transition to electric leaf blowers.

“Devices like this have an outsized and adverse impact in terms of production of air pollution. While there is a lot that we could be changing this a good step,” sponsor Ryan Dorsey said.

Landscape companies and residents may use gas-powered leaf blowers between Oct. 15 and Dec. 15 of 2025 and 2026 before the ordinance goes into effect year-round.

How is it that anyone is expected to take these people seriously at this point? They aren't even giving people any significant amount of time to come into compliance with this new regulation. There will be a couple of windows of time toward the end of 2025 and 2026 when the dreaded gas-powered blowers will be allowed, but after that they will effectively be driven to extinction. So which of Baltimore's many challenges is being addressed by this sudden change?

The bill's sponsor spoke of the "outsized and adverse impact in terms of production of air pollution" caused by traditional leaf blowers. While nobody is arguing in favor of more air pollution, it's worth remembering that the City of Baltimore has roughly ten thousand of those blowers in service at any given time and they are only used during certain times of the year. They will be replacing them at the eye-watering cost of $ 41,000 just to replace 18 commercial-grade blowers at their water facilities. Meanwhile, more than a million automobiles traverse Charm City's streets on a daily basis with no such restrictions.

Further, all of those new electric leaf blowers will have to be constantly recharged, requiring them to be plugged in somewhere. Contrary to popular liberal beliefs, electricity doesn't simply magically appear at the outlets in the walls of your building. It has to come from somewhere and most of it still originates from fossil fuel resources. The net gain in this equation works out to be very close to zero and that's a generous estimate. But I don't expect the members of the City Council to be up to speed on all of that.

Given what we know of the Baltimore City Council and their history with coloring outside the lines when it comes to municipal funding, this situation could clearly do with a closer examination. I won't be terribly shocked to find that at least some of the Council members have a vested interest in the company that will be picking up the contract to provide the new electric blowers to Baltimore. But as always, we are once again reminded that the good people of Baltimore keep electing this same collection of grifters to positions of power so they are clearly getting what they asked for.