Committee recommends Harbor Master transfer to DOT, clarifies who enforces promenade lighting

The Baltimore City Land Use and Transportation Committee recommended Council Bill 260178, transferring harbor authority to the Department of Transportation, favorable to the full City Council and adopted technical amendments after agencies clarified enforcement roles.

Why it matters: The bill moves harbor operations authority to DOT but left a standing question about who enforces maintenance of lighting along the harbor promenade, a public-safety and public-space concern for neighbors and businesses.

At the committee meeting, Ryan Dorsey, chair of the Land Use and Transportation Committee, noted that the "only lingering concern" was "accountability for maintenance of the lighting along the harbor promenade," and asked whether DHCD enforcement of adjacent-property lighting obligations would continue under the ordinance. Luciano Diaz of the Department of Transportation told the committee, "We've discussed with the Department of Housing and we've agreed that housing will continue to issue citations for building code violations related to defective lighting and the Department of Transportation will be enforcing for the citations outlined in this ordinance for the transfer of authority." That exchange clarified that DHCD will retain citation authority under building-code enforcement while DOT will implement the ordinance's enforcement provisions.

Committee members also approved a set of technical amendments previously submitted and described as grammatical or formatting corrections, including a change in amendment 4 from "authorizations" to "authorization." The chair said the technical amendments had been submitted in a prior hearing and the committee voted to adopt them once the revised language was available in the packet.

The committee—s approval was procedural: it recommended the bill favorable with amendments to the full City Council, which will consider the ordinance at a future meeting.