One of the most important issues the city needs to consider in deciding whether to approve a record-breaking tax increment financing deal for the proposed Port Covington development is whether it would effectively rob city schools of state aid. That has happened as a result of other TIF deals, and the size of this one means that unless the state steps in, Baltimore will be out hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming decades. As such, it was heartening to see House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller go on record this week pledging a fix to the TIF/school aid problem.

But we can understand if some are skeptical. A promise is not the same as passed legislation. And this issue isn't new; The Sun's Luke Broadwater first reported on it in 2015, and the General Assembly spent much of this year's legislative session trying in vain to find a permanent solution. If the best legislators could do was a two-year patch, how can we sign on to a 40-year deal?

At first blush, fixing the TIF problem seemed simple. Tax increment financing is a mechanism through which a city or county issues bonds to pay for infrastructure work related to a development, and the debt is paid off through the increased property taxes the project generates. The trouble Baltimore has had is with state disparity grants designed to help poorer jurisdictions pay for adequate schooling. They are determined in part based on the assessable property tax base in the jurisdiction. Baltimore's TIF-supported developments made its assessable base go up but not the property taxes available to support schools. So, all the state would need to do is tweak the formula so it looks not at the current assessed value of a TIF district but the value on which it pays property taxes, right?

It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. Although Baltimore has been hurt of late because of its TIF deals, it isn't the only or most frequent user of that development incentive in the state — not by a long shot. Anne Arundel County, for example, has almost 10 times the combined value of TIFs that the city does. The easy solution turned out to help Anne Arundel quite a bit, in spite of the fact that it is a relatively wealthy county that has been able to backfill its lost education funding without having to raise its income tax rate to the state maximum. Montgomery County, which has no TIF districts, would have been a big loser in the redistribution of funds such a change would cause, and Baltimore wouldn't have benefited much at all.

Instead, the legislature approved a bill (135-3 in the House and 45-0 in the Senate) to provide grants during the next two fiscal years to make up for any shortfalls caused by TIF districts approved after May 1 of this year — like, hypothetically, Port Covington. The idea of a permanent fix, they punted to a study commission (known as Thornton II) that is reviewing and considering revisions of the landmark education funding formulas Maryland adopted in 2002. The idea is that it would be easier to address the TIF issue equitably and fairly as part of a broad overhaul of the funding formulas than to try to handle it by modifying the existing ones. Handling it that way would also enable consideration of the various other economic development incentives counties use in Maryland, like tax credits and payment in lieu of taxes deals. (Baltimore actually has far more PILOTs than TIFs.) The consultants working on the study had already identified the TIF issue and are looking at how it is handled in other states, and Del. Maggie McIntosh, the Baltimore Democrat and Appropriations Committee chairwoman who has led the legislative effort to address it, sits on the commission.

The reason city leaders should have confidence that this issue will be addressed is not just that the presiding officers of the legislature say they are committed to helping Baltimore meet its goals of both economic development and improved education. The big reason city leaders should have confidence is that this isn't just a Baltimore problem. Prince George's County, which also receives disparity grants under the school funding formula, has three times the combined TIF value Baltimore does, and it's looking at another big one if the federal government picks it for the new FBI headquarters. Baltimore, Harford, Howard and Wicomico counties all have TIF districts, too, and Howard is considering approval for another $128 million in tax increment financing for the downtown Columbia redevelopment.

This isn't a case of the city asking the state to bail it out from the consequences of a deal with a deep-pocketed developer. It's a matter of the legislature resolving a policy flaw that wasn't apparent in 2002 but is an increasingly large issue statewide in 2016. It would be on the agenda for Thornton II even if the Port Covington proposal didn't exist. There are, of course, no guarantees until the legislature acts, but city officials can be confident that the stars are aligned in their favor.