A Baptist church pastor from Baltimore City sent an invitation for Trump to come to Baltimore City which Trump accepted. I doubt this visit will be warmly received in Baltimore City which is a Democratic city, Baltimore has historically voted Democrat throughout modern history, more recently voting heavily Democratic in the 2016 Presidential election and the 2018 midterm.
This visit to Baltimore coincides on the same day that Michael Cohen is expected to be sentenced.
Baltimore Sun article reporting about Trump's visit to Baltimore City: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-ci-trump-baltimore-20181207-story.html
Baltimore Sun article reporting about the invitation that was sent to Trump by a Baptist church pastor that he accepted:
This visit to Baltimore coincides on the same day that Michael Cohen is expected to be sentenced.
Baltimore Sun article reporting about Trump's visit to Baltimore City: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-ci-trump-baltimore-20181207-story.html
President Donald Trump will visit Baltimore Wednesday, his first trip to the city since taking office, the White House said Friday.
The trip is to promote so-called "opportunity zones," which were created by a Republican-backed tax law and are designed to encourage investment in and around struggling neighborhoods. The White House said the president will attend a roundtable with local leaders and mayors.
Greg Tucker, a spokesman for Mayor Catherine Pugh, said she had been told about the planned visit by the Baltimore Police Department and had not personally been notified by the White House.
A White House spokesman said Pugh was among a number of local leaders who have been or will be invited.
The opportunity zone program is one of the few aspects of the tax bill that has support from Democrats, and officials in Baltimore have said they hope to find ways to take advantage of it. Tucker said Pugh supports the special tax areas and called them "very important for Baltimore and her agenda of neighborhood investment and revitalization."
State officials designated much of east and west Baltimore as opportunity zones this spring, along with neighborhoods such as Park Heights. The federal government has certified communities in every state and the District of Columbia as opportunity zones.
The details of the program are complex, but it involves giving investors significant tax advantages if they invest in special funds designed to steer money to projects and businesses in the zones.
The White House said the tax program is designed "to expand the economic boom to all Americans, especially those in distressed communities — both rural and urban."
It said the opportunity zones "will bring billions of private investment and government resources to distressed communities."
In December 2016, one of Pugh's first actions in office was to press Trump for help with the city's aging infrastructure. She met briefly with him at the annual Army-Navy football game, handing him a letter detailing the city's needs, as well as a Baltimore pin.
"When he stepped out of his vehicle, I was the only elected official there," Pugh recalled later. "He walked over to me and I said, 'I am the mayor of Baltimore,' and he said, 'I know.'"
That interaction came after a new City Council, in one of its first acts since taking office, formally condemned the incoming president.
Wednesday's visit will occur the same day that Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime attorney and fixer, is scheduled to be sentenced on charges of violating campaign finance laws and lying to Congress.
Trump also came to Baltimore in September 2016 as a presidential candidate — attending a National Guard Association conference.
During the presidential campaign, he talked about immigrant gangs in Baltimore and other cities.
"You know a lot of the gangs that you see in Baltimore and in St. Louis and Ferguson and Chicago, do you know they're illegal immigrants?" Trump said during a Republican debate in 2015. "They're here illegally. And they're rough dudes. Rough people."
Baltimore officials disputed that gang problems were fueled in a substantial way by undocumented immigrants.
President Barack Obama was the last sitting president to come to Baltimore. Obama visited in 2015 to promote a family leave proposal.
Baltimore Sun article reporting about the invitation that was sent to Trump by a Baptist church pastor that he accepted:
The pastor of an East Baltimore church invited President Donald Trump for what will be his first trip to the city since taking office, hoping to showcase Baltimore as a model for urban revitalization through federal "opportunity zones" and other programs.
Trump is expected to meet Wednesday with the Rev. Donte L. Hickman, pastor of the 4,000-member Southern Baptist Church, and other clergy and elected officials at the church in the Broadway East neighborhood, Hickman said Saturday. Details of the agenda and who will attend are being worked out, he said.
The White House announced Friday that Trump will visit Baltimore to promote so-called opportunity zones, a Republican-backed tax law designed to direct investment capital into struggling communities by offering a huge new tax break. Trump will attend a roundtable with local leaders, the White House said.
Hickman, whose 88-year-old church takes on community revitalization projects in East Baltimore, said he hopes a presidential visit will shine a light on the need for investment and the success of recent public-private and faith-based projects. Baltimore can lead the way nationally, he believes, in encouraging opportunity zone investment in distressed neighborhoods.
"It's major," Hickman said of the White House accepting the invitation. "It's a major opportunity for Baltimore to be a leader and model to urban centers across the country. … We can show the country that it is possible to transform urban centers without gentrification."
For Baltimore, he said, "This is something that really makes sense, because we're ready to go."
That's because many of the city's 42 zones include swaths already scheduled or targeted for redevelopment, such as Poppleton, Port Covington, Perkins Homes and Park Heights. Zones exist downtown and in impoverished areas of East, West and South Baltimore. Anyone who uses profits from another investment to invest in real estate or businesses in designated zones could defer and reduce their capital gains tax, and any profits from the opportunity zone investment would be tax free as long as it is held for 10 years. The idea has drawn support from Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said Saturday she was notified by the White House that Trump would visit the city, but "they have not given us an agenda."
She said she began working to identify areas of the city to include in the opportunity zones program after it was passed as part of tax reform a year ago. The city hired an opportunity zone coordinator in October.
Pugh said she expects the redevelopment tool and the Neighborhood Impact Investment Fund she created earlier this year will work together to pump money into areas struggling with disinvestment for decades. Representatives of several large projects in the city also have said they expect a boost from the new zones, including developers of a part of Port Covington slated for a cybersecurity hub and of an 88-acre urban renewal project near Johns Hopkins medical campus in East Baltimore.
The mayor said she had met briefly with Trump in December 2016, at the annual Army-Navy football game, when she handed him a letter asking for federal help with the city's aging infrastructure.
Asked about Trump's planned visit, she said, "If the president is coming to unleash resources that help us fix the water pipe system, that would be welcome to Baltimore. ... If it's about releasing those resources that the city needs for infrastructure dollars, that would be helpful to the city."
U.S. Treasury officials have estimated the opportunity zone program will result in an infusion of $100 billion of private capital in regions with an average poverty rate of more than 32 percent. But critics believe the costs will outweigh the benefits, becoming a windfall for the wealthy or forcing poor residents out of their neighborhoods.
Hickman, though, said he sees the incentive as an effective way to spur development of affordable housing, grocery stores and health centers and improve public safety, education and workforce development in Broadway East — in an opportunity zone where about a dozen development projects are planned or underway — and elsewhere in the city.
Southern Baptist has worked through a community development corporation with partners on projects such as affordable housing for seniors and a health and wellness center. One church project, the Mary Harvin Transformation Center senior housing and job training center, was nearly halfway built in 2015 when it was destroyed by fire during the riots after Freddie Gray's death. Hickman had worked for five years on the center, made possible partly through tax credits and favorable loan packages. He vowed to start over and the center was later completed.
Hickman, pastor since 2002 of a church that also has Aberdeen and Ellicott City locations, said he reached out to the Trump administration a couple of months ago.
"We engaged the administration with what we're doing in an opportunity zone and invited him to come and see how Baltimore could really benefit from his encouragement and promotion of it," he said. "Baltimore has been dealing with dilapidated communities, abandoned and vacant properties from the uprising [after Gray's death] and community violence and poverty for decades. And I believe this investment could really turn our city around."
When asked whether he was concerned that Trump's visit could spark a backlash to the president or his policies, Hickman said he refuses to focus on "distractions or personal prejudices and partisan politics."
"My focus is on how we can help our city rebuild itself," he said.
