Maryland Looking at Price-Gouging Law

BALTIMORE -- State lawmakers in Maryland will decide whether to make price gouging during an emergency a crime in Maryland, an issue that hit home after gasoline prices spiked after Hurricane Katrina, reported the Baltimore Business Journal .

Del. Sandy Rosenberg, D-Baltimore City, said he plans to introduce a bill in the upcoming legislative session that would bar businesses from imposing exorbitant price hikes during a state of emergency. The measure would be similar to one that did not pass earlier this year.

The exact details of the anticipated bill have yet to be determined, but the 2005 legislation would have barred businesses from hiking prices for essential goods and services by more than 10 percent during an emergency, according to the Baltimore Business Journal .

That bill would have applied to sales of essential goods including food, emergency supplies, gasoline, medical supplies, heating oil and hotel rooms. It would have allowed price hikes of more than 10 percent only if a business could have proven the increase was the result of additional costs, according to the report.

Rosenberg, who sponsored the 2005 bill at the request of the state attorney general's office, was more optimistic about its prospects in the upcoming session.

"I think the political terrain has changed in light of Katrina," he told the newspaper.

Though business groups opposed the 2005 measure, Rosenberg and the attorney general's office said in the report they are hoping to alter the legislation to satisfy some of those objections.

Steve Sakamoto-Wengel, an assistant attorney general with the consumer protection division, said that unlike other states, Maryland does not prohibit price gouging. That leaves the state without any power to investigate consumer complaints.

"People can charge whatever the market will bear," he told the Baltimore Business Journal .

Ronald Wineholt, vice president of government affairs for the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, told the Baltimore Business Journal that the 2005 bill "would have really caused havoc in Maryland's economy" because it would have been effective for 180 days after a state of emergency.

However, Wineholt said in the report the chamber might not oppose a more narrowly drawn bill, including one that would be effective only for states of emergencies.

Peter Horrigan, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Petroleum Distributors' Association, called the bill "an absolutely unnecessary piece of legislation."

"Our markets performed superbly," he told the newspaper. "Everybody was able to get the gasoline that they needed."