Not to mention they have oil wealth to subsidize their welfare programs (although we have oil too).

At the end of the day it is about money. If preventative maintenance had been done and drivers were paid more this wouldn't be an issue. In a well funded system these upgrades would've been done in a rolling manner so service wouldn't have been interrupted.

It's worse than burning trash because

1. Not all the methane is captured. Methane is 80x more potent than CO2 and incineration generates none.
2. Not incinerating leads to a larger landfill footprint with long term environmental effects. (I agree that consuming less is better but I don't see that happening).
3. Waste incineration generates significantly more power than this methane recapture.
4. It's easier to mine the trash for recyclable metals after trash has been burnt than if it's in the dump.
5. Western Europe and Singapore have used incineration with great success. Just because BRESCO failed to comply with EPA standards and the EPA and MD state failed to enforce proper filtration does not make the entire method invalid.

Potentially controversial thought: I think they need to reduce the number of patrol cars so that there are more officers than patrol car capacity. That way they have to walk around and interact with Baltimoreans in a non-shooty manner.