Tag: War on Rural Maryland

Is this the way to win an election?

Last night I was tipped off (h/t Richard Cross of Cross Purposes) to a Washington Post item regarding bipartisan support for the gas tax increase. Yes, you read that right – bipartisan.

It seems our Chamber of Commerce types have the misguided notion that increasing the gasoline tax will allow the state to fully fund transportation projects, but I ask of them: what planet are you living on again? This is Martin O’Malley’s Maryland – we all know that the money is going to be spent on 1,001 items in the general fund and the rest will go to build more mass transit and bike paths we don’t need.

Meanwhile, the victims of the War on Rural Maryland will have to once again pay through the nose perpetually, because as proposed by one possible scheme advanced by a state commission the gas tax isn’t just going to go up a nickel each year in 2013, 2014, and 2015 – nope, it’s going to be indexed afterward to a construction cost index. So as union demands get more and more brazen and the cost of construction climbs at a dizzying rate, so will the gas tax. Nice system if you can con people into believing the roads will actually get fixed.

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The McDermott notes: week 1

As last year’s General Assembly session wore on, I found that freshman Delegate Mike McDermott’s weekly field notes were a very perceptive and comprehensive look at what was going on in Annapolis. So this year I’m making the executive decision to feature his notes (and my commentary on same) on a weekly basis, generally Sunday evenings.

McDermott is the one Delegate I voted for, although in future elections I won’t have that opportunity to re-elect him as Delegate unless I move to Somerset or southern Worcester county – the Democrats’ redistricting gerrymandering changed what was a two-delegate district based primarily in Worcester County, with the eastern half of Wicomico County added to create the requisite population, into two separate single-member districts with the existing District 38B truncated to be a district mostly based in the eastern portions of Salisbury along with Delmar and Fruitland. A new District 38C made up of eastern Wicomico and northern Worcester counties was then created, splitting Worcester County in two for the first time in recent memory. Oddly enough, we already have one prospective candidate there, but either Delegate McDermott or current District 38A Delegate Charles Otto of Somerset County – both freshman Republicans – will have to move up (to the Maryland Senate) or move out.

Now that you have a little bit of background on the man, I’ll go through what he had to say.

Mike begins by describing Wednesday’s opening session and the remarks by Governor O’Malley and House Speaker Michael Busch. I probably find it even more insulting than he does when it’s said that the state is better when it has the views from the right and the left in government – perhaps I’d be less insulted if that wasn’t so hypocritical on its face. If they really wanted views from the right, all the legislative districts would have been single-member districts done in a strictly geographical fashion – no little peninsulas to place one favored Delegate in a “friendly” district or districts which could pass for inkblots to make sure mainly minority voters get a district for themselves. I prefer the best, most conservative candidate no matter what color he or she is.

As for Thursday’s remarks, I found them interesting as well. Obviously the General Assembly gets into some seriously mundane issues, but I am surprised no one is clamoring for the inmates to get free calls because to do otherwise would be ‘unfair.’

Regarding a meeting by the Eastern Shore delegation with Secretary of Planning Richard Hall, McDermott related his opinion that:

It was quite clear that we are at polar ends of the specter (sic) with the O’Malley administration when it comes to PlanMaryland, but the concerns expressed were bi-partisan in nature. Maryland has operated for decades with a State Department of Planning  that has worked to provide guidance to local government. This plan will turn that “guidance” into direct oversight.

Not only that, PlanMaryland places the state in a position to usurp local authority by withholding necessary funding if development doesn’t meet their (somewhat arbitrary) standards of ‘sustainability.’ Obviously if a county or municipality wants to “go it alone” that may be feasible for now, but I’m sure eventually the state will tie other funding, like the stipends they send for educational funding, to compliance. While it’s claimed the state has had the authority to enact a PlanMaryland since 1974, there was no reason to go around the legislative branch to come up with a plan that’s a key offensive of the War on Rural Maryland.

I’ll be interested to see what becomes of McDermott’s compensation bill, but I suspect Governor O’Malley will tell that committee head to lock it away in a desk drawer someplace until about the middle of April.

I look forward to receiving this weekly update from Delegate McDermott, but what I don’t look forward to is the assault on our wallets and our liberty sure to come from this body as the months wear on and the items enacted during the “90 Days of Terror” become law.

We might have to get that referendum pen ready.

 

And yet they blame farmers?

There was a story in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun by Timothy Wheeler which was brought to my attention, a story which documented the troubles both Baltimore City and County are having with a sewage infrastructure which, in some cases, is over a century old. Between the two municipalities over 160 million gallons of untreated sewage has leaked into the watershed this year alone.

Obviously this is a situation which is slowly being addressed, as the story points out over $2 billion is being invested into repairing the system over the next decade. Certainly that’s a legitimate function of government, and I have no objection to local tax dollars being used in such a manner.

It’s the unfortunate tendency of farmers and rural interests getting the blame for a problem that occurs because of urban areas like Baltimore City and County which bothers me the most.

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Relenting, but briefly

A small Worcester County farm has been the subject of an environmentalist maelstrom over the last few years, but recent developments suggest the state is pulling back its full-court press against the Hudson farm outside Berlin. The farm made news when it was sued by the Waterkeepers Alliance based on a spill of chicken waste which reached the watershed. It was later learned that bacteria in the body of water wasn’t linked to the stored sludge on the farm – which also could have been Class A sludge from the Ocean City waste water treatment plant – but the MDE still fined the operators $4,000.

Needless to say, the Waterkeepers Alliance is no friend of farmers. As their staff attorney sneered in a 2009 news release announcing the suit, “If you want to find out why the Chesapeake watershed is so polluted, then you don’t need to look any further than this facility and others like it around the Eastern Shore.” So it has nothing to do with the leaking municipal sewage plants or anything which happens upstream in Pennsylvania or New York – it’s just greedy agribusiness and corporate farms wantonly polluting the landscape (read: farmers trying to make a living.)

But besides the obvious concern about the farm the Maryland Department of the Environment,which was apparently resolved to their satisfaction in the 2010 decision to fine the operator, the most recent controversy arose from the fact that law students from the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic are representing the Waterkeepers Alliance in the suit. In short, the state of Maryland is complicit in trying to run this Perdue grower out of business – hence O’Malley’s concern about the law school’s role in a “state-sponsored injustice and misuse of taxpayer resources.”

My question is much simpler, though. Why does the Waterkeepers Alliance, an organization which collected over $3 million in FY2010 and $16 million over a five-year period (see part 2 of Schedule A), need a group of college law students to help, anyway? Has the Kennedy family fortune melted away that quickly? I doubt it.

Others have also weighed in on the issue, and backed O’Malley’s suddenly stiffened spine. Kim Burns of Maryland Business for Responsive Government added, “the precedent the law school’s action sets for land use policy and economic development all over Maryland is horrendous. The law clinic’s action has already caused serious damage to the viability of the farm, the use of the land, and to an industry critical to Maryland, to operate lawfully and without unwarranted government intrusion…Governor O’Malley is correct to hold the clinic accountable.”

Meanwhile, Congressman Andy Harris chimed in by stating “tactics like this, especially when they are backed financially by the state, will destroy the poultry industry. Governor O’Malley was absolutely right to question whether this is an appropriate use of state resources.”

It’s understandable that a law school needs to have some method of showing prospective students the ropes. But this particular case seems to smell about as much as the manure pile, and since the MDE had already resolved the issue to its satisfaction perhaps the Waterkeepers Alliance should have sued the MDE on their own instead of trying to pick on a small family business.

Instead, the radical greenies choose to take a stance against an industry that’s the lifeblood of this area. All the better to create wildlife corridors and “greenways,” I suppose. If this attack on farming keeps up, someday the environmentalists may get their wish – a depopulated Eastern Shore littered with the ruins of a once-thriving agricultural industry. Like sunken ships made into artificial reefs, the remnants of chicken houses, family farms, and industry will slowly be taken over by nature and become habitat for Gaia’s creatures. Too bad no one will be around to enjoy it.

Trust me, this is only a temporary pullback in the War on Rural Maryland. I didn’t hear of any pledge by the Governor to defund the Environmental Law Clinic because of this transgression, so once the controversy blows over it will be back to business as usual.

It’s a war, I tell ya!

I’m not sure just how many outlets got this ‘letter to the editor’ but State Senator E.J. Pipkin lays out his case that Governor O’Malley has indeed declared a War on Rural Maryland. I’ll excerpt from his letter here:

Despite protests to the contrary from the O’Malley Administration, it has been clear for the past few years that the Administration’s programs, policies and proposed legislation constitute an assault on rural economies and property rights. Whether the War on Rural Maryland is intentional or not is beside the point. The fact remains that implementation of the Administration’s policies and legislative proposals, from the proposed septic system ban to higher tolls, taxes, and fees will strip rural Maryland of any real opportunity to create jobs and boost its economy.

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More land off limits to development: a sign of things to come under PlanMaryland?

It was just another item on the agenda Tuesday evening at the County Council meeting, and since I don’t have the record of what happened yet I have to presume it passed without a peep of opposition. (I’d be happy to stand corrected, but I know the resolution passed. Whether it was 4-2 or 6-0, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference in the end.)

With that passage the county was authorized to spend nearly $2 million in state money to purchase easements on 710 acres of land along Nanticoke and Royal Oak Roads known as the Tracey Property – that’s a little over one square mile of territory.

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Odds and ends number 36

Let’s begin with an item that only gets a couple paragraphs because of the circumstances. While I’m not at liberty to share the names of those who applied, I think I can safely say that we have no shortage of applicants to send four qualified prospects up to County Council in order to fill the District 4 seat made vacant by Bob Caldwell’s passing. Offoceseekers are both male and female, represent a broad spectrum of ages, and should be very interesting to screen. So that seat will be in good hands.

Now I could have had a great scoop in releasing the names but I respect the wishes of my Chair and the process too much to let any undue influence sway the decision, a circumstance which would certainly occur if the names were made public. Remember, this is not a typical political campaign because we as a Central Committee only make recommendations. The time for voting will be later and it will be done by County Council, not our committee.

All right, now for something a lot different.

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