Change Maryland, or pack up and go?

It seems to be the question on the minds of many people, including gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan. His campaign noted on Wednesday that:

Gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan this evening said the following of today’s Gallop (sic) poll that half of all Maryland residents would leave if they could, worse sentiment than all but two states.

“We know from Change Maryland’s Taxpayer Migration Study that under Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown, more than 6,500 businesses and 31,000 residents fled Maryland’s crushing taxes, fees, tolls and regulations.  Now, we learn that nearly half of Maryland residents would leave our state if they could.

 This tragic situation is the direct result of the failed policies of Martin O’Malley, Anthony Brown and Doug Gansler and one-party control in Annapolis.  The only way to make Maryland a state where people not only want to live but can afford to live again is to end the reckless fiscal policies of the past eight years.”

The two states cited as being ahead of Maryland in this Gallup Poll were Illinois at 50% and Connecticut with 49% – Maryland was third at 47%. None of our neighboring states made the top or bottom 10 in the survey release.

So the logical next question I had was whether people are acting on this desire to vacate our premises, and in a number of areas they are. For the most part, what they have in common is that the nine counties where I found slow to nonexistent growth – or even a decline – is that they are among Maryland’s most rural. (Baltimore City also makes this list, and it shares many of the same economic problems as its rural brethren.) This data is gleaned from Census Bureau estimates of population in both 2012 and 2013, compared with the official 2010 count.

Out of 23 counties and Baltimore City, the state’s population grew at a modest 2.7% clip between 2010 and 2013. But five counties lost population overall: Allegany and Garrett in western Maryland, and Caroline, Kent, and Somerset on the Eastern Shore. Others which lost population between 2012 and 2013, according to Census estimates, were Baltimore City and Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties on the Eastern Shore.

There was very slow growth (less than 1% between 2010 and 2013) in Carroll, Dorchester, and Worcester counties, the latter two also representing the Eastern Shore. While no county on the Eastern Shore matched Maryland’s overall growth, Wicomico came the closest at 2.2% and is now barely 1,000 citizens smaller than Cecil County, the largest of the nine Eastern Shore counties.

Perhaps it’s a little easier to see the reason if you compare unemployment data over the last several years with the growth (or loss) in population. All five counties which lost population overall have an unemployment rate persistently above state average, with most of the rest experiencing slow growth or a loss between 2012 and 2013 also suffering from above-average rates. (Carroll and Queen Anne’s counties are the two exceptions; however, other bedroom suburb counties such as Charles, Howard, and Harford counties are still growing.)

It all presents a sort of vicious cycle: people leave because they perceive a lack of opportunity, which leads to other employers closing up shop and people leaving as the economic pie shrinks yet again. It’s been my contention that the state’s onerous policies on growth and the environment, particularly in more or less undeveloped areas like the Eastern Shore, are retarding the potential of these areas to grow on their own so people look for greener pastures. Those who are raised in rural areas are either heading to the more developed areas of the state or abandoning it entirely.

One thing I haven’t heard a lot of discussion about during this gubernatorial campaign is the concept of local control. Maybe they haven’t expanded on this yet, but the range of solutions I hear from all of the candidates is one of a top-down nature. Certainly there is a place for action from the state, particularly on tax and fiscal policies. But where is the passion for restoring local control? I hear a lot about this on the educational front thanks to Common Core, but what about other areas like planning and zoning? Where is the push to let the counties be their own tiny laboratories of policy experiment such as the states were meant to be before the federal government decided to run the whole ball of wax over the last 20 to 25 years?

I know better than to expect such rhetoric from the Democratic side of the aisle, because their sole intention seems to be consolidating government at the expense of the common man, creating in average Joes the serf-like dependence on those for whom power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. So it’s up to the conservatives in the race to explain how they would have the state step aside and allow those rural counties which seem to be the biggest victims of state policy to flourish like some of their more urban counterparts.

Meanwhile, Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum suggests his own bottoms-up approach.

8 thoughts on “Change Maryland, or pack up and go?”

  1. Thanks, Mike for paying attention to this. We put out a statement on the Gallup poll on facebook and via our website. This is the main reason Charles and I have decided to subject ourselves to a political campaign. We want to keep people from leaving Maryland by making our state the most attractive in the region for families and businesses.

    I’m glad you raise local control. This is something Charles and i mention at every forum and oppportunity. We oppose Common Core because it’s been airdropped from Washington an from Annapolis. We want to empower local elected school boards to make these decisions. And we want to empower teachers over administrators and politicians.

    Ken Timmerman

  2. I left Baltimore County six years ago. I was born and raised in MD and love my home, but it was simply becoming more and more difficult to support a decent quality of life.

    Despite all the good things about MD living, the obscene taxes, restrictive zoning laws driving up housing costs, constant traffic gridlock, deteriorating public schools, and a power-hungry government preventing any progress on these things in the foreseeable future simply made it an unacceptable tradeoff.

    I now live in a major Midwestern city, where I have a ten minute commute to work. I earn a professional salary comparable to what I would have in MD, and housing is 30% less expensive. There is less crime, taxes are lower, and there is a better environment for starting a small business.

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