Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announces he's appointing a professional environmentalist with strong ties to Greenpeace to head his Department of Business and Economic Development.
Never mind that DBED's stated mission is bringing jobs and businesses to Maryland and advocating a better business climate -- it's high time business struck a better "balance" with environmental concerns, the guv explains.
Gee, we thought that's why the state also has a Department of Environment, mutter businessmen. "Stop the whining," says Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.
The Chamber of Commerce can rest easy. Such a thing will never happen, under any governor; nor should it.
Nor should it be happening in reverse at the state's Department of Environment, whose stated mission is "to protect and preserve the state's environmental resources" and to "safeguard the environmental health of Maryland citizens."
I can't find anything about boosting business in MDE's mission, except to help them "take responsibility for pollution."
But what is unthinkable when it comes to business advocacy seems to be all the Ehrlich administration thinks about when it comes to environmental protection. "Maryland is an anti-business state, and it starts at the Department of the Environment. ... We are going to restore balance," the governor's spokesman, Paul Schurick, told The Sun in December.
Ah, "balance." It has such warm and fuzzy connotations, as if to reassure that the governor would never allow anything important to go out of kilter.
And so last week we hear Lynn Y. Buhl, Ehrlich's nominee as MDE secretary, vow to "find a balance" between environmental and economic interests.
Buhl is a former auto industry lawyer and was, until last week, a minor functionary in Michigan's stridently anti-environmental Department of Environmental Quality.
Her deputy secretary at MDE will be Kendl P. Philbrick, who comes from Lockheed Martin Corp.'s properties management branch. Perhaps both have yearned for the chance to lead the charge for badly needed improvements in Maryland's air and water quality, but I haven't heard that yet.
What I have heard is Ehrlich, in nominating Buhl, say that the department she and Philbrick will lead is no longer going to be "in the permanent 'gotcha' mode." So forgive me if all this talk of "balance" sounds like an all-too-familiar code word for easing up on regulation and pollution control.
The governor and his new secretary would do well to consider how the real balance sheet on Maryland's environment reads:
Add to this federal and state budgets that fall billions short of documented state environmental restoration needs for the next decade, along with the continuing erosion of federal protection of air, water and wetlands.
How can anyone dream this situation needs balancing with a weaker, more business-oriented MDE?
Steele has told environmentalists to "stop the whining" and give Buhl a year to see how she does. I say give her a couple weeks until her confirmation hearings by the Senate and politely, but firmly, press her on how she will move forward in all the above areas.
Buhl has said state government needs to be "customer orientated." Of course it does.
But her customers include everyone who breathes the state's air, drinks its water and enjoys the Chesapeake Bay -- including business persons and their families.
