Judging the candidates

Choice: If the environment could vote, it would vote for Townsend.

Tom Horton | On the Bay

October 18, 2002

This is the second column on how gubernatorial candidates Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend measure up on the environment.

Smart Growth

How a governor handles this affects in the long term the whole environmental, economic and social spectrum.

Air and water quality, open space, traffic congestion, urban revitalization, local tax bases - all are harmed by the sprawl development that affects 128,000 acres annually across Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

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Maryland, in Gov. Parris N. Glendening's last term, has become a leader in Smart Growth, spending big to preserve the countryside while refocusing budgets for schools, roads and sewers to steer growth toward existing and planned communities.

But changing the ingrained culture of haphazard, developer-driven land use has only begun. Zoning power remains at the county level, and recent analyses show most still allow far too much sprawl.

Land-use watchdog groups such as 1000 Friends of Maryland say it's essential to continue Glendening's strong posture to keep the counties from backsliding. He canceled sprawl-prone road projects, threatened Carroll County's commissioners with loss of state funds when they tried to weaken agricultural zoning, and jawboned other counties to legislate better land use.

In a nutshell, Townsend, a Democrat, says she would continue in that vein, and Ehrlich, a Republican, gives every indication he wouldn't.

"Conceptually, Smart Growth makes sense, focusing state resources on existing developed areas, on redeveloping brownfields [abandoned industrial areas]," Ehrlich says. "But am I willing to pre-empt in a major way local zoning decisions? No. If I thought a local plan was ridiculously anti-Smart Growth, I'd sit down with those officials."

He faulted Glendening for creating unnecessary "antagonism," and said he would not have intervened in Carroll County. The dust-up over weakening open-space zoning was instigated by Ehrlich's close friend, developer Ed Primoff.

Runoff

Runoff of fertilizers and manure from farmland is one of the largest sources of bay pollution. Fifteen years of voluntary prevention have made little progress. Promising approaches exist, but farmers will need financial assistance and firm guidelines to do them.

Both candidates say they support Maryland's recent law that attempts to check agricultural pollution in a regulatory way, though Ehrlich indicates he favors voluntary, incentive-based approaches wherever possible.

Both candidates to date have spent more energy on reassuring farmers than on how they'll actually deal with the long-standing and intractable problems of runoff.

Open space

Both candidates said that in order to close budget deficits they'll continue the deplorable tradition of raiding tens of millions of dollars from Program Open Space (POS), a major funding source on the rural preservation side of Smart Growth.

The faster Maryland develops, the faster money for preserving land from development is supposed to flow to POS, from a tax on real estate transfers.

Townsend says she'll try to make up the difference of whatever she takes with bonds, while Ehrlich promises "to work" to restore POS to full funding someday.

Both candidates say they'll scrutinize new road projects to make sure they don't cause unnecessary sprawl development. But Ehrlich also says he'd consider building a far northern (Frederick County) route to a bypass around the Capital Beltway, which would induce lots of sprawl.

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