The County Council voted unanimously last night for a zoning bill that no one seems to want.
The bill makes comprehensive rezoning a legislative act subject to a voter referendum and the county executive's veto.
Previously, comprehensive rezoning had been accomplished by an administrative decision of the council sitting as the Zoning Board. The decision could be appealed to Circuit Court.
The bill approved last night is intended to implement a charter change opposed by the council and County Executive Charles I. Ecker in November, but approved by the voters.
Council members said the bill keeps the spirit of the charter amendment, but a writer of the charter amendment said it does just the opposite.
Peter Oswald of Fulton said the wording of his amendment was clear in that it called for virtually every zoning decision to be a legislative act subject to veto and voter referendum.
But council members, acting on the advice of county attorneys, say that the charter amendment is not so sweeping. Some zoning matters -- such as new town zoning for Columbia or special zoning uses that allow businesses in rural areas -- are not legislative acts subject to veto and referendum, they believe. To make them so would infringe upon the due-process rights of property owners, council members said.
"We put together a document as close to the issue raised on Nov. 8 as we could," said Council Chairman Charles C. Feaga, a 5th District Republican. "It's as close as we can do."
Mr. Oswald vehemently disagreed. "I am outraged as a citizen of the county" that the bill implementing Question B makes exceptions other than the so-called piecemeal exception specified in the amendment, he said.
Mr. Oswald said he and leaders of the group pressing for sweeping zoning changes had given the council alternatives that they believed would preserve due-process rights, but that the council chose not to follow them.
"I can't understand why the council knowingly chose not to implement the amendment as written," he said.
One of the alternatives ignored by the council would have been to add the legislative process to the administrative process now used by the council sitting as the Zoning Board, he said.
Council members told him such a process would be too bureaucratic, Mr. Oswald said. "But I would rather have a process that is bureaucratic than one that is illegal" because it does not follow the spirit of the amendment.
Mr. Oswald said he has written a letter to Mr. Ecker asking him to veto the bill enacted by the council last night, but he doubts that will happen.
He said supporters of the amendment are considering suing the county over the implementing legislation. A suit is more likely to occur, he said, when a property owner is granted a zoning use that council members believe is exempt from the charter amendment, but supporters of the amendment do not. "It puts property owners in a really difficult position," Mr. Oswald said.
In other action last night, the council voted unanimously to approve the sale of $10.7 million in revenue bonds in March and use the money to build the county's first municipal golf course.
Although the vote was 5-0, Councilman C. Vernon Gray, the 2nd District Democrat, and Robert L. Doory Jr., the county's legal adviser on bond sales, sparred briefly about amendments to the bill.
Mr. Gray questioned why one amendment changed the name of the bonds from golf course revenue bonds to revenue-producing capital project bonds. "It broadens the market and it gives you a better rate," Mr. Doory replied.