Legislative Updates~ By Delegate Mike McDermott

Dec. 30th, 2011

Freedom Lost

Many concerns over O’Malley’s Plan for Maryland

By Delegate Mike McDermott

Once again, the O’Malley administration and its apologists have sown division in our state with another program, they claim, we cannot live without: Plan Maryland. Those who naively claim the plan does not remove local authority need to follow the money. If a local governing body gets out of step with the governor’s cadence, state money will serve as the whip of conformity.

There is nothing wrong with planning. In fact, communities are required to maintain Comprehensive Plans for growth and development in Maryland and the state has always provided guidance and support. They are reviewed periodically and updated by the folks who know and recognize the dreams, hopes, and desires of their affected community.

I get concerned when the state wants “more teeth” in planning laws and guidelines. That is code for “inflexibility” or the desire to make land use decisions that are etched in stone rather than drawn on paper. In America and a free Maryland, we use to value the private property rights of each other. In fact, we use to understand their importance to our foundational moorings. The idea that more governmental control and bureaucracy enhances or increases my freedom  would prove anathema to the ears of Presidents Washington, Adams, or Jefferson.

Who has the right to declare that your city or town can only grow to a certain line?  What if a crossroads decides to be something more? What if a farmer decides he wants to diversify and divide up his property? Where did our cities and towns come from in the first place? Why should these decisions fall to bureaucrats in Annapolis and Baltimore? Ironically, it was royalty who first directed their growth.

These matters would be tragic enough if they came through an elected General Assembly, but the governor is enacting them by Executive Order...he simply wills them to be so. These are not the actions of a representative government. Considering the overwhelming bi-partisan rejection of the O’Malley septic plan last session, its clear the governor has decided to bypass the people and go straight to dictating.

By way of example, only 7.24% of Worcester County is developed and 69% of our total land and water resources are already controlled by the government. Plan Maryland says, “that is not enough”. The plan calls for “saving” 300,000 acres of farmland over the next 25 years. The only way the land can be “saved” is by a taking. Farmers will lose their property rights and future development will not occur...all in the name of “freedom” and a “greater good”.

New technology is rendering obsolete the notion that owner operated septic systems cannot be environmentally neutral and state of the art farming techniques continue to enhance output while protecting the environment.The fact is, technology is outpacing our best planning efforts and rendering the science, conjectures, and cost-benefit analysis null and void. 

Through Plan Maryland, proponents call upon the government to “use any means necessary” to demand that growth only occur in existing cities and towns, and bureaucracy, once created, results in freedom lost one code at a time.

We would do well to remember that a benevolent tyrant is a tyrant none the less.

Marylanders, take back your state!

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