"PlanMaryland" is dead, long live "A Better Maryland"

Governing by executive order has become common practice in Washington and Annapolis and so have been the attempts of  current office holders to eliminate and eradicate the policies and orders of their predecessors. Rational people will find this unproductive.

Hogan announcing a new State Development Plan effort (Aug 2017)

Governor Hogan has been very critical about some of O'Malley's central policies, including stormwater fees (which Hogan called a "rain-tax"), rail transit ("boondoggle"), smart growth and especially "PlanMaryland", O'Malley's initiative to coordinate local land use planning with larger State goals.

It isn't surprising, then, that Governor Hogan rescinded his predecessor's executive order which instituted PlanMaryland in December 2011 and replaced it with his own order. What is  surprising is that it took Hogan until August of this year to do so. In front of County representatives convened for the annual MACO conference he declared:

 “finally put local planning authority back in the hands of local government, where it belongs.”

As if the previous plan did anything different. While Hogans new executive order kicks off a new approach to a State Development Plan, judging from his Executive Order the goals are quite similar to the those of his predecessor's plan:

Goals and objectives of Governor Hogan's new Executive Order

The New Better Maryland Plan kicks off this fall with a series of public meetings.

PlanMaryland came under fire from Republicans ever since  Governor O'Malley and his Secretary of Planning initiated the first public meetings which is kind of curious because there was never any doubt that the State not only has the right tom plan but actually has to do it by law.  Maryland law, specifically Title 5 includes State Planning and the requirements for a "State Development Plan":

The Department shall prepare and from time to time revise a plan or plans for development of the State. The plan or plans collectively shall be known as the State Development Plan.

(b) Purpose of Plan.- The Department shall prepare the Plan to promote the general welfare and prosperity of the people of the State through the coordinated development of the State.

(c) Basis of Plan.- The Department shall base the Plan on studies of governmental, economic, physical, and social conditions and trends. 

Paving over green spaces for new subdivisions (Photo: Philipsen)

Even though a State Development Plan and regular updates are legal requirements, Republicans screamed bloody murder when the previous administration did it and quite per the law included environmental concerns  such as sea-level rise and climate change. Republicans declared a "war on rural areas" and saw a power grab  when PlanMaryland included land use considerations, clearly a domain of local government and equally clearly something that the State is supposed to look at. Title 5 states:

The Plan shall contain recommendations for the most desirable general pattern of land use in the State. The recommendations shall be based on the best available information concerning: 

(1) environmental and natural factors, including climate, soil and underground conditions, topography, and water sources and bodies of water;
(2) present and prospective economic bases of the State;
(3) water and sewerage facilities;
(4) trends of industrial, population, or other developments;
(5) habits and standards of life of the people of the State; and 

(6) the relation of land use in the State to land use in adjoining areas.  .    

The trench war about PlanMaryland resulted in a plan that was rather defensive in tone stating right in its introduction:

PlanMaryland is not a substitute for local comprehensive plans nor will it take away any local planning and zoning authority

Anyone who has read this far may conclude that a State Development Plan is just a matter for planning geeks and that the debate about terms and goals is esoteric and irrelevant to the life of real Marylanders. A few facts make clear, that land use and development affects everybody in the State:

Over the last 40 years, our consumption of land has grown at three times the rate of our population growth. While it took three centuries to develop the first 650,000 acres in Maryland, it has only taken about 40 years to develop the next million acres of land. Since 1950, we’ve lost 873,000 acres of farmland – that’s more than twice the area of Baltimore County – and we’re projected to lose another 226,000 acres by 2035 if current trends continue. That is not sustainable.
PlanMaryland is our first strategic plan for long-term sustainability. It’s a road map to better help us accommodate the 1 million additional residents Maryland is projected to have by 2035, while at the same time better protecting the Chesapeake Bay and saving more than 300,000 acres of farmland and forest. (Governor O'Malley in the intro to Plan Maryland)

Whether one likes the term smart growth (note that  Hogan's new executive order still includes it) or not, the proper arrangement of development on the Maryland landscape is hugely important not only for environmental protection but also for efficiency and economic development. According to Gerrit Knaap, Director of the National Institute for Smart Growth at t5he University of Maryland, the new effort holds the promise of developing a cpativating vision for the entire state:

PlanMaryland was criticized by rural officials as usurping local land use control, but in reality, it simply placed existing state programs such as Priority Funding Areas, Rural Legacy areas, Sustainable Communities and other state designations on a single map to better coordinate existing state programs. It’s primary shortcoming, however, was that it did not provide a compelling vision for a 21st century Maryland. That vision is precisely what Maryland needs right now. (Gerrit Knaap, SUN editorial)

Low density scattered development like this is very costly

Sprawl and scattered development is inherently inefficient, be it for schools, fire or police, road construction, transit, street lighting sewer, water, cable or electric power. Inefficient arrangement of development replacing towns and villages and their surrounding undeveloped buffers with carpets of uniform subdivisions is also bad for "social capital" and community spirit.  Those endless subdivisions have no "there there", i.e. no centers, no "commons", no places of civic life or interaction.

Many planners predict that those soulless subdivisions without public transit and miles away from the nearest grocery store or doctor's office will be the slums of tomorrow when many baby boomers will be too old or frail to drive and the younger generation continues to look for urbanity and an exciting lifestyle.

There are many good reasons why land use is and should remain local. But there are also many good reasons why the State needs to coordinate local land use and exercise some oversight when it comes to stormwater management, septic tanks, development in sensitive areas or transportation needs. There have been too many cases where local land use plans were renegade plans that ignored water service boundaries, their own designated priority funding areas or any restrictions on development in sensitive areas.

It is obvious that even if all local plans were locally optimized "smart" development, they wouldn't necessarily add up to a smart state. There must be rural and urban counties, it simply doesn't make sense to homogenize the entire state. If each county tries to attract gigantic distribution warehouses, whether there is good highway access or not, if each county wants large lot subdivisions, shopping malls,  outlet centers and business parks, to use just a few examples, probably none will succeed and none will be atrractive. Nor does it makes sense for each county to make their own land use and comprehensive plans in isolation and then expect the state to pick up the tab for schools, roads, clean-up of the Chesapeake and all the societal cost coming from inefficient non sustainable development. This is where a vision for the State is needed, a bigger concept that assigns different functions to different areas, each with a viable economic base, all adding up to more than simply the some of the parts.

Urbanity is not limited to big cities: Hagerstown (Photo: Philipsen)

It is easy to see that rural areas feel disadvantaged if everybody aims for concentrating public investments in the big population centers telling the rural areas that they should remain scenic but providing no hint how the economics should work and where residents should earn their living.

Real smart growth must create viable rural economies from farming to logging and from hospitality to health care. Traditional farmers have been under siege across the nation with  the industrialization of agriculture on the one side and encroaching housing developments on the other. Urbanites and rural residents share the goal of maintaining Maryland's family farms. To achieve that, farmers cannot unilaterally be burdened with all the environmental regulations, whether it is septic tanks, nutrient loads, stream buffers or critical areas.

 While those protections are important for a healthy Maryland and a healthy Bay, there must be cost sharing arrangements that prevent the unwanted demise of even more family farmers. Rural protection cannot mean that new residents can shut down farmers for noise or odors or for the construction of silos or farm-stands to sell their produce or dairy. Anybody who looks carefully into these matters will recognize that even under  previous administrations and their smart growth focus the recognition of the rural areas was there, for example through "the right to farm law", which curbed residential recourse against normal farming "nuisances".

Maryland farming: Sometimes there is noise or smell

For moving forward, the battle line between smart growth and rural rights,  between environment and economy, between local land use and State control  have to be abandoned because they don't make any sense. Healthy cities, towns and villages are as much in everyone's interest as a healthy environment. A sound economy requires efficient allocation of resources. Scarce resources can't be spread around like water with a watering can, they must be strategically used to leverage virtuous cycles of economic development and prosperity. One can only hope that the Governor's "Better Maryland" initiative does not begin everything from scratch but builds on past success and learns from past failures.  The time horizon assumes that a new State Development Plan would be completed in July 2019. Clearly the administration assumes that it will be in office beyond the 2018 election.

So far there are no details known about the plan except for a few general guiding principles. A website for the effort is still "under construction", similar to the MD Department of Planning, the lead agency for the new plan, which is also under construction with a Secretary that the General Assembly refused, who could receive salary only after she received a new job title, and whom Senate President Miller called unqualified.

The State's task to have State Development Plan is too important to get mired in the standard binary debates of either or. Maryland can only succeed if plans soundly for a sustainable future. This isn't a matter of Democrat versus Republican, but in many regards a matter of life and death.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Hogan's Executive Order 
Baltimore SUN about Hogan's announcement of a new plan
O'Malley's Executive Order Plan Maryland
Carroll County Times editorial