As the new home of Maryland PIRG's environmental work, Environment Maryland can be contacted regarding this update.
Protecting Maryland’s Treasured Places – Program Open Space
Foremost among the victories on the environmental front this year was money for land conservation. In the first draft of the budget unveiled at the beginning of the year, the governor diverted $140 million from Program Open Space this year and more in future years. MaryPIRG and a broad coalition of more than 100 organizations, known as Partners for Open Space, made it a high priority to get the money back. By the end of the session, we had succeeded in restoring $73 million for this year, eliminating the diversions for future years, and creating a system for repaying any funds that are taken from the program.
Another priority on land conservation—making sure protected land isn’t sold off without permanent protection and full public scrutiny—was also successful. This passed in two forms, a bill that will take effect this year and a constitutional amendment, with further safeguards, that will be on the ballot next year.
The successful land conservation bills were sponsored by Sen. Paula Hollinger (SB 306), Sen. Brian Frosh (SB 102), and Speaker Michael Busch (HB 4).
Toxic Flame Retardants
Another environmental bill that made its way through will phase out the use of some toxic flame retardants. These chemicals were approved for use 30 years ago without any health studies, and are now building up in our bodies as new health studies show they disrupt the hormonal system and interrupt brain development.
The bill, introduced by Del. James Hubbard (HB 83), included only two of the five classes of bromine-based flame retardants, so we will continue to work on the issue.
Unfinished Business
Two bills missing from the list of victories are the two clean air bills MaryPIRG worked hard on—the Clean Cars Act (SB 366/HB 564) and the “Four-Pollutant Bill” to reduce emissions from power plants (SB 744/HB 1169).
The Clean Cars Act came within one vote of passing out of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, which is closer than we’ve come before but still a vote short.
The power plants bill passed out of the Senate Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee and looked like it was set to pass the full Senate. But the day before the Senate vote, the House Economic Matters Committee brought the bill up for a surprise vote and killed it.
We remain confident that we will pass both of those bills soon. We made clear progress this year educating lawmakers on their impacts, and will continue to line up supporters. Major legislation like that often takes several years to get through.
On the Inter-County Connector, the news is not good. It looked for most of the session like we had the upper hand on convincing legislators that borrowing one billion dollars to build the road was a bad idea. But in the end they gave the administration the authority to borrow $750 million and wrote them a check for $250 million out of stronger than expected tax receipts. Legal strategies remain, but it doesn’t look good.
Other notable unfinished business from this session includes bills on energy conservation, forest preservation, wetlands protection, smokefree restaurants and campaign finance reform.