Maryland’s smart growth program gets ‘a little more than a tweak’

Maryland’s smart growth program, one of the most widely noted efforts by a state government to curb sprawl, has largely survived the shift to a new Republican administration. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. recently introduced a “Priority Places Strategy,” which he described as “a little more than a tweak but certainly not a sea change” in the six-year-old smart growth program initiated by Democrat Parris Glendening. Ehrlich transferred the Governor’s Office of Smart Growth from the capital in Annapolis to the Maryland Department of Planning in Baltimore — a move that reduced the cost of management and placed it closer to the planners it depends upon, said Charles Gates, a spokesman for the Planning Department. “Each year for the past three years, the legislature has recommended eliminating the Office of Smart Growth,” Gates said. Ehrlich decided against its elimination. A Smart Growth sub-Cabinet position continues, and the program’s basic idea — using state spending to foster development in urban centers and planned-growth areas — apparently remains intact. “My administration intends to build upon smart growth by preserving its core mission — encouraging redevelopment in older communities and neighborhoods,” Ehrlich declared Oct. 9. Gerrit Knaap, executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, said one aim of the Priority Places Strategy will be to “find out whether local governments have regulations that allow them to accommodate growth within the Priority Funding Areas [areas where development is to be encouraged through state spending].” Ehrlich’s program will examine whether zoning and other regulations are excessively restricting housing development in those areas. Knaap said some Baltimore and Washington suburbs have “somewhat exclusionary” policies, which cause development to move farther out. Indeed, housing for Washington area commuters has begun to leapfrog into southern Pennsylvania — in part because of restrictive policies or higher costs in Maryland. Knaap says Ehrlich appears to be less focused on preserving outlying land than on encouraging development in the Priority Funding Areas. Ehrlich has also called for stepped-up efforts to redevelop polluted sites. The Department of Planning and its Office of Smart Growth have launched an interactive “Smart Sites” web database on “high-priority development opportunities across the state.” As of this fall, the web database presented information on a dozen brownfield sites in seven jurisdictions, some of them privately owned. “In the past,” said Gates, “this type of property would just sit.” Conservationists have expressed concern, however, about whether Ehrlich will do enough to preserve land and natural resources.