“This land is your land, this land is my land.”
With all respect to Woody Guthrie, the author of those great lyrics, it seems we need to update them.
This land is the government?s land.
That?s what state officials decided when they overruled plans for a 1,350-unit project near the Bay Bridge on Kent Island. Gov. Martin O?Malley and Comptroller Peter Franchot voted down the project because it was in an environmentally sensitive area.
It sounded like just another development.
Maryland?s swelling population and the need for new homes have pushed growth to the shore. But not everyone there wants it. An eight-year development battle ensued even though the project met every requirement.
When this project started, we were partying like it was 1999 ? because it was. The development was named, ironically, Four Seasons. Who knew that building 930 single homes, 420 condominiums and a dock next to the Bay would take 32 seasons and still accomplish absolutely nothing?
The battle over the project took on a life of its own. It involved politicians, interest groups, environmentalists and lots and lots of lawyers.
If it had happened hundreds of years ago, this fight would have warranted a saga, not a song ? something like “Beowulf Battles the Developers.” But in 2007, it?s “Beowulf v. Developers,” and everything ends up in hearings and courtrooms.
As it turns out, the developer, K. Hovnanian, isn?t exactly a Grendel-like bad guy either. The firm did everything it was told to do. According to The Washington Post, O?Malley even said the developers had “jumped through every hoop.”
Even that wasn?t good enough. The plan called for building a bit of the community in a wetlands area. That meant it needed even more approval. And that?s where politics trumps law, ownership and local authority.
So O?Malley and Franchot voted the project down ? not on the law, but on politics. O?Malley called overruling eight years of process “common sense” because our current development system wasn?t good enough in his eyes.
Maybe the two of them even have a point. Yes, we do have to protect the Bay. It is the lifeblood for the state. No one on either side is saying otherwise. That?s one of the things the development process is meant to do ? protect the state.
But it?s not “common sense” to make development impossible ? especially after a developer gets all the proper permits. Imagine if that happened to your home or business.
In this case, everybody loses.
Developers will pass the cost of this sort of stupidity down to consumers. Politicians will lose any remaining credibility about being business-friendly, and environmentalists get depicted as a bunch of screaming yahoos when all they wanted to do was protect an essential resource.
This land was made for you and me, but the question is who gets to decide what we do with it.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at the Media Research Center?s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].
