Two groups called on political candidates Tuesday to make preserving open space a priority throughout the state.
Environment Maryland and Partners for Open Space asked the state’s present politicians and candidates seeking office to not raid the coffers of a program designed to conserve land and develop parks at a small gathering at Germantown’s Ridge Road Recreational Park. Program Open Space, established in 1969, created Maryland’s real estate transfer tax and also diverted a percentage of that tax into a fund to conserve the state’s natural resources and the Ridge Road property was part of that program.
But the program has been raided to help balance Maryland’s budget several times this decade, according to an Environment Maryland official, taking $480 million away from preservation efforts.
“Unfortunately, from 2002 to 2006, it became a pot to rob to balance the budget,” Jennifer Bevan-Dangel, staff attorney for Environment Maryland, said Tuesday. “Once they divert it, there’s no accountability.”
Marcia Verploegen Lewis, campaign director of Partners for Open Space, said the program received its full funding — $361 million — for the 2007 budget year beginning Saturday. But Verploegen Lewis said Maryland’s projected budget deficit of at least $1 billion for fiscal year 2008 means open space funds aren’t safe from “the black hole of the state budget.”
No one at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources was available Tuesday to speak about the program. A Md. DNR Web site said it has preserved morethan 283,000 acres of open space for state parks and natural resource areas and more than 39,000 acres for local park land.
About 20 percent of land in Maryland is developed, according to the site, and about 19 percent is either publicly owned open space or protected with conservation easements. Verploegen Lewis said the state needs to keep pace with development pressures through a fully funded Program Open Space.
“Once land is developed, once a shopping center is built,” Verploegen Lewis said, “they’re never going to take it down and plant trees.”
Candidate scorecard
Environment Maryland has rated current state legislators on their environmental record, including a smart growth category. The rankings can be found at www.environmentmaryland.org/scorecard
