Other transition work groups made recommendations to new Cabinet secretaries they had never met, but in the case of the environment report, work group co-chairman John Griffin became the head of the Natural Resources Department, which will implement some of the recommendations.
More than 150 people participated in 10 subcommittees and came up with 57 recommendations. The basic goal is to make Maryland “the nation?s most livable state.”
“The grand challenge,” as the work group called it, is “simultaneously and harmoniously restoring the Chesapeake Bay, managing growth within its landscape and addressing climate change,” the report says.
“Public support is strong. Political will is aligned ? as never before” among state, regional and federal officials, according to the report.
“I thought what came out of these working groups was pretty impressive,” said Cindy Schwartz, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters, who served on the work group.
The issues were “very complex” and intertwined, as another environmentalist described it, running across multiple departments and jurisdictions, Schwartz said.
An important factor the work group addressed was the two key departments, Environment and Natural Resources, “had suffered enormous cuts” under the Ehrlich administration.
The concern was so deep that the first three recommendations dealt with the departments? lack of money and loss of staff.
Restoring the Bay is a top priority, but the report says the state is lagging “far behind the progress needed to achieve the key restoration objectives to be met by 2010” under an agreement Maryland signed in 2000.
“Many of them will not be reached,” Griffin said in a recent interview. “One can seriously question whether we?re going to get there.”
On climate change, the report says, “Maryland cannot wait for the development of national programs. ? Maryland is especially vulnerable to rising seas, more violent storms and other consequences of global warming.”
The O?Malley administration has implemented some of the report?srecommendations, such as:
» Supporting the enactment of the Clean Cars Act
» Requiring tougher emission standards
» Supporting increased production of biofuels from cover crops and wood chips
» Funding fully the Program Open Space programs, a key campaign promise of O?Malley?s.
