Gov. Robert Ehrlichscored almost a failing grade from the League of Conservation Voters in its biennial report card on the environmental record of Maryland?s governors.
Ehrlich?s grade dropped from a D+ two years ago to a D this year.
“This administration has often done more harm than good,” said the league?s executive director, Cindy Schwartz. “This administration has slowed down environmental progress, fought against strong protection, and ignored ? or in some cases even exacerbated ? serious environmental problems.”
Ehrlich gets a C grade for air quality, though he signed the Healthy Air Act, the so-called 4P bill to reduce four key pollutants by coal-fueled power plants.
“It took two years of hard lobbying to get the bill passed,” said Terry Harris, a Baltimore attorney who heads the league?s political committee. “His support of the healthy Air Act was minimal at best.”
The league was especially critical of Ehrlich?s failure to try and stop the Blackwater Resort development in Dorchester County, a 2,700-home golf community near a national wildlife refuge. Ehrlich has repeatedly said he doesn?t want the state interfering in local zoning decisions.
“This hands-off approach to local development is going to allow bad development across the state,” Harris said.
Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said, “We?re disappointed that the league?s longtime partisan agenda prevents them from offering a fair and objective assessment of the governor’s accomplishments.”
Fawell noted that Ehrlich has preserved 60,000 acres of parkland since taking office and authored the groundbreaking Chesapeake Bay Restoration Act, financed by the “flush tax” to clean up sewage treatment plants.
“Marylanders have every right to be proud of these historic accomplishments,” he said.
“Two years ago, we gave him a lot of credit for the flush tax,” Harris said, but since then there has been a lack of leadership.
“We?re not partisan,” Schwartz insisted, though the league has endorsed only five Republican candidates out of 49 people it has backed for the General Assembly.
“Our process is based on the environmental record of the candidates,” Harris said.
Former Gov. Parris Glendening got the grades of B and B+ from the league.
