Comptroller Peter Franchot continued his campaign for closer scrutiny of parkland purchases, telling county parks and recreation officials, “We don?t have a bottomless pit of money.”
But parks officials from both Baltimore and Howard counties argued with Franchot, saying it was important to buy open space when it became available. The state cannot take land for parks against the owner?s wishes.
“You might not get anything if you wait” for only the land the county has targeted for park and recreation use, said John Markley, deputy director of the Baltimore County Parks and Recreation Department.
Baltimore County has gone through the biggest building boom for parks in the past decade, said Jean Tansey, director of park building projects. But in high growth areas such as the Honeygo area in White Marsh, that land is now costing four times as much as it did 10 years ago, she said.
Gary Arthur, Howard County?s longtime recreation and parks director, said there were similar growth pressures there, and that the county can?t always afford the parcels that it has targeted for parks.
“Sometimes we can?t buy in these areas because of the market,” Arthur said.
Franchot said he understood “the need to be opportunistic” when land comes on the market, but “each of these projects is going to have to justify themselves. Are these the best possible deals?”
On the Board of Public Works, on which Franchot serves with the governor and treasurer, Franchot has blocked or objected to two recent projects in Queen Anne?s County, saying the state was paying too much to landowners who brought the deals forward.
The state and local governments buy parkland and develop it for recreational purposes using revenues from the state transfer tax on real estate sales.
After the session, Franchot was scornful of the “open space” argument being used for slot machine gambling, which he vehemently opposes. A report this week by Labor Secretary Tom Perez said that by helping the horseracing industry, slots help preserve the horse farms that might otherwise be turned into housing developments.
“Of all the absurd arguments for slots, that is the most absurd,” said Franchot.
It involves giving money to “rich racetrack owners so that they can pass it on” in the form of racing purses “to rich people who own horse farms.”
