HB1107 PART I

This country and our State is in the midst of a depression.  Unemployment is at an all-time high and government is still trying to get larger by increasing their size and spending.  Spending money they don’t have and will never be able to pay back.  Maryland is already trying to balance their budget by pass the cost of their programs down to the counties, but they still retain the control by dictating how the programs are to be enforced.    The proposed bill HB1107 titled Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2011 is just another example of the same kind of liberal control that will further increase the debit.   One might ask how does this increase the debt.  It’s simple,  by directing that all major subdivision must have public facilities drives the cost of development up making it impossible for a property owner to do their own development.  So it either shifts the burden to local towns who already cannot afford to pay their own budgets, which in turn will raise taxes in order to take on the new responsibilities.  Or if that doesn’t happen and someone has a large property that is currently permitted to develop a major subdivision, can no longer afford to do that development.  Therefore they must sell their property to a large development company, which is almost always located out of the jurisdiction where the development will take place.  They move in with their deep pockets, do the development, sell the lots, and when it’s over go back where they came from and take all their profits with them leaving local jurisdictions holding the bag.  So how do they handle all this, increase their size, hire new employees, and yes raise taxes.  This way it also decreases the value of the property to the owner of the property because when a development company purchases the land they need to pay less in order to meet the overall development cost if they are going to make a profit, and they will make a profit, and they will make a profit or they wouldn’t be in the business.  The fact is that right now there is no development going on because even those developers know that the economy there is no one who can afford to purchase their lots.

           

The writer of this bill is making a lot of assumptions that may not be true and I my opinion are not factual.  The bill even says they are estimates.  When the Coastal Bays critical area was being studied the estimates have not changed that much and most of the development taken place has been by these big developers with public facilities.  The fact it that 8% nitrogen load from on-site sewage disposal systems is a drop in the bucket to the overall picture.  What is happening with all the other contributors to this problem?   That’s a good question; farmers and the agricultural business are being hit with more regulations driving their costs up and their profit down.  And if that isn’t enough, environmental groups are suing farmers, and chicken processing companies, who then must defend themselves also increasing their cost and reducing their profit while these environmental groups’ costs are paid for by us the tax payers.  Therefore those being sued are not only paying for their own defense, but also for the lawsuit brought against them and quite frankly these radical environmental groups really don’t care and will tell you they don’t care.  So the end result is government is responsible for reducing the value of the farmer’s land, which can no longer afford to farm the land and this legislation, slaps them in the face once again.  And remember one of the purposes of the bill is agricultural preservation.  So what are they preserving it for, certainly not for agricultural because this bill is further killing the industry and putting the nail in the coffin.  When are our legislators going to wake up and realize they are kill our country and economy by passing regulations such as this piece of junk and driving our economy further and further down.

           

 I think if left in the hands of the property owner growth is controlled much better.  You don’t see a local coming in and building a large 5000 lot subdivision all at one time.  No, they do it a little at a time, in proportion to the need and in accordance with the regulations imposed on them by government.  These regulations, currently on the books already control growth and preserve agricultural land.  For instance in Worcester County, agricultural land is prohibited from doing a major subdivision and the chance of getting a zoning change completed is next to impossible.   The critical area regulations limit development considerably by requiring the size of the lots to be 20 acres even in agricultural zoned land.  Now that really preserves farmland doesn’t it.

           

Now to the minor subdivisions as anticipated in these regulations.  Worcester County now as previously stated only allows up to five lots.  However, this new definition only allows 4 lots (definition as follows: “Minor Subdivision” means the subdivision of land into fewer than five new lots, plats, building sites, or other divisions of land)  therefore the farmer in one swipe of the pen loses again.   And then there’s the addition of nitrogen removal units which adds a minimum of $10,000 to the cost of building a new home or for that matter to the cost of replacing an existing on-site sewage disposal system.  And then we look at the nitrogen removal unit itself.  The definition in this bill says, ”Nitrogen removal technology” means technology for the removal of nitrogen as approved by the department.   So you go to the expense of installing a new or replacement nitrogen unit today and one might think it’s over, but it’s not.  The definition says “as approved by the department”.   So, a few years down  the road, the subsurface part of the system fails and the department has changed what is acceptable technology, guess what, your spending more money to replace that unit again and who knows what the cost will be then.  It’s just a never ending problem because it’s always left up to the discretion of whom, the department and the bureaucrats running it. 

MORE TO COME