March 16 Environmental Matters Hearing

The rules changed overnight – public testimony was not accepted on bills with numbers higher than 1269. Only the sponsors and department representatives go to testify on these. If you signed up anyway, they recognized you by name after the hearing. I signed up for both 1307 and 1372 but only got recognized for 1307. I drove over an hour and a half to testify and they couldn’t even call my name. I won’t bother going next time – that will show them!

I was interviewed by a TV station in Salisbury for my views about the boat fees (HB1307) and then introduced them to Dave Smith so he would be interviewed as well.

HB1307 came up first and the panel consisted of Secretary Griffin, Bob Gaudette (boating guru at DNR), a representative from the boating trades, and the mayors of Rock Hall and Chesapeake Beach. The last minute amendments reduced the fee windfall from $9M to $4M and the Republicans on the committee ripped DNR for diverting Water Improvement Program funds to other uses. The Democrats were quiet on this issue and I assume O’Malley’s plans to divert more money from the program in the new budget made them toe the party line. If you sleep better at night because you trust the State to manage your money, you were wise not to see this – it was disgusting.

The boating guy from DNR complained that most people don’t know what they do with the money and I wouldn’t have had the stones to go there knowing that the Governor was planning to divert some to other general fund uses and some of it went to pay slip fees for commercial fishermen who didn’t have waterfront access.

Gaudette testified that the fees were well received by most people but one of the delegates countered that with the ton of email he received – all in opposition. Another delegate observed that if they hadn’t diverted so much money, they wouldn’t need the fee increase at all. The discussion got outside just boat fees and Griffin, under pressure, agreed that he might be able to address the diversion issues with other cabinet heads but he wasn’t making any promises. Holding my breath starting ……NOW!

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