Maryland Democrats have plan to restrict governor on transportation decisions

The Democratic leaders of the General Assembly want to restrict the governor's power to decide what transportation projects to fund.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch threw their support Tuesday behind legislation that would create a process for determining which transportation projects should be priorities.

The bill would affect all future governors, but is an explicit reaction to Gov. Larry Hogan's decision last summer to shift $1 billion toward highway construction after scrapping the $2.9 billion Red Line through Baltimore. The light rail project had been in planning for more than a decade.

The leaders said the bill would "create a new process to objectively screen and score transportation projects based on their anticipated benefits." It would require the governor to justify decisions that fall outside of that scoring system.

Busch said such a measure was not needed under previous governors because there were opportunities for legislators and local government to give input. Under Hogan, he said, that changed.

"There was no discussion, no collaboration," Busch said. "They waited to the end of the session to put forward their plan without any input from the General Assembly."

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