The Enabling Legislation is now Law!

After months of stops and starts, after many obstacles created by Senator Guzzone, the Majority Leader of the State Senate, despite the lack of interest and apathy by many of the members of the State Delegation, the bill to enable Howard County to raise its school surcharge fees has become law.

All the proceeding of the Howard County delegation were live-streamed on Facebook. Only two Delegates appeared to work in good faith to pass a law and hold developers accountable. Thank you to Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary and Delegate Terrasa who did their best.

The disposition of the rest of the delegation ranged from apathy to obstructionism.

For example, in one session Senator Guzzone and Delegate Pendergrass threw a wrench in the process by politicizing senior housing and working to exempt a 1200-unit retirement home proposal to be built in Clarksville, Maryland.

In another session, the County Administration provided an obscure term called “technically complete” used by the Department of Planning and Zoning in the development review process to exempt projects from the process. It would amount to thousands of homes and millions of dollars.

This attempt was unsuccessful after a post in this petition called out the egregious attempt.

Now it is up to the county council to pass a bill. Our attention will turn to them.

We will keep this petition going until we have the surcharge fee that holds developers accountable and that takes effect immediately.

This fight is not over.