Selling the Future

Upon receiving word that Governor Ehrlich is determined to have a fire sale of various State-owned properties around the County, it appears that Executive Owens has done the right thing and tried to step in to block their sale. The 3.9 acre parcel at the northwest corner of Ritchie Highway and Jones Station Road in Severna Park and the 64-space Park & Ride lot in Earleigh Heights are on the Governor's hit list and represent yet one more step in his ideological drive to avoid tax increases by any means necessary. Slots and selling public lands are apparently the most creative solutions he can muster.

Meanwhile, the Severna Park plot is used regularly by not only commuters and those utilizing the B & A trail, but it has also hosted a farmer's market for 11 years. It has been a site for the Severna Park community to gather for recreation and commerce, and holds the potential to become an even more substantial hub for public transportation between Annapolis and Baltimore in the future, and once the public loses it, it's going to be gone for good.

Rather than auctioning our assets off and mortgaging our future, perhaps we should consider Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s famous words, "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." Future columns will focus on the public's cognitive dissonance between wanting more services (and effective funding of those currently in place) and the widespread disdain for paying more taxes, but let me leave you, dear reader, with a teaser. The October 2003 survey [pdf] by the Center for the Study of Local Issues, at Anne Arundel Community College, found that when asked "Which is the best approach for dealing with the State budget deficit?", only 24 percent of residents suggested raising taxes or creating new ones. Only 27 percent suggested reducing spending. Can you guess which alleged silver bullet almost all the rest chose?