Fines Increased and Lawsuit Tossed

On Tuesday night, the County Council voted, at Executive Leopold's insistence, to pass a bill which raises the fine for constructing a shed, deck, pier, or entire home without a permit to $500/day. The bill comes largely in response to the ongoing situation at Little Dobbins Island.

In similar news, Judge Paul Goetzke threw out the lawsuit the Magothy River Association (MRA) and five riverfront property owners had filed against the owner of Dobbins Island for erecting a fence on the beach that restricted public access. After the ruling, the attorney for the MRA expressed to the current owner that the Association is interested in purchasing the island. Keep posted for updates.

Leopold Fires a Shot Across the Bow

With his latest critical area violation lawsuit, John Leopold has made it clear that there are no fish too big to be caught in his environmental enforcement net. The County is suing Herrington Harbour, one of the largest marinas in the area, for illegally constructing a wedding chapel, a rooming house, sheds and walking trails constructed without permits.

Steuart Chaney, president of Herrington Harbour, is extremely well-connected, politically speaking, as evidenced by the fact that Senate President Mike Miller (D) felt comfortable shamelessly flakking for him: "People get charged with anything these days. I just know that he's a decent, honest, hardworking man, and a good family person who in my opinion is a law-abiding citizen."

Nonetheless, the County Executive seems to be pursuing a hard line: "There will be no sacred cows at the trough. Everyone will receive this message that this administration will maintain an even playing field."

The County is seeking to tear down the illegal structures and restore the impacted shoreline.

Voluntary Strategies, Regulation, and the Patuxent

Dennis King, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, has published an interesting paper in the Bay Journal focusing "on why government decisions have so little influence on the millions of land and water-use decisions that do have a direct effect on the health of the [Patuxent] river." His conclusion is that, in essence, unless lawmakers find the spines to implement "hard strategies" which create expectations among individuals in the watershed that: "a) their individual decisions to comply with environmental laws will contribute to a collective effort to restore the health of the river that may succeed, and b) their individual decisions to ignore environmental laws will be detected, and that they will be prosecuted and penalized," the health of river and the Bay will continue to decline.

Leopold Wisely Lifts Freeze for Inspectors

About a month after he announced that there would be a countywide hiring freeze on non-emergency employees, Executive Leopold wisely lifted the ban to fill six open inspector positions. It's a good start, but I suspect getting the job done properly will require hiring quite a few more.

Critical Area Failures

The University of Maryland recently released its report on the enforcement of critical areas law in Maryland. It found, unsurprisingly, that "in many cases, the various parties responsible for enforcing the Critical Area Act use their discretion to interpret the Act in ways that minimize impacts to private property owners, at the expense of stricter environmental standards." Capital coverage of the report can be found here.

CAC Smackdown

You've got to love the Critical Area Commission (CAC). Here you've got one State body that actually seems to have no qualms standing up for the environment and protecting our shared resources. They, as one of the final lines of defense, didn't hesitate to tell Janet Owens and Jack Keene to take their unwanted and inappropriate schemes for Franklin Point Park back to the drawing board, and now they're standing up to Stephen "Rubber Stamp" LeGendre, in the case of the home/lighthouse/pool on Little Dobbins Island.

LeGendre is the County Hearing Officer who racked up an 86 percent approval rate for variance requests in 2003, and who determined that developer Daryl Wagner's illegally built home on the Magothy could remain (but that the pool, gazebo, and lighthouse had to go). The Critical Area Commission believes that the variance standards weren't met, and is appealing the County's decision to let the house stand.

So, not only did Wagner not get the permits to build his house, he violated State Critical Area laws as well. And, he's a builder who should know better. Mr. Wagner's lawyer, Robert Fuoco, presumably beginning to feel the heat of several State agencies breathing down his neck, is apparently searching for a settlement, "It appears as if this case will take several years, and with a lot of resources involved, unless everyone is willing to sit down and figure out a reasonable accommodation."

Ideal response from the powers-that-be: "Not unless that "accomodation" involves razing your client's home and accompanying kitsch paradise, reforesting the island, and going back to the proper agencies, hat in hand to plead that Mr. Wagner doesn't deserve the maximum penalties allowed by the law."

As West/Rhode Riverkeeper Bob Gallagher said, "Failure of government to enforce the law doesn't give anyone the incentive to follow it," particularly those without a well defined sense of right and wrong.


Crimes Against the Magothy: Exhibit A