Burton Overwrought
Dear Bay Weekly:
I always read Bill Burton, and I usually enjoy his pieces. However, “In Election Year, ‘The Free State’ is Bought and Sold” [Vol. X, No. 6, Feb. 7], Bill sounds overwrought. He compares Gov. Parris Glendening to Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall 120 years ago. Only Glendening is worse, Bill says.
“You see, Boss Tweed,” Bill complains, “in your days, there was even honor among politicians and thieves (yes, sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish one from the other.”
Rubbish. You’re ticked off by redistricting. So am I. Rose Haven, where I live, is losing a great delegate, George Owings. These things happen. Both parties gerrymander.
Further, Bill, you get childish when you say ‘What’s an ex-governor to do, get a ticket to the bricklayers’ union and work like the rest of us?”
Most politicians do work hard, Bill. Really. And most politicians are not thieves, any more so than most businessmen are crooks, Enron not withstanding.
Have a double, Bill, and relax. You know what? You may even vote for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
— Tom Gill, Rose Haven
An Environmental Dozen
Dear Bay Weekly:
Here is an environmental dozen. First, six proposals to candidates for state offices:
1. Increase fines so polluters can’t just absorb them as a cost of doing business.
2. Apply the Critical Areas Act to our coastal bays so they will have the same good protections Chesapeake Bay enjoys, such as a wide buffer from development.
3. Plug three big holes recently blasted in the Critical Areas Act by Maryland judges.
4. Broaden “standing” in court so you don’t have to live next door to a polluter to sue, so people who get cancer from a smokestack three miles away can have the benefit of the law.
5. Build the Purple Line rather than the Intercounty Connector or the Outer Beltway.
6. Doubletrack lightrail, reduce nitrogen run-off, stop toxics and secure pesticides.
And second, six proposals to candidates for Anne Arundel County offices:
1. Stop railroading water/sewer projects at budget time. Stop railroading the annual update of the Water/Sewer Master Plan. Water/sewer is the real engine of overdevelopment.
2. Appoint more green people to the Board of Appeals, which decides most zoning cases.
3. Ban waivers that hurt slopes, creeks and roads. (Executive Owens bans all school waivers.)
4. Complete the Hiker-Biker Core Trail west through Annapolis to Crownsville, Millersville and Odenton, then north to BWI. With the BWI and B&A trails, it will form a figure eight.
5. Expand Provinces Park south and east so it becomes West County Regional Park. Complete Stoney Creek Regional Park by securing parcels on either side of North Shore Drive.
6. Preserve BW Parkway (Route 15) lands for high-tech firms rather than for malls. Preserve town centers for transportation hubs rather than Wal-Marts or other commercial monsters.
— James A. Hoage, Severna Park
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