Environmentalists dubious of Ehrlich claims ANNAPOLIS, MD (wypr) - In the week leading up to a meeting of state and local government officials in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich has staged several events. And he's made some claims that have environmentalists scratching their heads. WYPR's Joel McCord reports:





Monday afternoon Ehrlich set up shop on the banks of the Gunpowder River to announce $26 million in grants to protect some forty five hundred acres from development.

Ehrlich: "When you add all the programs up, one in five acres is permanently protected. That's a big deal."

The accompanying press release said that the state had budgeted "record Program Open Space funding for two consecutive years." But those numbers are hard to pin down.

Documents from the Department of Legislative Services and Partners for Open Space, an advocacy group that tracks these numbers, differ slightly, but they agree that the current fiscal year, 2007, is the first in which open space funds surpassed those of fiscal 2002, before Ehrlich took office.

However, the governor's press office says the appropriation for that year was lower than the $126 million for fiscal 2006, the first of two record years.

Warren Deschenaux, the top analyst in Legislative Services, said the numbers can differ depending on who's counting.

Deschenaux: "It's really not that critical if the number's a hundred and twenty or a hundred and twenty five. What is critical is how it compares to the year before and the year after to establish some pattern."

And the pattern for Ehrlich's first three years in office, Deschenaux said, had been to use Program Open Space, a dedicated fund generated with property transfer tax revenues, to cover yawning deficits.

Deschenaux: "Over $450 million of transfer tax revenues was diverted from its statutorily intended purposes to the support of the operations run from the general fund."

Marcia Verploegen Lewis, campaign director for Partners for Open Space, said that's nothing new.

Lewis: "Previous governors have diverted this funding. However, this administration has shown a consistent approach to diverting these funds."

In a letter that appeared Tuesday in the Delmarva Farmer, Ehrlich repeated the program open space claim and noted that he had "signed into law" the Healthy Air Act, which caps emissions at seven coal-fired power plants in Maryland. He called it a "hard-won achievement" in which he "worked with both sides of the aisle to craft a plan that cleans the air without threatening our electricity supplies."

That surprised Senator Paul Pinsky, the Prince Georges Democrat who was the lead sponsor of the bill.

Pinsky: "He's rewriting history. He opposed it. He fought us. He put in a weak regulation which didn't go far enough. It didn't deal with the whole issue of carbon dioxide and global warming. He ignored that. He said it was a bad idea."

Ehrlich lobbied heavily against a bill similar to the Healthy Air Act during the 2005 General Assembly Session because it required power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He opposed the bill that passed this year for the same reason.

Yesterday, he turned away questions about the letter.

Ehrlich: "What kind of a question is that?"
Questioner: "Why would you write that?"
Ehrlich: "Because. Your premise is flawed."
Questioner: "Okay, tell me..."
Ehrlich: "Because what passed was not what we opposed."

Today, Ehrlich convenes a meeting of bay state executives with little chance of reaching their 2010 goals for cleaning up the Chesapeake. Don Boesch, president of
The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, says the goals may have been too ambitious, but he doesn't see any sense of urgency among political leaders.

Boesch: "We have a number of directives that the governors and the head of EPA will consider and they are, for the most part, interesting and important, but small efforts."

Earlier this week, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation outlined proposals to kick start Maryland toward reaching those goals. Gubernatorial spokesman Henry Fawell said Ehrlich "looks forward to working with the Bay Foundation in the years ahead."

I'm Joel McCord, reporting in Annapolis for 88.1, WYPR.
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