Bills aim to focus growth

Smart Growth, adopted more than a decade ago, was designed to encourage compact development near existing cities and towns and to cut down the rate at which forests and farms were being turned into subdivisions and shopping centers. But a new report says it has failed.

"It specifically measured the land consumption per new resident and found that it's the same as it was in the past decade, it's the same as it was three decades ago. So clearly we haven't made an improvement."

That was Mike Sherling, co-author of the report issued last week by Environment Maryland, a non-profit advocacy group. Under Smart Growth laws, the state would finance roads and water and sewer projects to encourage development in what were called "priority funding areas."

One bill would require local governments to follow their own master plans in making zoning decisions. Others would add goals for compact and environmentally sustainable growth; require counties to report on their progress toward meeting those goals, and set "performance standards" to measure whether the counties are meeting those goals.

Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Maryland, insists the bill "in no way" intrudes on local controls.

"What it does is say we have expectations for the results of your plan. Everybody should be held accountable and in this day and age when every dollar is so scarce that we want to make sure that we're using each one really, really efficiently."