NEW GROWTH PLAN: Gov. Larry Hogan announced a new effort Saturday for a statewide plan to guide growth and development across Maryland, writes Pamela Wood for the Sun. The plan, Hogan said, will “finally put local planning authority back in the hands of local government, where it belongs.” Speaking at the close of the Maryland Association of Counties conference, Hogan’s announcement drew hearty applause from an audience filled with local officials and members of his Cabinet.
- Gov. Larry Hogan (R) told a group of county leaders here on Saturday that he signed an executive order to create the statewide land-use plan that, unlike a highly criticized development plan set by his predecessor, seeks input from local and county officials, Ovetta Wiggins reports in the Post. “As I have traveled across Maryland, local elected officials have repeatedly asked for a plan that better reflects the needs of our state,” Hogan said.
- Republican Hogan got a boisterous standing ovation. A majority of county elected officials in Maryland are Republican, though Democrats control the five largest jurisdictions. The only real news in a speech that contained the usual boilerplate about administration accomplishments was that Hogan was officially killing Plan Maryland, the controversial smart growth guidelines from the final O’Malley years, writes Len Lazarick for MarylandReporter.
- Hogan’s announcement is mostly symbolic, as nearly all references to the program known as “Plan Maryland” were previously scrubbed from the state Department of Planning website, writes Bryan Sears in the Daily Record.
ECONOMIC DOWNTURN EXPECTED: A leading state economist urged local government officials to prepare for an inevitable economic downturn that he said is coming soon, reports Bryan Sears in the Daily Record. Anirban Basu, speaking to a gathering of county leaders at the annual Maryland Association of Counties summer conference, said that while he is optimistic about the economy for the balance of the year he sees turbulence on the horizon. (More at the bottom of MarylandReporter.com story if you can’t access the Daily Record.)
PURPLE LINE CASE: The federal government filed its brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. in the long-running Purple Line case on Friday and rebuked two rulings by a lower court by saying the judge erred in his conclusions, reports Andrew Metcalf for Bethesda Beat. The brief prepared by Department of Justice attorneys is the first one filed in the appeal in the D.C. court. It lays out why Maryland and the Federal Transit Administration believe District Court Judge Richard Leon’s rulings in the case should be overturned.
HOGAN ON CITY STATUES: Gov. Larry Hogan said Friday that it is not his place to tell cities across Maryland how to deal with statues of historical figures who, for many, represent a legacy of slavery and racism, reports Ovetta Wiggins in the Post. “We’re not going to tell every jurisdiction what to do,” said Hogan (R). “They have to make the decision for themselves.”
BACKLASH OVER TANEY REMOVAL: Gov. Larry Hogan’s decision to remove a controversial Confederate-era statue from the State House grounds has prompted a backlash within some facets of his Republican base, reports Erin Cox reports for the Sun.
- Josh Hicks and Ovetta Wiggins recap the situation that made Gov. Hogan reach his decision on the Taney statue at the State House and some of the criticism he has received from removing it.
- Amanda Yeager of the Annapolis Capital writes that the statue of Roger Brooke Taney has garnered controversy for years. In the early 1990s, there were calls to take the statue down — and again in 2000, 2007 and 2016. She talks with several people about their views on the statue finally coming down.
- Citing the complex history of Maryland before and during the Civil War, conservative Greg Kline of Red Maryland writes that Gov. Hogan was wrong in removing the statue of Taney. He even sides with Senate President Mike Miller on the issue.
- In this seminal period of American history, it is important for elected officials to display moral courage and leadership rather than more fashionable politics of survival – and a craven pandering to people’s baser instincts. Columnist Barry Rascovar writes in MarylandReporter.com that both Gov. Larry Hogan and Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh took the high road last week, doing what was right even if it proved controversial.
PUGH’s QUICK ACTION: Baltimore’s Confederate monuments exited swiftly last week, but they might have left something behind: an image, however temporary it might turn out to be, of a city that got it done, Jean Marbella and Luke Broadwater of the Sun reports. “Ain’t nobody got time for this white supremacist foolishness,” began a gleeful account by the team at the website Blavity of the unannounced overnight takedown of the statues. “The city of Baltimore did not come to play with ya’ll.”
JOLENE IVEY ON RACE, TANEY TAKEDOWN: Jolene Ivey, former delegate and one-time candidate for lieutenant governor discusses race relations in America and the removal of the statue of former U.S Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney from the State House grounds with Ryan Miner of a Miner Detail podcast.
IDENTITY POLITICS: Montgomery County Legislative District 15 Republicans released an email blast on Sunday morning, affixed with a cartoon image of a child, ostensibly blasting Democrats for playing identity politics, one week and a day after white nationalists and Neo-Nazi groups collided with mostly peaceful protesters and some members of the anti-fascist group, Antifa, in Charlottesville, Ryan Miner notes in his Miner Detail blog. The cartoon image is of a white child, FYI.
STUDY: WIND TURBINES WON’T DETER TOURISM: Scores of wind turbines off Ocean City’s coast, many standing about as tall as the Washington Monument, likely won’t lower property values and may even become a tourism draw, a new report suggests. The economic analysis prepared on behalf of U.S. Wind Inc. seeks to allay concerns among Ocean City officials that the proposed structures will turn off tourists and mar the resort’s iconic ocean views, Jeremy Cox reports in the Salisbury Daily Times.
KUSHNER RENTAL FIRM REVIEWED: Congressional Democrats from Maryland are asking for thousands of pages of documents to review the business practices of the apartment rental company owned by Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior adviser to President Donald Trump. Kushner’s company owns 17 rental complexes, most of them in Baltimore County. In a letter Friday, Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen and Reps. Elijah E. Cummings, Dutch Ruppersberger, John Sarbanes and Anthony Brown told Kushner’s firm that it must abide by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations because its tenants receive federal rental subsidies through the Housing Choice voucher program, Doug Donovan reports for the Sun.
POLS OUT AT MACO: What is it about Maryland that forces office-seekers to campaign in extreme weather conditions, often while the voters they are trying to connect with have Old Bay and crab guts on their hands? That phenomenon was on full display Friday evening during the annual crab feast at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference in Ocean City, writes Josh Kurtz for Maryland Matters.
SEN. RAMIREZ TO RUN FOR COUNTY STATE’s ATTY: State Sen. Victor Ramirez (D) is poised to enter the race for Prince George’s County state’s attorney, according to multiple sources – setting off a scramble to replace him in Annapolis, writes Josh Kurtz in Maryland Matters.
For any governor to state that the President of OUR country is “not fit for office” is when THAT governor needs to RESIGN his position!! Because he can no longer lead with fairness and measure! Pandering and inciting HATE is NOT what we need or want in our Leaders in Maryland.. or anywhere!
The article does NOT say WHY Hogan decided to remove the statue? At the risk of sounding ignorant what was this person KNOWN FOR? Was he only known for wanting to keep slavery, fighting for slavery? Or was he a slave owner (which most were at that time) and went on to do great things for the country. If it was the latter, Hogan is pandering and the statue should NEVER have been removed! If it was the first reason than I would agree 100% that it is TIME to remove those.. put them in a museum somewhere and replace it with a statue of someone who fought for ALL our freedoms!! We are ALL Americans and OUR LEADERS need to LEAD and stop the SHEEPISH PANDERING!!!
Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney (pronounced “Tawney”) is best known for his decision in the Dred Scott case. The case concerned an enslaved man who had been brought to Illionis (a free state–now appropriately known as the Land of Lincoln). He sued for his freedom, but was denied. He appealed up to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, wrote that current or former slaves and their descendants had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
That is what Taney is known for.
The full context of Taney’s majority decision:
“In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument…They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
The Dred Scott decision was so horrific that some scholars (and Abraham Lincoln) said it was one of the causes of the Civil War–it denied the states the right to abolish slavery. There is absolutely no reason why Taney should have a statue, except if you want white supremacists to have a place to gather.
I’m a passionate Democrat, but applaud Governor Hogan for finally, finally getting rid of this statue.