It IS The Economy, Stupid.

The Coastkeeper has been negligent for months and has ignored her blog.  Not the best way to keep my followers following.   Please accept apologies.

The 2011 Maryland General Assembly began it's session shortly after the new year.  I had intended to post updates, news, information about all the exciting environmental bills that were introduced this year, keeping you informed and asking for help with letters/emails/phone calls when needed.

But this year's Session turned into a real slogfest (is that word?) and it was all I could do to take care of matters from my desk and in Annapolis, leaving little time to even try and create a blog posting or two.  Hopefully most of you caught my cries for help on the Coastkeeper Facebook page and I thank all who did write letters, make phone calls or sent emails to their legislators when I asked.

2011 will go down as one of the worst legislative sessions for the environment in history.  Our legislators, who all ran on a 'green' platform promising to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and our other waterways,  caved to industry lobbyists on every important environmental bill.

~Despite all the testimony, facts and an incredibly successful campaign in Washington, DC our lawmakers decided it was ok to keep all those plastic bags flying around our roadsides, forests and in our waterways in Maryland because the plastics industry cried 'foul.'

~Despite peer reviewed studies, facts and analysis presented by scientists and researchers who were experts, but apparantly were NOT highly paid Industry witnesses, our legislators decided it was ok for the chicken produced in Maryland to have arsenic in it when the chemical companies cried 'fowl.'

~And with incredible lack of long term vision, our legislators decided it was ok to burn trash as a 'renewable' resource but offshore wind was going to have to wait.

~State funding to preserve agricultural land was deeply slashed, in a wonderful little bit of budget trickery in which millions of  tax dollars that were paid into a dedicated fund for land preservation were robbed because a loophole allows the State to transfer the money at will into the General Fund in order to 'balance' the budget.

~One bright spot, of sorts, was the passage of a watered down (sorry, pun intended) fertilizer bill that is a good start at reducing phosphorus loads to our waterways.

And while most of the hand wringing and furrowing of eyebrows in the General Assembly these past two months was because all these decisions were made in the 'best interest of the economic situation in Maryland' or because it was feared there would be 'impacts to jobs' in the State, any bill that smacked of regulation was passed down to Committees like a hot potato to be killed by inaction. (Sparing our legislators having to get involved in messy stuff like debate and voting.)

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently published Briefing Paper #305, written by Isaac Shapiro and John Irons, titled: 'Regulation, Employment and the Economy - Fears of job loss are overblown.'

Shapiro and Irons state in the opening Executive Summary of the report,  'In the first months since the new Congress convened, the House has held dozens of hearings designed to elicit criticisms of regulations, introduced legislation that would dramatically alter the regulatory process by requiring congressional approval of all major regulations, and passed a spending bill that would slash the funding levels of regulatory agencies and restrict their ability to enact rules covering areas such as greenhouse gas emissions.'

They further noted, 'In support of each of these steps, opponents of regulation argue that agency rules are damaging to the economy in general and job generation in particular. Some say specific regulations will destroy millions of jobs and cite a study (critiqued later in this paper) purporting to show that regulations cost $1.75 trillion per year. Regulations are frequently discussed only in the context of their threat to job creation, while their role in protecting lives, public health, and the environment is ignored.'

They stated,  'Well-designed and strongly enforced regulations are often necessary for the economy to operate effectively, a proposition supported by the history of regulation.....' and pointed out how lax regulations have resulted in such economic disasters as our recent financial market meltdown, major food poisoning outbreaks, and the mother of all environmental and economic crisis - the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The report is not very long and very worth the read.

But let's bring this back to Maryland's 2011 Legislative Session.  Taking a lead from their Federal counterparts, environmental regulations or programs at the State level were labeled as a threat to the economy and a job killer.  It has long been a favorite activity in Annapolis to plunder funding sources for the Maryland Department of Environment or attempt to take regulatory oversight away from MDE and place the control in another agency that has no enforcement authority.

So this leads me to a final question - how often do you follow what is happening in Annapolis during the legislative sessions each year?  Do you know who your District Delegates and Senators are?  Do you ever write to them, or call them, or better yet pay a visit to them in Annapolis?   The second most important thing to an elected official is YOUR VOTE (the first most important thing is the industry that contributes the most to their campaigns and the lobbyist representing that industry.)  If your elected officials are hearing from industry lobbyists on a daily basis, who will continue to foster this myth that regulation results in job loss, it just might be a good idea for greater numbers of ordinary citizens to make their voices heard during the sessions.

Our great natural resources-water, forests, wetlands and the air we breath do not have a voice.  They don't have a highly paid lobbyist.  They can't vote.  You must be their voice and speak out,  not only by paying an annual membership to your environmental group of choice or showing up at the polls, but by making your voice heard in person with some face to face time with your elected officials.  Make yourself heard!