LEADERSHIP THAT WORKS: Ensuring a Cleaner, Healthier Maryland

Goals and Values for a Cleaner, Healthier Maryland

Maryland’s environment is one of our state’s greatest treasures, and preserving our finest natural resource – the Chesapeake Bay – must be a top priority if we are to leave our children an environment they can enjoy. Individual cities and counties can only control the environment within their borders, but so many of our environmental problems require regional solutions that only a strong, forward-looking state government can implement. Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown will immediately protect our environment with leadership that works for a cleaner, healthier Maryland.

Paths to Progress

As Maryland’s next Governor, Martin O’Malley will:

• Implement an Environmental Bill of Rights for Maryland’s Families. Martin O’Malley believes every Maryland family has the right to enjoy a clean, safe environment, and he will use five key principles when making environmental decisions. O’Malley believes Maryland’s families have:
  
  

  The right to breathe clean air

  The right to drink clean water

  The right to a cleaner and healthier Chesapeake Bay

  The right of every child to be safe from the debilitating hazard of lead poisoning

  The right to enjoy the parks, playgrounds and open spaces that belong to Marylanders

  
  
• Institute and Enforce the Healthy Air Act. Martin O’Malley understands that air quality has fallen dramatically in Maryland, and he fully supports the Healthy Air Act, which will reduce the levels of Nitrogen Oxide, Sulfur Dioxide, Mercury, and Carbon Dioxide in Maryland’s air – pollutants that have been linked to birth defects and dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay.
  
• Fully Fund Lead Paint Poisoning Prevention Programs. Martin O’Malley will promote a safe environment both inside and outside our homes, schools and workplaces, and he will fully fund the much needed state lead poisoning programs.
  
• Restore Cuts to Maryland’s Successful Program Open Space. Martin O’Malley will undue the damage done by the current administration and will restore the cuts to Program Open Space to preserve Maryland’s valuable parklands and nature reserves and refuges.
  
• Reduce Sprawl and Over-Development. Martin O’Malley will work for initiatives that promote growth in a more thoughtful manner. O’Malley will work to ensure that families spend more time together and less time in traffic. O’Malley will also work to preserve open space and oppose unreasonable developments which threaten the Bay.
  
• Institute BayStat - A New Tool to Monitor and Gauge the Health of the Chesapeake. Martin O’Malley will use the techniques gleaned from Baltimore’s successful CitiStat program to bring accountability and responsiveness to the state’s work in improving the health of the Bay.
  
• Create New Tax Credits To Protect Vanishing Farmland. Martin O’Malley will create new tax credits to protect Maryland’s vanishing farms and will increase funding to programs to reward farmers for planting cover crops and creating buffer zones.

A Record of Progress

• Martin O’Malley was the first Mayor to join 12 states in a federal lawsuit to reduce dangerous mercury emissions and protect Maryland’s air quality. O’Malley’s action was necessary because the Ehrlich Administration decided to side with their special interest friends in Washington, DC and ignore Maryland’s environmental problems.
  
• Martin O’Malley has been a leader in lead poisoning prevention, reducing the number of children in Baltimore City seriously poisoned by lead on a daily basis by 65%.
  
• Martin O’Malley has earned scores above 90% from the Baltimore City League of Environmental Voters, and earned their endorsement in every city election since 1991, including the race for Mayor in 1999.
  
• Martin O’Malley has made Baltimore a national model in urban smart growth. He has cracked down on urban polluters, reduced sprawl by reclaiming more than 5,900 vacant properties for redevelopment, and dedicated funds to renewing urban decay.
  
• Martin O’Malley safeguarded drinking water for the 1.8 million Marylanders in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area by signing the Reservoir Watershed Protection Agreement.
  
• Recognizing his innovative and bold leadership to address some of Baltimore’s toughest problems, and the progress he had made to protect Baltimore’s environment, Time Magazine named Martin O’Malley one of the top five big city mayors in America.

Maryland Can Do Better

• Bob Ehrlich refused to join the bipartisan, multi-state mercury lawsuit, which if successful would reduce the amount of mercury contamination in our water supply which has been linked to birth defects in newborns.
  
• Bob Ehrlich declined to sign the bipartisan Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and he opposes the Healthy Air Act.
  
• Under Bob Ehrlich, 41% of the Chesapeake is a low-oxygen “Dead Zoneâ€? incapable of supporting marine life.
  
• Bob Ehrlich was caught trying to sell off state preservation land in a secret deal to a wealthy developer.
  
• Working closely with developers, Bob Ehrlich diverted $269 million from Program Open Space, threatening Maryland’s legacy of national leadership in Open Space protection.
  
• Last year in their most recent rating, the Maryland League of Conservation Voters gave Bob Ehrlich a D+.

Bob Ehrlich and the Environment – No Goals. Failed Leadership.
A Stronger Maryland Can Do Better.

Martin O'Malley and Anthony Brown –
Leadership That Works