Sign up to receive County Executive Pittman's Weekly Letter to be the first to learn about big announcements, and get an inside look at issues crossing the County Executive's desk.
You’ve read a lot in the local paper lately, and maybe online, about how quickly and quietly five members of the County Council tanked Councilwoman Rodvien’s bill banning campaign contributions from real estate developers when they have applications in the pipeline (which is pretty much always).
I spoke at a rally before the vote, alongside former Prince Georges’ County Executive Rushern Baker, leaders of League of Women Voters and Growth Action Network, and other supporters. The bill before the Council that night was modeled after the one that Rushern Baker used to restore public trust in land use decision-making after his predecessor’s conviction, and it was authorized by an Anne Arundel delegation bill in the 2019 session of the Maryland General Assembly.
The Capital Gazette posted a chart showing how much each Council member had received in contributions from developers, and it’s been widely shared. That chart, however, missed the bulk of the giving: contributions from the attorneys, engineers, builders and others who profit from the development of real estate.
Former County Executives have been elected with a majority of their campaigns financed by the real estate industry. The $250,000 bundled by Halle Development for Jessica Haire, my 2022 opponent, got so much attention when voters made an issue of it that, when I met Mr. Halle a few months later, I thanked him.
I will note here that while developers lined up unanimously against me in 2018, I chose to pursue their money in 2022 when my opponent openly opposed affordable housing. Despite supporting a ban on developer money in campaigns, I did not unilaterally disarm. Most of their money went to Haire in that election, but I was able to raise enough of it to pay for the ads that got our message to voters. I know the game, and I don’t like it.
But I don’t dislike development, and I don’t dislike developers, their attorneys, their engineers, or builders. When they talk to me about public policy, about zoning on land that they own, fees that they pay, and the regulations that impact their work, I try hard to consider their interests in the context of my job representing the public interest, not as somebody who relies on their money to keep my job. Electeds all try to do that, but the more we depend on developers for campaign money, the harder it is to say no to them.
We’re currently in the final stretch of comprehensive rezoning. The zoning bills that we have put before the Council for each of our nine county regions were based on the recommendations of Stakeholder Advisory Committees, the Planning Advisory Board, the professionals at Planning and Zoning, and my own interpretation of the information brought forth by all three.
When landowners and their agents don’t get the upzoning that they applied for during that process, their last opportunity to be heard is through County Council amendments to the zoning bill. We created the region planning and stakeholder advisory process to grow community engagement and strengthen the community voice in the process, and the Council has in most cases been willing to turn away upzoning requests that are inconsistent with community and planner recommendations.
But the pressure by developers to upzone, even in areas zoned as rural, has begun to crack our defenses, and I will continue to use my veto authority when the “smarter, greener, more equitable” principles of our community-driven Plan 2040 and Region Plans are not adhered to.
My wake-up call that things were moving in a new direction was some language in last year’s Housing Attainability Act. That bill was the result of a months-long workgroup convened by a councilmember who had voted against our Essential Worker Housing Access bill. I had announced after that defeat that without legislation requiring developers to offer 15% of rental units and 10% of for-sale units at reduced prices, I was unwilling to move forward on other legislation that developers supported, like the redevelopment bill.
The task force was mostly people from the real estate development industry. The bill that it produced delivered the moderately priced units, but with a heavy price tag. To get developer support, it created an incentive to buy and build on parcels of land that have environmental features like steep slopes, wetlands, and specimen trees, even when no moderately priced units are required.
The incentive is created by granting a longstanding request from the development community to calculate density - the number of homes that can be built on a parcel of land - from the gross acreage of the land rather than the net after subtracting the protected acreage. Without an upzoning, it increases development potential on parcels that include sensitive land, increasing the value of those parcels to speculators and making their purchase by conservation groups less likely.
You may remember that I convened conservation organizations to make a case to council members that we should remove the incentives for sprawl development from the bill before it took effect. It was too late. The move was deliberate, and there was no interest in a change of course.
I find it frustrating. We spent years engaging residents in planning that would address housing affordability without a return to the sprawl development that is so profitable for developers and so harmful to communities and nature. I get why developers don’t like being regulated, and I get why they contribute so much to political campaigns.
I just wish our elected representatives spent less time in rooms with developers and more time with people who can’t afford rent, and more time outside in nature.
The next land use bill that I will send to the County Council raises development impact fees as proposed in this study. It helps us to cover the costs of schools, roads, police, fire, parks, and libraries, but developers will say that it raises housing costs. It does not. Workforce and moderately priced housing are exempt from impact fees, and market rate housing is by definition priced as high as the market will bear.
I hope that you’ll join me in advocating for this long-overdue update to these fees.
Until next week…