The State of the County

By Steuart Pittman

Thank you.

Thank you first to everyone here who was elected just one short year ago, both the family of seven who serve on our county council and graciously allowed me to speak in your chambers, and those who comprise our dedicated and diverse delegation that represents us in the Maryland General Assembly. The people of this county are lucky to have this new crop of talented public servants representing them.

Thank you also to everyone here who works in county government, whether I hired you or suddenly appeared as your new boss a year ago. We are a team, and you know that. You have showed me, and you have showed county residents over and over again, that when there’s a problem to solve or a citizen to protect, you are there, not only because it’s your job, but also because it’s your calling.

And finally, I want to thank everyone else in the room. You are here because you are an engaged resident, representing a community, or simply supporting the cause of making Anne Arundel County The Best Place. Your presence and your advocacy are what makes government work. Please stay engaged, and never give up.

The topic this evening is the state of the county. Most leaders say that the state of their jurisdiction is strong, and then they talk about economic growth. The state of Anne Arundel County is strong by those measures. It is very strong. Incomes are rising, unemployment is low, and our tax base is growing.

But let’s be honest. County government didn’t create the strong economy. County government didn’t choose our ideal location. And County government didn’t create the natural beauty of this piece of our planet.

County government is essential, however, as a tool in our efforts to protect what we have been given, and to ensure that it is available for all.

Let me repeat that.

I believe that our primary obligation as county government is to protect what we have been given, and to ensure that it is available for all.

I’ll tell you in just a moment what we are doing to meet that obligation, but first, I want to describe an even more fundamental challenge to Anne Arundel County, a challenge that also confronts our nation.

We must restore trust in government.

Trust in government has been on the decline for too long. Politicians use anti-government rhetoric as a weapon and voters blame government for their problems. We say it’s either sold out to the rich and powerful, or that it inhibits our freedom with regulation and taxes.

There is some truth in both perspectives, but I know that everyone in this room, and in fact everyone in this county, relies on local government. We want it to succeed. So let’s show some pride in what we do, and promote it.

As an old community organizer I started where I was most comfortable - with community engagement.

So far this year we have:

• renamed the Constituent Services office to Community Engagement and Constituent Services and started publishing weekly e-newsletters for every district,
• reorganized the Citizens Advisory Committee with a rep from each small area,
• held sixteen small area visioning sessions,
• Held town halls on
• Land use
• Immigration
• Health and human services
• Racetrack redevelopment
• Transportation
• Public safety
• Forest Conservation
• Employee satisfaction, and after creating an online budget building tool,
• Seven Budget Town Halls.

For county staff who thought the work day ended at 5, I apologize. There will be more Town Halls in 2020.

Growing trust in local government also requires that we take some risks and share some power. That’s why we’re starting Arundel Stat, a new open data portal that will be launched in 2020, allowing the public to see how we measure not only the successes of our programs, but also the shortcomings.

Our forthcoming Land Use Navigator (soon to be known across the county as LUN) will allow residents and developers to follow the progress of electronically submitted permit applications as they go through our systems, and to intervene more often and more effectively.

Our support for a charter amendment giving the County Council approval authority over our hiring of police chief, fire chief, and county attorney raised some eyebrows in government circles. Same with our endorsement of a charter amendment granting expanded access by the auditor to government operations.

But I don’t believe that sharing power is a bad thing, whether it’s with our residents or their elected representatives on the council. It can be frustrating as hell, but done right it builds trust and accountability.

The ultimate test of trust in government is taxpayers’ willingness to invest.

We were told that Anne Arundel County taxpayers are a grumpy lot, and would revolt if anyone raised our second-lowest rates of 24 Maryland jurisdictions, even to fund education, public safety, and transportation infrastructure.

We tested that theory and you all saw the results in the fall public opinion poll from Anne Arundel Community College. Seventy percent approved our increases, as long as the money goes where we said it would go. Had we been allowed to tax progressively like the state and the feds do, that figure would have been higher. Stay tuned on that front, as we work to shift the burden away from our lowest paid residents.

To maintain and to grow whatever trust we have earned from our taxpayers, we must deliver a handsome return on their investment. Or, as I said before, we must succeed in protecting what we have and making sure that it is available for all.

The greatest gift that we as a community have been given, and must protect, is our natural environment. The things that are gone when paved over or dead when polluted: the soil, the trees, the waterways and all of the life that they sustain.

The good news is that overwhelming bipartisan majorities of county residents support government efforts to protect our natural environment. Add on the frustration with traffic and overcrowded schools, and you’ve got a solid mandate for carefully managing growth.

On the other hand, we must respect constitutionally protected property rights and create places for our people to live, work, and play. Development can and should happen.

Here is how we are confronting that challenge.

We are ending the county’s extraordinary dependence on staff-approved modifications to facilitate development projects that do not conform to county code.

Land use plans and laws exist for a reason, and when the planning officer, a paid employee who works at the discretion of the county executive, has the power to waive legal requirements through modifications, the only winners are the well-connected regional developers who contribute generously to political campaigns. The loser is the natural environment that sustains us.

That’s why we sent out a directive in May announcing that modifications to circumvent environmental regulations will no longer be granted.

To reduce the temptation to rely on these kinds of modifications in the future, my administration and the county council must do what our neighboring jurisdictions have done, and update our land use and zoning code as we create our General Development Plan.

I cannot overstate the importance of this. We have outdated laws that stifle business and new kinds of development that didn’t exist when our code was written. I will rely on our team at Economic Development and our Chambers of Commerce to identify those flaws and propose reform.

Our 2009 GDP predicted that by 2020 very little land would be available for development under current zoning. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that we have 186 applications from landowners who plan to seek new land use designations, mostly upzoning for more development potential. Pressure to up zone will be strong, and in some cases may be appropriate, but zoning changes must reflect community-driven planning. They did not in the past.

Our last comprehensive rezoning was a very political process in which some members of the county council seemed to support upzoning based as much on land speculators’ desire to make a profit as on the directives of small area and general development plans. That invited the sprawl growth that cost us the trust of our residents.

I don’t want to see that happen again, and I don’t think our county council does either. Here is how we’ll prevent it.

Our Citizens Advisory Committee for the GDP is dividing the county into 9 regions. Immediately after the County Council approves the GDP at the end of next year, our planners will begin work on regional plans, each with its own Citizens Advisory Committee.

Comprehensive rezoning will take place for each region as part of that citizen-driven planning process.

The County Council retains the final zoning authority, but I am convinced that this council and those that follow it will engage with these local groups and zone according to the plans, especially if we are successful in our efforts to limit campaign contributions from the development interests seeking the rezonings.

The final, and most important part of this plan, I believe, is that once each region completes its plan, we will form an Implementation Advisory Group. Rather than watching the plans gather dust on a shelf, we will make them happen.

That is how Anne Arundel County will protect what makes us The Best Place.

Of course it’s not that simple. We also must

• implement our Move Anne Arundel! multi-modal transportation plan,
• re-do our Greenway Master Plan and town center plans,
• facilitate redevelopment where infrastructure exists,
• monitor sediment control at construction sites,
• upgrade failing septic systems,
• continue our watershed restoration projects,
• enforce our new forest conservation law, and
• permanently preserve environmentally sensitive land.

Because it is our sacred obligation to pass on land to the next generation in better condition than we found it, we must deliver on these promises.

We have another obligation that I take just as seriously. It comes straight from the pledge we recite before the flag of our nation. “Liberty and justice for all,” we say. “For All.”

Being The Best Place isn’t enough. We must be The Best Place For All. That’s what our signs will say as visitors enter our county in 2020. For All will be noticed.

At United Way of Central Maryland, ALICE stand for Asset Limited, Income Constrained Employed. It’s the folks whose paychecks don’t cover the basic necessities of life. In recent years, even while our county’s median household income approached $100,000 and unemployment dropped to 3%, our ALICE population rose from 1/4 to 1/3. One third of our residents can’t afford the basic necessities of life.

Our 2018 Poverty Amidst Plenty report shows that since 2015 our percentage of school children living in poverty increased from eight to ten percent, while our number of households making over $200,000 grew by 38%.

When what’s considered a good economy is accompanied by increases in poverty, we can’t claim to be The Best Place For All. We must do something different.

The good news is that what we do to serve the folks who’ve been left out of our economic success story also serves the whole community. Or, to put it very simply, we all do better when we all do better.

Consider education.

Investing in public education, both K-12 and Anne Arundel Community College, is the only way we will reduce the intergenerational poverty that faces too many children in our least affluent neighborhoods. But it is also our most powerful driver of overall economic growth.

We added 140 teachers, 35 counselors and 50 special ed instructors this year. That was a huge step forward, but it’s not enough. We will hear from both our Opportunity Gap and Student Mental Health Task Forces in the coming months, how we can do better. We will act on their recommendations.

Our police officers, firefighters and EMTs are in our neighborhoods every day and every night, serving and protecting us all, including our most vulnerable residents. We demand a very high standard of service from them, and in return, we must have their backs. That starts with staffing.

At our Fire Department, the call volume for each one of the last five years rose by an average of 7%. Staffing was stagnant, and our trucks were going out short-staffed too often. With help from a federal SAFER grant we are adding 70 new positions. In fact, we’ve already graduated 78 from two academy classes, so after attrition, we’re right on target. I’m also proud to say that these classes reflect the diversity of our county.

We’ve read a lot in the news recently about what happens when jails are understaffed and badly run. Last year the county council heard regular and urgent pleas from our detention officers’ union asking for vacancies to be filled and pay to be raised. Both happened this year. That means that we will be ready to staff and operate our new central booking facility when the doors open early in 2020. And not long after that we will be unveiling some new strategies to facilitate the all-important re-entry of our inmates to become productive members of our communities.

And just like fire and detention, our Police Department was being asked to provide more services to a growing population, with the same number of officers. We were stuck below 700 sworn officers for the last four years while the International Association of Police Chiefs had told us we needed 825.

I am very proud to announce that in just one year we have have grown from 693 to 791 sworn police officers. That is an extraordinary increase of 98 highly qualified, very well trained men and women dedicated to serving and protecting the people of Anne Arundel County.

With all seven FOP grievances resolved and a settlement of the public safety health benefits lawsuits, it should come as no surprise that morale is improving. Morale is improving, but the job we ask our officers to do is daunting.

With each intervention against the violence that threatens our communities, our officers must decide whether the use of force is warranted, and how best to apply it. Failure to use force can result in death. The use of excessive force can end careers.

I have thought long and hard about the stress these officers are under, and also about how to build the community trust that is so essential to effective policing. My conclusion is that transparency is the answer.

Maryland Live! Casino has security cameras. Gamblers who drink too much must be removed, sometimes with help from our officers. When the gamblers charge the officers with use of excessive force, the videos tell the true story. That protects our officers and our taxpayers from the cost of false allegations.

Body worn cameras provide that transparency as well - for officers, their supervisors, the courts, and the public, whenever and wherever police interventions take place. Officers in departments that use body worn cameras consistently report that the transparency they provide gives them security and rewards their professionalism. Law abiding residents, some of whom fear the police, report the same sense of security.

My FY21 budget request will include body worn cameras and the staffing necessary to ensure that the footage is available to bring facts to the courtroom.

Making our county The Best Place For All doesn’t end at education and public safety. Government can and must address what academics these days call the social determinants of health.

Our transition team was so committed to this concept that it asked for all legislation on its way to the county council be accompanied by a health impact note. We are working on a plan to provide these notes, and will begin the practice in 2020.

A major social determinant of health is housing. It’s a big part of why our county is such a difficult place to live if you get paid less than about $25 per hour.

We should have listened to Senator Pam Beidle when she was on the county council in 2004 and introduced legislation requiring developers to build a percentage of new construction as affordable. Our neighboring counties did it, but we failed to act, leaving us with a housing affordability gap that hurts both our people and our local businesses.

But better late than never. Working with the County Council this year, we passed a workforce housing bill and long-overdue fair housing legislation. Next we will pick up the baton from Senator Beidle and introduce Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit and Housing Trust Fund legislation.

We’re also exploring tiny home possibilities, preservation of existing older stock that is affordable, and many other strategies that have worked elsewhere.

One thing that we will not do in our county, is allow Johnny-come-latelys to the affordable housing cause to drive a wedge between our environmentalists and our housing advocates. Smart growth, environmental protection, and affordable housing are three legs of a very sustainable stool.

Housing is just one piece of the health and wellness puzzle. We will also pursue

• multimodal transportation options,
• public access to recreation areas,
• accessible health services,
• livable wages,
• gun violence prevention (please join us next Thursday at 6pm at the Anne Arundel Medical Center Belcher Pavilion, for a preservation of our task force preliminary recommendations). And finally,  
• civility and respect in our schools, our workplaces and our neighborhoods.

Lack of that civility and respect, particularly when it comes in the form of racism, bigotry, and hate, is a disease that we must eradicate.

We know what the state report on hate bias says about our county, and we know our county’s history. Both show that we have work to do, very difficult work.

We will learn our history. We will teach our history. But we will not repeat our history. While racism is deeply embedded in our institutions, in our attitudes, and sometimes even in our politics, diversity and inclusion is our future.

With two strong words added to our three-word county slogan, we will embrace - regardless of race, religion, national origin, or any other characteristics that define us - we will embrace our classmates, our co-workers, and our neighbors.

The people of this county all want exactly the same things: a healthy environment, healthy communities, and a government we can trust.

When enough good people come together with enough good intentions, it really is possible to make history. Good history.

I think we have that magic in Anne Arundel County. You know we have that magic.

So let’s all get to work, helping to make Anne Arundel County The Best Place...For All.