Before I begin, I will take a moment to express my appreciation to Senator John Chafee. When you retire at the end of your term in 2000, you will leave behind a powerful legacy of strong leadership on critical issues: Health care and housing for low income children and their families; Helping people with developmental disabilities realize their full potential; And of course providing for a cleaner environment. I thank you for your dedication to these issues.
It is a pleasure to be here and to speak about one of my favorite topics. Whether we call it Livable Communities, Sustainable Growth, or as we call it in Maryland Smart Growth, this national movement toward more sensible land use patterns offers us a genuine opportunity to make positive, lasting change as we begin a new century.
For 50 years, Americans have acted as if moving out is moving up. In the process, we have taken our natural resources for granted. We have paid too little attention to what happens to agricultural communities when farms are fragmented by development. Or what happens to forests, and the wildlife that lives in them, when they are destroyed by roads or malls. Across this nation, we have let too many of our great and historic cities and towns collapse. This has been done, in part, through an indifference to urban needs that has fueled the great flight to the suburbs. We must remember that we cannot be a suburb to nothing!
Those of us who have studied the causes of sprawl understand that government policies, even well-meaning policies, too often have caused or perpetuated the very patterns of development we are now trying to reverse. For example, the Interstate Highway System provided the United States with perhaps the best national road network in the world. That highway system is so good, in fact, that it has literally paved the way for long-distance commuting from virtually any corner of this nation. The Interstate program -- combined with the G.I. Bill that made low interest mortgage loans available to returning World War II veterans -- were great programs, but they inadvertently made sprawl development financially viable for developers and home buyers.
Now, those patterns of land use have increased air pollution that has virtually negated the introduction of dramatically cleaner cars, and they have cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for new, and often redundant, highway or other infrastructure costs.
In Maryland -- and I know this is so in many other States -- we too often followed an unwritten rule that directed State funds to new suburban developments first, at the expense of our older communities and neighborhoods. It was a hidden form of entitlement! No matter where a developer wanted to build, the state pitched in to help. Even if it hurt our established communities. I can remember when my wife Francie and I were courting, we would have dinner on Friday nights with her parents, then go into downtown Cumberland. Plenty of open stores, coffee shops, movie theaters, people walking around, etc. A perfect Norman Rockwell small town setting on a Friday evening. Then some developers wanted to build a big shopping mall just outside Cumberland, and the state pitched in with $12 million for roads and other infrastructure. Within a year from when this mall was built on the side of the mountain, stores in downtown Cumberland shut down, some closed at 5 or 6 p.m., and it looked like a ghost town. Now we are spending millions more in State dollars to revitalize the same downtown Cumberland we helped to destroy by providing funding for the mall!!!
We are reversing these trends in Maryland by addressing the fundamental driving force behind development decisions: bottom-line cost. We decided that if government policies had inadvertently encouraged sprawl by making it cost-effective, then new government policies could encourage investment in existing communities and Smart Growth centers, and make it more expensive to further sprawl. People make bottom-line decisions. Homebuyers do. Builders do. Investors do. Therefore, it must be our goal to change the bottom line.
That is why we turned our $17 billion per year State budget into an incentive fund for Smart Growth. First through State law in 1997, and then by Executive Order in 1998, we refocused the State's financial resources on our established communities and neighborhoods. For development projects outside of those areas, we are saying, "Sorry, the State will not help out! If you building out there, and tearing up one more farm, then you pay for roads, water and sewage, schools, parks, and other development costs. But, If you invest in our existing communities, then you will avoid those costs, and you will have access to tax credits, grants, low-interest loans, and other bottom-line impacting incentives." Let me emphasize: It is not our intention to stop growth. We do not want "No Growth," or even "Slow Growth." In fact, we want economic growth in Maryland, and our economy is booming. We have the third highest family income in the nation, and stand at a 10-year low in unemployment. We simply will no longer approve State funding for capital projects not in accordance with our Smart Growth Program. We will not use tax dollars to subsidize sprawl.
Think about this statistic: The American Farmland Trust says the United States is losing 45.6 acres of green space an hour. That is a loss of more than one acre every two minutes! In Maryland, if growth patterns do not change, new development will consume as much land in the next 25 years as it has during the entire 350-year history of the State. This simply cannot be allowed to continue.
Think about it: We carefully plan for and invest in our capital infrastructure roads, schools, water, and sewer lines. We also carefully plan for and invest in our human infrastructure education, health services, and care for our disabled and elderly. We must equally understand the need to care for and invest in our environmental infrastructure . . . our green infrastructure our forests, fields, farms, rivers, lakes, bays and streams. I am proud that we already laid a sound foundation for the protection of our green infrastructure with Smart Growth.
Maryland may be a leader in this effort -- but we are not alone. This is neither a regional issue, nor a politically partisan one. All over the country my counterparts on both sides of the aisle are addressing the same or similar problems: Republican Governors like Mike Leavitt of Utah and Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey are dealing with the adverse effects of sprawl development and working to protect and preserve green space; Democratic Governors like Tom Carper of Delaware and Roy Barnes of Georgia are doing great things regarding transportation and land-use; And Independent Governor Angus King of Maine is working to address the threats from unplanned and unchecked sprawl development before the quality of life in his state is permanently damaged.
My fellow governors and I are on the front lines, but there are some critical steps that only the federal government can take to help us win this battle against sprawl. I see four key areas: 1. Continue and expand effective programs; 2. Emphasize the location of government facilities; 3. Use a "sprawl vs reinvestment" test for decisions; 4. Rethink some broader policy issues.
First, continue and expand effective programs like the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program [CREP], which is providing Maryland with $200 million to protect forest buffer along our waterways. I stress that we are not just asking for money. We are making a significant investment as well. The State is investing approximately $140 million over first five years of our Rural Legacy program to protect close to 70,000 acres threatened by development.
Additionally, new programs like the Liveable Communities initiative can be a helpful way for the Federal government to be a partner with state and local governments on this issue. Just think what a strong Liveable Communities partnership could mean to all our States: The Better America Bonds could unleash $9.5 billion in investments to preserve green space, restore urban areas, and protect water quality. In Maryland, this would help us expand our Rural Legacy and Brownfields programs. Community Transportation Choices is a $9.9 billion proposal to ease congestion and improve air quality. As most members of Congress already know, the Washington area suffers from the second worst traffic congestion in the nation. In Maryland, this initiative would help us meet our goals of doubling mass transit ridership, improve existing roads, and exploring new technology-based options to reduce congestion. And the Regional Connections Initiative would provide $50 million in matching funds to enact Smart Growth strategies. This would help us revitalize existing communities. An important aspect in the Livable Communities approach is the emphasis on keeping land use decisions with local government. A solid Livable Communities partnership will give the States and local jurisdictions many of the tools they need to combat sprawl.
The second approach the federal government can adopt is emphasizing the location of government facilities in Smart Growth areas. The federal government should make it a practice to locate new offices in central business districts especially in communities where other revitalization efforts are already underway. Sometimes relatively simple actions like keeping a Post Office on Main Street rather than building a new one outside of town can make a large difference in whether a community's downtown business district remains viable. We are following this policy in Maryland: Before I took office only 43% of our school constriction budget went towards renovating and modernizing our older schools . . . today well over 80% is dedicated to older schools in established communities. And Court Houses and County Buildings from Berlin on the Eastern Shore to Hagerstown in Western Maryland are being built downtown, supporting our neighborhoods. The third step the federal Government can take it to apply a simple test to policy decisions: "Does this reinvest in an establish community or does it contribute to sprawl." Once you begin viewing your policy decisions from this perspective, you will realize how many governmental actions have a significant impact on either protecting or threatening open space, on either reinvesting or disinvesting in established areas, on either fighting sprawl or assisting sprawl. This Smart Growth test needs to be applied to virtually every decision we make involving the allocation of resources. The hidden costs of sprawl, and the benefits of reinvesting in older areas, must be taken into account.
Finally, we must look anew at many broad policies at the Federal level. Certainly we must have water and air pollution standards. We must also adopt minimal national standards for animal waste run-off to prevent competition between states that ultimately results in lowering pollution standards in order to attract business. But we must also look at policies that are grounded in laudable goals like cleaner air and water, but that have unintended consequences that actually make them worker counter to their intentions. For example, disallowing growth in "non-attainment" areas often has the effect of forcing growth away from areas we want it like Baltimore and to "greenfields" where we do not want it. We need the flexibility to target the appropriate investments to the right areas and away from open space.
I conclude with an observation: There are still those who do not understand that Smart Growth programs are about a different future; about a different vision for a better America. The fact is, we are going to have growth -- so our choice is clear: We can either hide our heads in the sand and ignore it, and then face the consequences of unplanned growth. Or we can plan for a better future. I choose the latter. And I am confident that you will as well.
Change will not be easy. We had a Public Safety Training Center project in the planning stages for over a decade, but as we began to look at things thinking Smart Growth first, we realized that the location is not consistent with our Smart Growth Program. We are still building it, it's going to be better than originally planned, but it will be in a location that is consistent with Smart Growth and preventing future sprawl. And now there is a great hue and cry in the community and the Maryland General Assembly about re-locating this center. But at some point we have to make the tough decisions about Smart Growth today so we can prevent future sprawl and over-development tomorrow. I am reminded of the old saying "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there." Quite frankly, change will take time. There is no overnight solution. It will require changes in attitudes as well as in the way we do business at every level of government; local, state, and federal. And frankly, it will take years before we begin to see change. But we will change. There is too much at stake.
I will leave you with one final thought. Last month, Bill Hudnut, the former Mayor of Indianapolis and now a Senior Fellow with the Urban Land Institute, spoke before the Natural Resources Committee of the National Governors' Association, which I have the honor of chairing. His message to the Governors was one of urgency: We must begin to address the multiple challenges embodied in the movement known as "Smart Growth" before it is too late. He told an old North American Indian saying:"We do not inherit the land from our ancestors; we bequeath it to our children. In other words, we are not owners but stewards of our environment. As protectors, we must remain determined to pass the environment to future generations in a better state than we found it. Thank you again for inviting me to speak with you today. ###