O'Malley New Sustainability Initiatives

Washington Business Journal reports that Maryland Governor O'Malley pushes his new sustainable initiatives to control growth and pushing transit-oriented-development. In addition to the 6 related bills part of his "Smart, Green and Growing initiatives."

Via Office of the Governor.

The O’Malley-Brown Administration’s Smart, Green and Growing legislative agenda includes a number of smart growth initiatives, including protecting the integrity of Comprehensive Plans, modernizing the State’s Planning Visions, and developing Smart Growth Markers for state and local governments.  In addition, Governor O’Malley is proposing measures to revise and reauthorize and the Maryland Heritage Structure Rehabilitation Tax Credit Program and reinforce the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) bill from the 2008 legislative session.

Kaid Benfield, the smart growth expert over at NRDC, has this to say about O'Malley's green initiatives:

I hope that O'Malley will look at the "smart, green and growing" package as a start, but not as an end to his personal work on these issues.  I hope he also takes a hard look at the existing smart growth programs and ramp up their implementation and enforcement, with new legislative muscle if necessary. The fact that so much development is still occurring outside the designated growth areas, many of which were pretty generously designated by their municipalities, is alarming.