>Kristin Harty Barkley
Cumberland Times-News The Cumberland Times-News Wed Apr 27, 2011, 11:26 PM EDT
FROSTBURG — The District 1 Delegation to the Maryland General Assembly met with area business leaders Wednesday morning to reflect on the 428th session, which ended April 11.
By all accounts, it was a rough few months for Western Maryland.
“This year was almost like an assault on rural Maryland,” said Delegate Wendell Beitzel, noting that education funding was drastically reduced for Allegany and Garrett counties.
“You’d think perhaps the governor was trying to get even with the rural areas of the state because he didn’t get many votes in this area.”
About 45 people gathered at the Lyric Theater Wednesday for the Allegany County Chamber of Commerce’s annual Legislative Wrap-Up Breakfast.
With Beitzel, Delegates Kevin Kelly and LeRoy Myers, and Sen. George Edwards discussed some of the most difficult battles.
• The governor proposed the elimination of key funding sources for both Garrett and Allegany counties, including a 25-percent annual reimbusement for Deep Creek Lake dock fees, and a similar reimbursement for timber sales.
“We held the line on those two,” Beitzel said, adding that the local delegation also successfully defended the Maryland-Mined Coal Tax Credit.
“This is an annual thing we’ve had to battle, and we had to fight it hard this year,” Beitzel said.
• Efforts by Beitzel and Sen. George Edwards to encourage forward movement on drilling in the Marcellus shale were rebuffed by the administration, which wants to further study environmental impacts.
“We got an opinion from the attorney general that says the Department of the Environment has all the power they need to draft any rule or regulation they feel appropriate to put in place for Marcellus drilling,” said Edwards, who encouraged local residents to write the governor’s office to give their “two cents worth” on the issue — regardless of where they stand.
“So it’s a question, I guess, do you trust MDE to come up with what you might feel is appropriate? We feel they can. I just use coal mining as an example. We have some of the strictest mining laws in the country now. … We believe we’ll have some of the strictest, if not the strictest, drilling rules in the country.”
Edwards and Beitzel said that Marcellus shale drilling could provide an unprecedented boost to the local economy and should be pursued, though safely and wisely. The issue has sparked heated debate in the community.
“None of us want to see anyone come in and mess up our area,” Beitzel said. “But we need energy. And this is one area of Maryland where we have energy resources.”
• A 3 percent increase in the sales tax on alcohol is expected to have negative effects on area businesses. Starting July 1, the sales tax will increase from 6 to 9 percent.
“This tax actually impacts the rural parts of the state considerably,” Edwards said. “Because we had a lot of people coming into our part of the state to buy alcoholic beverages. Now they’re not going to because we’re not going to be as competitive as we were.”
The session was not without good news for Western Maryland, however. Legislators overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed to bring a slots operator to Rocky Gap Lodge & Golf Resort, which is deeply in debt.
“We had 120 other legislators come to the rescue of Rocky Gap,” Myers said. “That took our efforts, working with our colleagues, to get a product at Rocky Gap that was something that would attract a bidder.”
And the local delegation worked to defeat a bill that would have forced the renaming of Negro, Polish, and Savage mountains.
“We took a defensive posture, we made great presentations, and we stuffed those bills this year,” said Kelly, who called called the name-change effort “political correctness run amock.”
“I don’t think they’ll be coming back.”
Contact Kristin Harty Barkley at kbarkley@times-news.com
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