Delegation to hear concerns on sheriff’s office, slots, wind power

Kevin Spradlin
Cumberland Times-News

(from article)

In Garrett County, emergency services, legislation to authorize an increase in the hotel/motel tax and to establish minimum setback requirements and decommissioning standards for commercial wind turbines are key issues.

Among statewide issues, local organizations are seeking state lawmakers’ support in keeping teacher pensions state-funded and to modify the collective bargaining process that currently allows the state Department of Education, instead of an independent mediator, to serve as final authority in labor disputes between teachers’ unions and the state board.

Rocky Gap State Park is one of five locations authorized to operate slots. The eastern Allegany County facility is permitted up to 1,500 machines. To date, there has been no qualified bid submitted for the site. The Allegany County commissioners asked the delegation in November to introduce a bill that would allow third parties to purchase licenses to operate some of the machines.

The Garrett County commissioners have asked the delegation to introduce a bill that would grant them the authority to increase the hotel/motel tax. It’s an issue that local businesses and property owners object to. Joyce Bishoff, interim president of the Garrett County Chamber of Commerce, indicated that an accommodations tax increase could turn people away from visiting.

The commissioners also want the authority, as their counterparts in Allegany and Kent counties do, to have public sales of homes of residents who are 60 days or more delinquent in the payment of water and sewer bills. During a November meeting, the county’s Department of Public Utilities noted property owners were more than $280,000 in arrears.

There have been a number of requests from private individuals and agencies as well.

Linda Jones of the Garrett County side of Lonaconing is asking the delegation to continue pushing for equal payments for widows deemed “wholly dependent” and “partially self-supporting” after a death in the workplace. Jones, whose husband Dale Jones was killed in April 2007 during a mining incident along with Frostburg resident Michael Wilt, praised the passage of legislation in 2009 that increased payments, but wants a level playing field.

Frostburg resident and former state senator John Bambacus has appealed to the delegation to codify Gov. Martin O’Malley’s ban of wind turbines on state land. Bambacus said the ban currently is continued only at the whim of the state’s chief elected officer.

Bambacus also wants legislation introduced to prohibit wind turbines on mountain ridges in Garrett and Allegany counties.

In correspondence with Bambacus, Delegate Wendell Beitzel said such legislative efforts might be “futile … due to the current frenzy to develop alternative energy sources and the governor’s opposition to anything that stands in the way of wind energy development.”

Beitzel also said that such legislation “could come back to haunt us” if it would prevent other possible uses that would “foster economic development, recreational infrastructure and tourism-related activities.”

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