Updated March 26 8:30am
The staff of the county board that handles zoning and land use planning may be restructured, if a proposal by Maryland state senators from Prince George’s County goes through.
The state legislation, SB1005, will be discussed in a hearing today (March 26) in a meeting of the Maryland Senate’s Education, Energy and the Environment Committee.
In a short emergency meeting March 20, the Prince George’s County Planning Board voted unanimously to support the legislation, which would allow Prince George’s County more independent control over legal, human resources, procurement, and information technology for the county planning board.
“It gives Prince George’s County the independence to put our residents first,” said Manuel Geraldo, the county planning board’s vice chair, in a prepared statement. “We aren’t walking away from regional collaboration, and we certainly aren’t walking away from our employees or our retirees.”
Before reading his statement, Geraldo tried to confirm with Darryl Barnes, the chair of the Prince George’s County planning board, that current employees would continue to be protected under existing rules, called a merit system.
Right now, parks and planning in Prince George’s County fall under the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), which covers both Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, and has five commissioners from each.
The proposed legislation would not get rid of the M-NCPPC. Each county’s planning board already has its own set of zoning rules to apply and dedicated lawyers to apply them.
However, the new rule would require each planning board to have its own general counsel, rather than central leadership in a legal department, and to establish separate human resources, information technology, and procurement functions.
County executives for both Montgomery and Prince George’s counties support the restructuring, according to a March 26 joint letter. They say giving each county’s planning board more independence will prevent bottlenecks in project review and hiring and increase accountability and transparency.
The change could cost more than $10 million, according to the bill’s fiscal and policy note, published in the last week, which also says that costs are difficult to estimate with available information.
The Montgomery County Planning Board announced its opposition to the legislation March 12, citing loss of efficiency and regional coordination and a rushed process. A group of 10 former members of both the M-NCPPC and the Prince George’s County Planning Board published a letter also expressing opposition on March 16, citing waste, the potential for corruption and mismanagement and harm to existing employees.
Correction: A prior version of this article said that the March 16 letter was signed by six former M-NCPPC chairs; it was signed by four former M-NCPPC chairs, two former vice-chairs, and four former members, all of whom are also former members of the Prince George’s County Planning Board.