MARYLAND PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE
"There is a trend where state-based institutes are popping up all over the place," said Christopher Summers, president of one of those new think tanks, the Maryland Public Policy Institute (MPPI)-a member of the State Policy Network. Founded in January 2001, MPPI is fighting an uphill battle in advocating limited-government, free-market policies in a state dominated by Democrats and their union lackeys.
However, this year, Democrats have a weak gubernatorial candidate in Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and so the fairly conservative Republican candidate, Rep. Robert Ehrlich (American Conservative Union rating: 82%) has a good chance of introducing Annapolis to some common-sense ideas this fall.
"Education; public safety-which we call crime-transportation; budget and taxes; health care; ‘smart growth,’" said Summers in reeling off issues on which MPPI works. Wendell Cox, adjunct fellow at MPPI, wrote in an article on MPPI’s website that Maryland Democratic "Gov. Parris Glendening has been a national leader in the anti-sprawl movement and is even credited with coining the enviable term ‘smart growth.’ But the Maryland legislative committee’s recent approval of a $1.3-million state grant to finance and otherwise assist the Giant Foods relocation deal indicates that smart growth and fighting sprawl are a matter of who you are. Smart growth seeks a more compact city-higher residential densities and greater job concentration. . . . The state-supported move of Giant Foods from Landover to Jessup violates these objectives. Landover is more centrally located, has more than three times as many people within ten miles and much better transit."
"I want people to build more houses," said Summers, a native Marylander. "I want people to be able to live where they want to live."
"Urban sprawl, while unpopular at the political and polling level, drives the day-to-day behavior of the very same populace," says MPPI. "Marylanders prefer a house in the suburbs, with plenty of land. They prefer two or more cars, which convey them in comfort to a wider variety of locations in far less time than could be reached by any transit system."
When it comes to education, said Summers, people think "more money equals a smarter kid. The fact is, it doesn’t." The City of Baltimore, he said, "ranks last in state exams. There is a large achievement gap between white and black students. And this is after eight years of increased funding. . . . Maryland is one of the few states which does not have a statewide charter school system."
"Today, 37 states and the District of Columbia have enacted charter school or voucher legislation," says MPPI. "However, real education reform will not take root unless policymakers empower parents and teachers to make the decisions affecting their children’s education. School choice can maximize the nation’s sizable investment in education and help the United States ensure that all its children, regardless of their socioeconomic status or where they live, have the opportunity to succeed."
MPPI publishes papers, op-eds, and newsletters. Mark Hemingway in the August 14 edition of the "Maryland Policy Update" wrote about Baltimore’s declining library system, which closed five of its 26 branches last year.
"Some libraries are successfully combating their budget woes by tapping the management expertise of private business," wrote Hemingway. "And one of the leaders in providing that expertise is based right here in Maryland: Library Systems and Services Incorporated (LSSI) in Germantown."
The company now operates the Riverside County, California, library system. "In theory," wrote Hemingway, "managing Riverside’s public libraries, which include 25 branches in 15 different municipalities, should be no easy task. Since LSSI took over, however, the results speak for themselves: The company has almost doubled Riverside’s weekly hours of operation, replaced or remodeled several older buildings, increased the staff by 57%, and increased the money allocated for new books by a whopping 250%." And the 2000 budget was $6.3 million-the same that it was in 1996, the year before LSSI took over, said Hemingway.
"We have a state budget deficit. Why not go back over the last eight years and see how the government has grown and see what programs we don’t need?" asked Thomas Firey, fellow at MPPI. Maryland liberals’ efforts to prevent sprawl and real estate development have decimated the value of Maryland farmland at a time when federal and state policies are killing agribusiness, he said. "Lots of farmers in Maryland are gentlemen farmers who have other sources of income. . .," he said. "We need careful, philosophical examination of state policies."
MPPI may be reached at P.O. Box 195, Germantown, Md. 20875-0195 (240-686-3510; fax: 240-686-3511; e-mail: [email protected]; website: www.mdpolicy.org).
