Case Study of Developer Influence on Howard County's Political Parties (2011 Legislative Year)

This is part two of a multi-part case study into the level of developer influence in Howard County’s political parties. The 2010 study results may be found here.

Howard County’s Legislative Record Tracker, which may be found here, was conceived to keep an eye on County Council and County Executive actions on pieces of legislation that impact four key issues: the budget, affordable housing, accountability, and school quality. These pieces of legislation are often the leading indicators of the longterm impact of those issues. Attempting to effect change to a budget after it has been fixed by the mostly zoning and land use actions taken years ago typically bears little fruit. It is like fighting over a pie after it’s baked, instead of working to make a bigger pie in the first place.

The 2019 tracker has shown in no uncertain terms that three Councilmembers, Opel Jones (2-D), Christiana Mercer-Rigby (3-D), and David Yungmann (5-R) have voted on a bipartisan basis to support legislation that hurt the aforementioned issues. Their votes usually go hand-in-hand with the preference of County Executive Calvin Ball (D). The material pieces of legislation tracked so far in 2020 also show a similar trend.

Some may ask, is this an anomaly? Just how pervasive is this issue? How long have developers controlled both political parties and to what extent?

The case study begins with the 2010 legislation actions and will look at every single year until 2018. For each year, every bill is scrutinized to determine whether it has material impact on zoning and land use laws. This list of bills is further scrutinized assigned a rating on a five-point scale based on its degree of favorability to developers from ‘very unfavorable’ to ‘very favorable’ as follows:

Very Favorable: if the legislation appropriates significant dollars to developers, offsets developer financial responsibility using taxpayer dollars, loosens zoning and land-use laws to benefit developers, or introduces new provisions that benefits them. The benefits to the developer are clear and egregious with a possible windfall.

Favorable: either of the conditions stated above are present, the benefits are clear, but they are to a lesser degree. For example a benefit of $5 million is relatively less favorable than $50 million. The benefits to the developer are clear.

Neutral: if the benefits to developers cannot be ascertained or they are nonexistent.

Unfavorable: either of the conditions stated below are present, the impact can be discerned, but it could be at the margins.

Very Unfavorable: if the legislation requires developers to pay their fair share, strengthens zoning and land-use laws to benefit the taxpayer, or introduces new provisions to do the same. The positive impact on taxpayer dollars and accountability is clear and unequivocal.

With this in mind, let’s look at 2011. First some brief statistics:

• 249 total pieces of legislation

• 98 reviewed and analyzed because they have material impact on the county

• 114 were resolutions for appointments

• 9 were Supplementary Budget & Appropriation Ordinance (SAO) and Transfer of Appropriation Ordinance (TAO)

• 28 non-material impact

Among the 98 pieces of legislation analyzed, 45 were rated at least ‘favorable’ to developers. Only two were rated ‘unfavorable’. As the results in the dashboard show, 43 out of the 45 bills were passed on a bipartisan basis.

In 2011, the County Executive was Ken Ulman (D). There were four Democrat (Courtney Watson (1-D), Calvin Ball (2-D), Jen Terrasa (3-D), and Mary Kay Sigaty (4-D)) and one Republican (Greg Fox (5-R))