Until 2015, Prince George’s County had one of the fairest zoning and land use standings laws in Maryland. County residents and community associations had broad standing to challenge unlawful decisions by the District Council, Planning Board, and zoning hearing examiners.

In 2015, the General Assembly took away these rights and restricted judicial access to a very small minority of affected people, now customarily interpreted as those living no further than 1000 ft from the development.

Some of our delegates to the General Assembly have told constituents that they are waiting for a letter of support from the County Council before they move the local bill MC/PG 107-23 to the full General Assembly and allow that body to consider returning our standing to challenge land-use decisions to what we had prior to 2015. Since power over land use is a State prerogative, and since residents’ rights were taken away by the State in 2015, it is somewhat odd to be waiting for the opinion of a body you obliged to regulate. Nevertheless, why has the County Council not sent a letter of support for MC/PG 107-23 to the delegation when a majority of the Council - Council Members Dernoga, Blegay, Burroughs, Ivey, Olson and Oriadha have publicly stated their support for the bill? Read on.

The Prince George’s County Council has a General Assembly Committee that discusses bills and makes recommendations to the full Council on whether to support certain bills or not. MC/PG 107-23 was discussed by the Council’s General Assembly Committee on January 31^st. Though video or minutes of this meeting have not yet been posted, we know what transpired at that meeting from activists who attended the meeting and from a recording of parts of that meeting captured by an activist. Click on the links to listen to:
testimony in opposition to the bill from the County Executive’s office,
a motion by At-Large Councilmember Mel Franklin to hold the bill indefinitely,
a counter interjection by CD-7 Councilmember Krystal Oriadha and
a comment by At-Large Councilmember Calvin Hawkins
before a vote of 3-2 was cast in favor of Franklin’s motion to hold the bill indefinitely:
YES (hold) votes cast by Hawkins, Franklin and Harrison and
NO (don’t hold) votes cast by Blegay and Burroughs.  

Note that since it is a “hold” vote, the committee members are not required to indicate whether they support the bill or not. Their intention is however crystal clear: by putting an indefinite hold on the bill, they have effectively prevented the majority of the council, whom they know support the bill, from voting publicly in support of the bill. The same three were part of a larger group that attempted to raise property taxes in the middle of the pandemic in 2021 and that supported gerrymandered district boundaries in 2021 before that attempt was soundly defeated in the courts in 2022.  

The Council requires super-majority support (8 votes) to over-ride the committee hold and move the bill from the General Assembly Committee to the full Council for a discussion and vote. Support by any two of council members Fisher, Watson, Harrison, Franklin or Hawkins would achieve this goal, but that support has not yet been forthcoming.

We ask you to click and send the attached letter to the entire council. You will be able to edit the language if you choose to.

We are calling on:

1.     Council members Hawkins, Franklin and Harrison to publicly support MC/PG 107-23, over-ride the hold in the committee and call for a vote by the full Council. We cannot stand by as council members whose campaigns have been funded by developers block the rights of Prince George’s voters to stop ill-advised or illegal development in their communities.

2.     We are also calling on council members Fisher and Watson to publicly support MC/PG 107-23, join the council majority to over-ride the hold in the committee, and support a full vote by the Council. If you live in CD-2 or CD-4, please add that information into the message.

To paraphrase what council member Oriadha interjected so eloquently on January 31^st , the guardrails that Prince George’s needs are not against citizens frivolously going to court over good development, the guardrails Prince George's needs are against ill-conceived or illegal development foisted on Prince Georgians by their electeds and the development industry.  

Let it never be said that politics in Prince George’s County is uninteresting.