Kudos!
The flood of emails you sent spurred the Montgomery County Council to unanimously approve funding for the I-270 corridor transportation study. The Planning Board now gets a green light to directly compare the Governor’s toll lane proposal with all the transit alternatives, including MARC expansion, monorail, a Red Line extension, and bus rapid transit. This is great news!
Now let’s make Delegate Kumar Barve hear us!
Your emails to Kumar Barve, Chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, are starting to get his attention. We need to keep it up until he releases the County Consent Bill (HB292) for a vote in his committee. The bill is our last, best chance this legislative session to fix the Governor’s disastrous plans for lower I-270.
Del. Barve is making himself the sole decider on a measure that affects the entire state. That’s not right. Tell him to let the full House of Delegates (where there is strong support for the bill) have its vote!
We are not alone. The Montgomery County Executive, the President and Vice President of the Montgomery County Council, the Mayor and Council of Rockville, and many other officials are all in favor of HB292.
Del. Barve is not watching out for his own District 17 constituents, who are telling him they need HB292. District 17 will bear the full brunt of the construction, environmental and community degradation, worsening congestion (the toll lanes won’t solve it), and fiscal harm that is the inevitable outcome of the Governor’s current I-270 plans!
We need to spur Del. Barve to action NOW!
The legislative session is more than half over and time is running out.
Reach out to him today. If you’ve done it before, please change up the message and do it again. We need to inundate his office with support for HB292. Here’s his contact information.
Spread the word!
More News
Another worthy bill coming up for a hearing this week would improve the Public Private Partnership (P3) process going forward. Read about HB1424.
Del. Barve actually proposed two of his own bills to “check” the toll road plan. The consensus of experts and advocates is that those bills would have no real impact. One (HB1220) would leave the ultimate decision-making re: putting a cap on tolls to the same three-person Board of Public Works that got us into the current mess. The other (HB1405) is a constitutional amendment that would not take effect until 2023.
Remind yourself why you’re committed to this cause
Read (or re-read) transportation expert Ben Ross’s extraordinary expose on the financial dealings driving the Governor’s I-270/I-495 plan, and the great harm that will surely follow. This article deserves a widespread audience. Please pass the link on to others.
Consider that what the Governor has proposed for us is really a new transportation tax in the form of high tolls and unknown financial risks to Maryland taxpayers. One way or another, we will all end up paying for the Governor’s $11 billion deal.