Maryland Wind Bill Falls Victim to Bad Tradition

Some political traditions are hard to take issue with. A few examples might include the State of the Union Address (most of the time) or the presidential turkey pardoning. Of course there are many, many others that most of us would probably rather see scrapped. In the Maryland General Assembly one such highly dispensable tradition is the tendency to take at least two years to pass vital, transformative clean-energy legislation like Governor Martin O’Malley’s Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2011.

That bill, which would have initiated a process to construct a 400 – 600MW wind farm about ten miles off of the coast of Ocean City, stalled in the General Assembly late last week after months of productive debate and relentless pressure for passage from citizens across the state. Advocates for the bill had done their homework for those debates, and came armed with numerous studies on Maryland offshore wind energy and detailed answers for essentially any major question or concern legislators could raise. Still, that apparently just wasn’t thorough enough for some lawmakers who decided to shelve the measure for reconsideration next year, citing the need for “further study”.

It’s unclear what additional evidence legislators could need regarding the bill’s potential benefits to Maryland. After all advocates had supplied very convincing data to show that the bill would create thousands of manufacturing jobs for Maryland workers, cut global warming and other air pollution, and provide stable, reliable energy prices for over two decades. And as if that wasn’t sufficient, the bill included an escape clause which would have allowed state officials to throw out any proposals from wind developers that could not reasonably ensure such benefits to Marylanders.

Of course, some critics might point out that the bill contained no measures to provide every child in the state with their own magic pony or to guarantee pots of gold at the end of every rainbow. But then again everyone knows that the magic-pony-and-rainbows lobby are notoriously hard to please.

So with no serious justifications for the legislative punt, and no lack of political clout behind the bill, we can only conclude that the problem all came down to reluctance by legislators to buck tradition and make clean-energy history in a single session without tediously belaboring it for another year.

Thankfully, Maryland clean-energy advocates with organizations such as CCAN also have a long standing tradition: we never give up or lose on our major state-level legislative campaigns. We’ve passed a global warming bill, an RPS and a clean cars bill that are among the strongest in the country and none of those victories were won in a year. O’Malley administration officials have said the wind bill will be back for round two next year, and when it is you can be we’ll be there to score a knockout.

In the meantime, we’re not planning on letting up for a second in our push for victory, and you can help us maintain momentum by signing and promoting our petition. Stay tuned for updates over the next year.

Follow Change.org's Environment page on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo credit: Sean_Marshal via flickr