The Comprehensive Plan Exposes the BGI

A letter to the editor from David Kanter, Smarter Growth Alliance for Charles County, February 25, 2014

During the past three years, Commissioners Collins, Davis and Rucci have served on our Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) as agents for the Balanced Growth Initiative (BGI). Their focus on BGI, a special interest group, has violated the public trust and encouraged an atmosphere of lawlessness and backroom deals. 

The Comprehensive Plan process has cleared the backroom smoke to publicly expose the Charles County political machine at its absolute worst.

Here is the rough chronology:

1. BGI agents on the worst Planning Commission imaginable hijacked the Comprehensive Plan process. 
2. These same agents ignored state laws designed to counter sprawl development. 
3. They approved a Tier Map produced by BGI to circumvent more laws, when a Tier Map had all but been settled on by County residents. 
4. BGI asked for $250,000 to resurrect the dead Cross County Connector; the BGI agents on the BOCC “rounded” it up to an even $1 million. 
5. The BGI BOCC hired attorney Warren Rich to cover up flaws in the County’s worst Comp Plan yet, produced by the BGI Planning Commission. He failed to make it pretty enough. 
6. Then, the BGI BOCC set up a special committee to apply band-aids to hide the more obvious Plan flaws and tried to ensure the meetings were not recorded for the public. 
7. The last thing the Plan needed was an objective peer review and it appears the Committee will also fail to save the day with mere band-aids. 
8. The committee meetings were not advertised – a clear violation of yet another law – The Open Meetings Act.

So what is the common link between the BGI Planning Commissioners, the BGI County Commissioners, the BGI Plan, and the BGI Tiers Map? BGI, of course.

The ethics issues resulting from County Commissioner Collins’ relationship with BGI, documented in the public record, just keep getting worse. He has admitted to sharing a PO Box and address with the Scott Law Group, (Steve Scott is listed as the BGI owner of record). Commissioner Collins has also acknowledged that he served as co-counsel in a Scott Law Group case in violation of an Ethics Commission consent agreement.

Ok – Commissioner Collins made some serious mistakes and now has a mess to clean up. Everyone makes mistakes and often what they do to make amends counts for something. If he wants to really make amends, he needs to come clean and start over with a new Planning Commission and a new Comprehensive Plan.

“Just trust me” no longer works. He should choose either the public trust he swore to honor or he should choose BGI.