Even if it hurt our established communities. We have started to reverse those trends in Maryland. We have dramatically changed that dynamic by shifting the priorities of where we spend State school construction funds. We did not need a new law for that - we just needed to make our priorities clear. We decided that if government policies had inadvertently encouraged sprawl by making it cost-effective, then new government policies could encourage investment in existing communities and Smart Growth Centers, and make it more expensive to further sprawl.
People make bottom-line decisions.
Therefore, it must be our goal to change the bottom line. First through State law in 1997, and then by Executive Order early this year , we refocused the State's financial resources on our established communities and neighborhoods. If you building out there, and tear up one more farm, then you pay for roads, water and sewage, schools, parks, and other development costs. What we opposed was allowing the State to subsidize the unplanned, or poorly planned growth that was eating up our countryside at an alarming rate. In the meantime, we continue to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars to build miles and miles of new roads to accommodate this increase.