No PlanMaryland Lobbyist for Carroll County...Yet

Carroll County Board of Commissioner President Doug Howard confirms some Maryland counties are considering hiring lobbyists to help them shape the PlanMaryland agenda but that is not a discussion the Carroll County commissioners have had formally.

Carroll County's five commissioners have made clear their dislike for PlanMaryland, the state's plan to deal with growth and development.

An article posted on herald-mail.com, a news site based in Hagerstown, Md., said that Carroll County is one of five Western Maryland counties considering hiring a lobbyist to promote its  interests in regard to development.

According to the article, Washington County Commissioner President Terry Baker said that representatives of the five counties, Allegany, Garrett, Carroll, Frederick and Washington, met recently and discussed each contributing $5,000 to hire a lobbyist.

Howard told Patch that the counties have met on several occasions to discuss a myriad of topics relevant to the Western counties and PlanMaryland has come up, but only informally.

"We were together to discuss relevant issues at the MACO (Maryland Association of Counties) conference a few months ago and then last week we had dinner in Hagerstown to again, discuss many topics that impact our counties," Howard said.

Howard said that PlanMaryland is an ongoing topic of discussion and that many ideas were presented in these meetings, incuding the hiring of a lobbyist.

"At the MACO meeting we discussed a number of ideas including trying to work through MACO, meeting more often, and someone raised the idea of hiring a liaison who could represent our interests in this area," Howard said.

"Then when we met last week in Hagerstown, the idea of having someone down there (Annapolis) and each county throwing some money in resurfaced," Howard said.

Howard explained that since all the commissioners weren't present formal discussions would have to be held by leadership in each county to determine the best way to move forward.

"We have not taken these ideas up in Carroll County," Howard said. "At some point we will discuss it."

Howard said that any discussion about hiring a lobbyist would likely have to take place in a public forum.