Maryland Route 200 - Opposition

Opposition

MD 200 has gained opposition from several groups, including the Maryland General Assembly and the Prince George's County Council. Proponents of the highway have claimed that it will improve the flow of interregional traffic, relieving traffic congestion on local roads. Opponents of the highway have claimed that the road will (with a few limited exceptions) harm significant traffic flow characteristics (such as increasing drive times, congestion, and costs in the form of tolls), will harm the environment (with air, sea and land impacts), and will disrupt established communities through which it passes. Many of these assertions against the ICC were rebutted in detail in an appendix of the ICC's Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).

Members of the Maryland General Assembly stated opposition in the Spring 2008 and Spring 2009 sessions, the 1998 session, and back to 1979, when a bill introduced in the General Assembly by Delegate Robin Ficker proposed to eliminate funding for a study of the ICC and the never-built Rockville Facility highway project. In 1980, a bill proposed by Delegate Idamae Garrott to forbid the Maryland Department of Transportation from even studying the matter of new highways running east and west between Montgomery and Prince George's Counties was tabled by the Montgomery County Delegation.

In the 1998 session, House Bill 817 was introduced to prohibit MDOT from spending funds or granting approvals to the ICC project, and House Bill 905 was intended to stop the operation of a toll highway altogether. Both bills failed to pass. In 2004, House Bill 732 proposed a similar statement to House Bill 817, extended to include the MdTA. The 2007 Special Session saw the offering of House Bill 37 to prevent construction of the road. Both of these bills also failed to pass. In the 2008 session, two bills proposing to cancel or delay the project were introduced – House Bill 1416 and House Bill 1471. House Bill 1471 proposed to eliminate funding for the road, and, if it had passed, would trigger "liquidated damage clauses that would require it to pay the contractors an estimated $80.0 million upon cancellation of the contracts," according to the Fiscal Note prepared by the state's Department of Legislative Services. Both bills failed.

In the 2009 session, a bill proposing to cancel funding for the ICC was pre-filed by Delegate Barbara A. Frush – House Bill 27. This bill had not attracted any co-sponsors nor had it been scheduled for a hearing. A similar bill, Senate Bill 753, was filed in the Maryland Senate by Sen. E. J. Pipkin and others. The Maryland Politics Watch blog opined that Pipkin's co-sponsorship of SB 753 may be related to his possible desire to run again for the U.S. House of Representatives Maryland District 1 seat. Both bills failed in the 2009 session. House Bill 27 received an unfavorable report from the House of Delegates Appropriations Committee on March 28, 2009; and no action was taken on Senate Bill 753 prior to adjournment on April 13, 2009, though a hearing was scheduled on March 18, 2009 before the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee.

The position of the County Council of Prince George's County in opposition to the ICC has been repeatedly cited by opposition groups, and its 2003 resolution on the subject, CR-32-2003, was adopted on June 10, 2003, where it called for alternatives to the road. In 2007, the Prince George's County Council passed resolution CR-59-2007, which repeats much of what was stated in CR-32-2003, including the language endorsing the ICC in Prince George's County.

In November 2006, environmental groups announced that they were preparing to file suit in order to delay or stop the project, and lawsuits aimed at halting construction were filed by environmental groups and affected residents, assisted in part by pro bono legal counsel from the Institute for Public Representation of the Georgetown University Law Center. One of those lawsuits was originally filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (possibly as part of a forum shopping effort to avoid having the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals hear the case on appeal - though the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which would have heard any appeals from the D.C. federal court, had ruled against the Sierra Club and allied groups on similar legal issues in reversing a lower court on a case involving the proposal to reconstruct and widen the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in 1999) but Judge Gladys Kessler of the D.C. federal court ordered the matter transferred to federal court in Maryland on May 17, 2007 and the suits were consolidated. After hearings in October 2007, both lawsuits were dismissed in their entirety on November 8, 2007 by Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in a 105-page memorandum opinion.

The Baltimore Sun described the decision handed down by the court as a "victory for both Governor Martin O'Malley, who backs construction of the road, and a measure of vindication for former Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, who made it the top transportation priority of his administration." After the opinion was released, environmental groups opposed to the ICC stated that they would "consider their legal options before deciding whether to continue their battle" and some homeowners near the selected route expressed disagreement with the ruling of the court. On January 7, 2008, it was announced that Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club would appeal Judge Williams' decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia. In April 2008, persons and groups opposed to the ICC held an "Irish wake" to draw attention to the impact of the ICC, and an op-ed in The Diamondback was printed which raised objections to the ICC.

In June 2008, protests against the ICC were held at Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary School in Silver Spring. The participants claimed that ICC construction should be halted because of air pollution impacts on pupils at the school, though it was reported that Governor O'Malley has no plans to do so. In August 2008, The Baltimore Sun published a letter to the editor from the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth calling on the Maryland Department of Transportation to "cancel the ICC." In September 2008, The Sun's columnist Dan Rodricks wrote an anti-ICC opinion piece asserting that the ICC was the "Intercounty Anachronism". Rodricks' column was first rebutted by a letter to the editor by Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Floreen (D-At Large) and then in a longer op-ed by SHA Administrator Neil Pedersen. Also in September 2008, The Gazette published an op-ed by state delegate Heather R. Mizeur (D-District 20) suggesting that the ICC be canceled. The Mizeur op-ed was rebutted in a response (also published by The Gazette) by Neil Pedersen in October 2008.

In November 2008, it was announced that Environmental Defense had dropped its appeal with the Fourth Circuit of the decision handed down by Judge Williams of the U.S. District Court for Maryland about a year earlier. In exchange for dropping the suit, the State Highway Administration agreed to fund new emissions-reduction technology used by public school buses in Montgomery County; and the SHA will also "sponsor a three-year study that involves installing air quality monitors along a major highway selected for its similar characteristics to the ICC and I-95." Press releases were issued by the State Highway Administration and Environmental Defense discussing the details of the legal settlement.