MACo Executive Director Michael Sanderson joined several local elected officials, public works officials and county engineers in support of its initiative bill, House Bill 1322, “Local Infrastructure Fast Track for Maryland Act” in the House Environment and Transportation Committee.

MACo’s panels included:

• Cecil County Executive Alan McCarthy
• Anne Arundel County Council Member Jerry Walker
• Frederick County Government Affairs and Policy Director Roger Wilson
• Prince George’s County Deputy Director of Transportation and Public Works Martin Harris
• Baltimore City Department of Transportation Legislative Director Patrick Fleming
• Caroline County’s Director of Information Technology Jim McCormick
• Calvert County’s Director of Public Works Rai Sharma

From MACo’s testimony:

MACo also strongly supports efforts to study the State of Local Infrastructure in Maryland. Local governments are responsible for a number of infrastructure modes in addition to roads and bridges which require reliable investment moving forward. Maryland local jurisdictions oversee 469 community water systems that serve from 25 to 1.8 million customers each … [and] are eager to update their 9-1-1 call centers via “Next Generation 9-1-1” so that they can process voice, text and video calls from any communications device via Internet Protocol-based networks …

Moreover, the Board of Public Works and General Assembly continue to express trepidation over the state of school maintenance year after year, and an inventory into the state of affairs could shed light on how to address these shared costs moving forward. Inventorying all of these issues objectively at a high level would allow for insight into how to prioritize a wide range of important needs for infrastructure investment moving forward.

The cross-file to this bill, Senate Bill 586, was heard by the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee on March 7, 2017. Click here for previous Conduit Street coverage.

Follow MACo’s advocacy efforts during the 2017 legislative session here.