Doug Gansler, Maryland’s freshman attorney general, finds himself in shallow water on an outgoing tide.
Gansler powered into office, in Gov. O’Malley’s wake, pledging to muster the full strength of his office to crack down on polluters and clean up the Bay.
He may have ventured too far into the flats.
At the so-called “Poultry Summit” in Salisbury last November, Gansler, in one of the warm-ups for the main attraction, said he believed that all nutrient management plans on file by farmers at the Maryland Department of Agriculture should be available for public review.
(He was later informed, we are told, that the confidentiality of the plans is protected by law, drafted as part of a compromise with the agricultural community to ensure compliance.)
The main attraction at the “summit” as you will recall, was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chairman of the board of the Waterkeeper Alliance, who, in a broad attack on the poultry industry, also demanded that the confidentiality of those nutrient management plans (NMPs) be abandoned, claiming that the state law that protects them is unconstitutional.
Waterkeeper and Kennedy’s small army of lawyers subsequently filed suit against MDA to force the NMPs into view.
Also subsequently, Maryland Sen. Brian Frosh, a Montgomery County Democrat and avid supporter of environmental legislation, introduced Senate Bill 964 (Agriculture — Nutrient Management Plans — Filing and Release), which would alter the requirements for filing NMPs and require MDA to release copies upon request.
Gansler has a problem. He’s apparently supporting Frosh’s bill. As a matter of fact, Sen. Richard Colburn, an Eastern Shore Republican, in a recent report on legislative activities in Annapolis, referred to Senate Bill 964 as “Mr. Gansler’s law.”
“Why should we move forward on Senate Bill 964,” Sen Colburn asked, “while litigation on the issue (the Waterkeeper suit) is pending in Maryland?”
Our concern here goes beyond the practical impact of two efforts butting heads.
It goes to the nature, the core of Mr. Gansler’s job. It is the responsibility of his office to represent Maryland and it agencies in the courts of law.
It seems to us legally, if not ethically, impossible for his office to lend support to SB 964 while at the same time having to defend the MDA against the Waterkeeper suit.
As attorney general, he can’t have it both ways.