St. Mary’s County Delegate John Bohanan (D: 29B) will introduce legislation in the upcoming Maryland General Assembly to drastically change the make-up and role of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland (TCCSM). The proposal was formally presented last night (Thursday, November 21) to the council’s executive board.
The council was formed on December 6, 1964, as a cooperative planning and development agency to foster the social and economic development of the Southern Maryland Region. In was an outgrowth of the legislative effort to ban slot machines in Southern Maryland. In 1965, the Governor of Maryland recognized the TCCSMD as the regional planning and development organization for the region comprising of Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s counties. The TCCSMD’s statute was established by Act of the Maryland General Assembly in 1966.
For its almost 50 years the council been largely comprised of elected officials in Southern Maryland, with just a small number of private citizens. Bohanan proposes to change that. Under a draft bill presented to the council board, the number of members would change from 38, of which 90 percent were elected officials, to 15 voting members led by the private sector. The chairman would come from the private sector.
Under the proposal one member would be from the General Assembly, one county commissioner (rotated yearly among the three counties), one member appointed by the Southern Maryland Municipal Association, three public sector members (one from each county) and nine private sector members (three from each county).
The proposal is to transition the council away from its reliance of federal funding. Today the majority of the council’s funding comes from the federal government for workforce development.
In a memorandum to the council members, Bohanan wrote: “For too long, each of our three counties as relied too heavily on the federal government as the primary driver in our local economies. While that has worked for longer than the past two decades, that largess will not reliably continue into the future and we will need to do what I see other parts of our state and other regions of the country are doing. They avail themselves of smart resources to brand their economies and pull together comprehensive visions and strategies for economic growth. We need a plan that takes us well beyond the next five, 10 or 20 years for Southern Maryland.”
Bohanan’s proposal is part of a larger effort called Southern Maryland 2020 that creates a public/private partnership “to formally organize a cohesive strategy for the region to competitively position ourselves for the emerging economy of 2020 and beyond.” An e-mail announcing the effort was signed by Bohanan and Southern Maryland Navy Alliance President Glen Ives and Energetics Technology Center President Robert Kavetsky.
