C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022BY JAZZ LEWIS,
JARED SOLOMON,
MALCOLM L. AUGUSTINE
AND PAMELA G. BEIDLEWith a few smart invest-
ments today, we can
make a more accessi-
ble, inclusive and sus-
tainable Maryland over the next
decade. Maryland is often de-
scribed as America in Miniature.
From our two major metro areas,
to the Chesapeake Bay and ocean-
side communities of the Eastern
Shore, and the mountain towns
in the west, more than 6 million
people call our state home. How-
ever, like in most of the rest of the
country, it is much too hard to
move around this state without a
car, and too few of our jobs and
homes are located near transit
stations. Those two facts are
holding back our economy, exac-
erbating inequities and polluting
our environment.
In this General Assembly ses-
sion, we are introducing twopieces of legislation that will
make it easier for all Marylanders
to experience the great opportu-
nities this state has to offer. First
is the Maryland Regional Rail
Transformation Act, which
would require the Maryland De-
partment of Transportation
(MDOT) to create investment
programs to advance major up-
grades and expansions to the
MARC commuter rail system, in-
cluding additional capacity on
the Brunswick, Penn and Cam-
den lines, station improvements
and rail connections to Virginia
and Delaware.
Today, MARC connects Balti-
more and D.C. to many of Mary-
land’s suburban communities,
but service is too slow, infrequent
and disconnected from the wider
region. In fact, throughout much
of the day, service is unavailable
altogether. Investing in Mary-
land’s passenger rail service and
infrastructure would create jobs
and new markets, unlock oppor-
tunities for residents, increaseaccess to affordable housing and
create a more sustainable trans-
portation system.
The proposed investment
plans in our bill would also help
the state compete for $66 billion
in federal funds for passenger rail
made available through the his-
toric bipartisan Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act. Right
now, we are not prepared to
compete for that federal money.
This bill would put us on the right
track. These operational invest-
ments are critical, but to get the
biggest return on our investment,
we must ensure that the right
policies are in place to maximize
the areas in and around our
transit stations.
The companion bill is the Eq-
uitable and Inclusive Transit-Ori-
ented Development Enhance-
ment Act. In 2008, the Maryland
General Assembly enabled an of-
ficial transit-oriented develop-
ment (TOD) state-designation
process that allows development
projects within a half-mile ofdesignated TOD stations to be
eligible to receive state support in
advancing transit-oriented devel-
opment around the station. As of
this month, there are 17 state-des-
ignated TOD sites throughout
Maryland. However, the 2008
statute did not provide any mean-
ingful benefits or incentives to
encourage more TOD.
Developing around a transit
station is often more expensive
because of higher land costs,
legacy developments, environ-
mental hazards and the greater
need for supportive infrastruc-
ture, including sidewalk net-
works, station parking and bus
facilities. Though more expen-
sive, building residences and
businesses near transit stations
allows more residents to access
opportunities, especially low-in-
come residents without cars who
must rely on transit.
This bill would create a $10
million competitive grant and
revolving loan fund to provide
financial assistance to local juris-dictions for design, planning,
construction or gap funding and
financing for public or private
development within a state-des-
ignated TOD station area. The
bill would also expand the tax
credits that businesses receive for
creating eligible jobs in Opportu-
nity Zones to state-designated
TOD sites and require the secre-
tary of transportation to report
annually on MDOT’s efforts to
increase TOD throughout the
state.
Combined, these bills will
make sure the state is investing in
an expanded and improved re-
gional rail system and encourag-
ing more development around
the state’s rail and transit sta-
tions. Think about what 30-min-
ute train service from D.C. to
Baltimore would mean for you
and the state’s economy. Resi-
dents in Northern Virginia or
Delaware could take hourly
MARC service to spend a week-
end or even a day trip, hiking or
antiquing in Western Maryland.More houses would be built and
jobs located near our transit sta-
tions, protecting and preserving
our waterways, forests and farms
and making it easier for transi-
t-dependent Marylanders to find
and get to work.
This is not a far-off dream but
something we could see in the
next decade. We know the policy
changes and decisions we need to
make. By passing these bills, we
can make the investments need-
ed to leverage federal dollars, and
we can set in motion a bright
future for our state.Jazz Lewis, a Democrat, represents
Prince George’s County in the
Maryland House of Delegates; Jared
Solomon, a Democrat, represents
Montgomery County in the Maryland
House of Delegates. Malcolm L.
Augustine, a Democrat, represents
Prince George’s County in the
Maryland Senate. Pamela G. Beidle,
a Democrat, represents Anne
Arundel County in the Maryland
Senate.A more connected Maryland would improve inclusivity and equitypeople apart, into their own worlds of
like interests of politics or hate.
Online social media, however, can-
not take the place of social responsi-
bility IRL (in real life).
The lure of RTs (retweets) and
shares shouldn’t obscure the basic
principle of helping someone who
needs help, such as someone who has
been shot or beaten. Even if someone
sees a crime and doesn’t call the po-
lice, he or she should at least have a
thought for the victim and act accord-
ingly.
The Magruder incident isn’t an iso-
lated occurrence. In another case, 11
people witnessed an assault in Silver
Spring, and not one called the police
or even stuck around to tell what they
had seen. If someone has been shot,
stabbed or beaten and is fighting for
life, the least anyone could do is punch
three digits on a phone. Emergency
calls are anonymous, so the person
calling isn’t in any danger.It could be that we need better tools
that make it easier for people to report
crimes. We can look into video tip
lines. Through text, an app or a web-
site, someone could forward, anony-
mously, video of an incident. We could
do this in real time or with a recorded
video.
Even though we wouldn’t know
who is sending it, video could help
investigators looking into a crime de-
termine crucial facts. And, of course, if
done in real time, it could save some-
one’s life. As we strive to improve our
911 system by implementing Next
Generation 911, we hope to accom-
plish those opportunities.
Would anyone use a video tip line?
Perhaps, perhaps not, but we need to
give people every option we can to do
the right thing. We know some people
don’t like the police and don’t want to
help the police. We know we have a lot
of work to do. We work every day to
establish better relations with thepeople in our community.
What we’re talking about here,
however, is a much more basic issue of
responsibility, personal and to society.
This is a discussion that I hope teach-
ers will have with their students and
that adults should have as well.
How is it that people can watch a
shooting or beating or stabbing and
not do anything for the person being
attacked? Even if you don’t know first
aid, even if you don’t want to call the
police, at least tell someone who can
help. Even better, students or others
can prevent tragedy if they warn
school security or law enforcement if
they know someone has a weapon.
This isn’t about betraying friends
or snitching. It’s about a responsibili-
ty to your neighborhood, your com-
munity or simply the health and safe-
ty of another person.The writer is the Montgomery County chief of
police.BY MIKE TIDWELLHere’s the most shocking part
of Glenn Youngkin’s shock-
ing tenure as Virginia gover-
nor so far: He’s making a
mockery of his reputation as a pru-
dent business leader. Exhibit A is his
apparent intention to erase tens of
thousands of price-energy jobs while
making the state a “don’t go there”
pariah for every Fortune 500 compa-
ny rapidly greening its operations
because of climate change.
Here’s the rule of thumb in state
capitals: To really know what a gover-
nor values, look at his or her nomi-
nees to top posts. “Personnel is pol-
icy” is the old political saying.
So, the Republican Youngkin is a
pro-coal, anti-clean-energy fanatic
who openly wears the label of climate
skeptic. That statement is confirmed
by his nomination of Andrew Wheel-
er to the state’s top environmental
job, a former coal-industry lobbyist
and Trump administration bomb-
thrower at the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency. Even before Senate
Democrats in Richmond sank Wheel-
er’s nomination for obvious reasons,
Youngkin was busy figuring out other
legislative schemes to pull the state
out of a popular cap-and-trade mar-ket to reduce climate pollution from
power plants.
Most of Virginia’s largest compa-
nies — from Mars and Amazon in
Northern Virginia to the good old
boys at Dominion Energy in Rich-
mond — have long since abandoned
the “climate change is controversial”
worldview that Youngkin seems to
embrace. So what are these compa-
nies waiting for? They and other
businesses must speak up loudly,
calling out the absurdity of Young-
kin’s climate agenda — from a busi-
ness perspective. Indeed, absent re-
sponsible voices from the business
community, it’s hard to see how the
brakes get applied in a Republican
Party whipped into an anti-science,
anti-reason fury by a former presi-
dent in South Florida.
Here’s the problem: Energy mar-
kets have changed faster than Repub-
lican ideology in Virginia. There was
a time when the state’s GOP and the
state’s biggest polluter — Dominion
Energy — were perfectly aligned on
the issues of climate change and
clean energy. Coal and gas were
cheaper than wind and solar and
created more in-state jobs, so Domin-
ion was all in on the dirty stuff. It was
all about the bottom line.
Then, over the past three years orso, Dominion’s energy analysts con-
firmed that clean energy was becom-
ing cheaper than fossil fuels and
would probably stay that way forever.
The company in 2020 committed to
shutting down most of its coal plants
by 2024 and its gas plants by 2045.
Today, four times as many people
work in the Virginia solar industry as
coal, and Dominion is partnering
with global giant Siemens Gamesa to
launch an offshore wind industry
that will create 5,200 jobs for Vir-
ginians. All the while, Dominion’s
major data center clients in Northern
Virginia and other national brand-
name companies have begun asking
for clean energy by name.
It’s simply a no-brainer for Domin-
ion and most of its customers state-
wide: Dirty energy just no longer
pencils out.
And then comes Youngkin. Few of
us in the environmental community
imagined a day when wind and solar
would finally become price-competi-
tive with fossil fuels and yet an entire
U.S. political party would want to pay
more for combustible energy. It’s
more than just bad business, of
course. It’s socially unconscionable.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initia-
tive that Youngkin is hellbent on
leaving actually generated $228 mil-lion last year to protect coastal Vir-
ginia homes and businesses from
sea-level rise. It also increases energy
efficiency for low-income households
statewide. Meanwhile, a new study
predicts flooding costs in many Vir-
ginia counties will increase as much
as 200 percent in coming years, espe-
cially in poorer communities.
There are plenty of morally contro-
versial aspects to the current Repub-
lican fervor nationwide — mask man-
date bans, abortion restrictions, vot-
ing rights restrictions. Perhaps, deep
down, Youngkin agrees with his base
that these are issues worth fighting
for.
But fighting against clean energy?
In a rapidly changing corporate
America? Surely, this former co-chief
executive of the Carlyle Group, this
man who worked hard to create a net
worth of half a billion dollars, can see
that the “war on solar and wind”
orientation that nominees such as
Wheeler would bring to the state is
just bad for everyone’s pocketbooks.
And if he can’t see it, the Virginia
business community needs to pro-
vide him with a fresh pair of eyeglass-
es. Fast.The writer is director of the Chesapeake
Climate Action Network.On climate, Youngkin is no business leaderBY MARCUS JONESWhen a 17-year-old student
allegedly shot a 15-year-
old student at Magruder
High School on Jan. 21,
there were several disturbing aspects
to the incident. First, of course, that
the shooting took place at all, and
within the confines of a Montgomery
County public school, at that. Second,
the weapon used was a “ghost gun,”
otherwise known as a privately manu-
factured firearm, made from a mail-
order kit and totally untraceable.
The element of the crime that has
the longest-lasting impact and might
be the most serious danger to all of us
is that there were witnesses to the
crime who did nothing to help the
victim or try to make sure the person
who committed the crime would be
caught.
This wasn’t a case in which the
students took a vow of silence to
protect themselves from retribution
or simply didn’t want to get involved.
Just the opposite. They told the whole
world, but not the appropriate part of
the world. Rather than notify the
school staff or get in touch with 911 by
calling or texting, students instead
posted about it on Twitter and Snap-
chat. Their followers knew what had
happened at the school, and whoever
received the shared or retweeted
tweets knew, and perhaps they even
sent it further along. None of that
helped someone who was in need. In
the long run, after the student who
was shot recovers and after ghost
guns are banned (I hope), that’s the
real tragedy here.
Social media can cause some of our
best citizens to lose focus during a
critical moment. I’m not here to attack
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and the
rest. Plenty of others are doing that
quite well. There’s a lot to be said for a
technology that allows people to keep
in touch and to share their life experi-
ences and interests in sports, music
and much more. Yes, social media can
bring people together, and, as we have
seen in a wider political and societal
context, social media can help driveAfter a school shooting in Montgomery,students turned to social media, not 911BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Police block the entrance to Magruder High School in Derwood on Jan. 21 after a shooting.Local OpinionsWASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCALOPINIONS. [email protected]BY SHANE SULLIVANT
he profit-driven underpinning of all of our
systems — including our public health infra-
structure — has become plainer than ever
through this ongoing pandemic. Eclipsed by the
coronavirus’s pervasive impact, however, is another
ongoing public health emergency that has received even
fewer resources to adequately address it: overdose
fatalities.
According to data from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention data, D.C. recorded 511 overdose
deaths in 2020; preliminary 2021 estimates suggest a
similar figure, both largely driven by the increasingly
toxic street drug supply wherein fentanyl has largely
replaced heroin and increasingly been found in cocaine
and pills sold as opiates such as OxyContin and Vicodin.
Though an imperfect analogy, the Iron Law of Prohibi-
tion — a phrase coined in 1986 — posits that as drug
enforcement efforts increase, the potency of the street
drug supply does as well.Fentanyl and other even more potent opiate ana-
logues, such as nitazene, which was recently detected in
D.C., highlight this link, especially as medical access to
opiates has fallen to its lowest rate in 15 years, much to
the detriment of chronic pain patients.
Black D.C. residents accounted for 84 percent of
overdose fatalities in the past six years; they make up an
even higher percentage of the 1,200 people arrested in
D.C. for drug charges, despite similar rates of use by
race. In contrast to the mainstream narrative of clini-
cians “overprescribing” opiates in economically disen-
franchised and primarily White rural areas, people
dying from fatal overdoses in D.C. are overwhelmingly
older Black men, many of whom self-medicated with
heroin for decades and did so with vastly lower overdose
rates before fentanyl’s arrival.
Despite bipartisan agreement that the so-called drug
war is a failure, we continue its barbaric practice of
caging people for their drug use and target those most
marginalized. The District’s LIVE. LONG. DC. initiative
— the city’s strategic plan for addressing overdoses —
recently allocated $1.75 million in its anti-stigma-fo-
cused marketing campaign while ignoring the obvious
reality: Criminalization is stigma. How can we expect
people who are actively using drugs to speak honestly
with medical providers or loved ones about their use
when often that use is a felony charge?
We also need to begin a national conversation about
implementing a safe supply of drugs, as decriminaliza-
tion alone won’t end the increasingly toxic drug market.
Although relatively new, there are pilot programs in
Canada we can look to as models. The concept of a safe
supply seems “radical” only because of decades of drug
war propaganda that has demonized certain classes of
drugs while obfuscating the potential harms of alcohol.
Very few among us desire a return to Prohibition. There
is no innovative program, no brilliant new treatment
modality that can stem the gaping wound caused by the
bullet hole of these drug war policies of criminalization,
surveillance and punishment.
We’ve been in a sustained state of emergency for so
long that it’s easy to accept this as the status quo. But
nothing is normal about losing more than 500 of our
community members to fatal overdoses every year (or
100,000 nationally), and it’s unheard of in countries that
have shifted toward compassionate models.
I am a person who uses drugs who has worked in
harm reduction for nine years and loved people who
have used drugs for much longer. It’s long past time we
listened to front-line workers and people who use drugs
— especially those most directly affected — and uproot
the policies of Prohibition that have been the driving
force behind so much preventable grief and trauma.The writer is a community outreach coordinator at HIPS, a
D.C.-based harm reduction nonprofit, and a core organizer
with #DecrimPovertyDC, a coalition aiming to decriminalize
drugs in D.C.Facing a surgein overdose deaths,D.C. should nowdecriminalize drugsDespite bipartisan agreement that theso-called drug war is a failure, wecontinue its barbaric practice of cagingpeople for their drug use and targetthose most marginalized.