But to get rid of runoff pollution, we need to deal with runoff corruption. I will introduce a bill my first week in office to abolish corporate and partnership contributions in our elections. These contributions are illegal in many states, from Wisconsin, where they are a felony crime, to Texas, where the populists insisted on a separation of politics and corporate power, and even West Virginia. The time has come in Maryland too. We need to make political judgments free of the incredible pressure of large corporate contributions, and we also need to stop the political shakedown of honest Maryland businesses. Unlike my opponent, I do not accept or solicit corporate contributions and I will move quickly to ban them.

We need to conduct a thorough environmental audit of both internal state practices and private industry every year and establish benchmarks for real progress on all of our key environmental indicators. When the Bush administration pulled the plug on the Kyoto accords, the New England states got together to form a regional compact to comply as much as possible with the Kyoto agreement. We should immediately do the same thing in the mid-Atlantic states. We have no time to spare.

Maryland should be a leader, not a laggard, in confronting the scary realities of global warming. The Arctic icecap is melting away at a shocking pace and there are dragonflies buzzing in the North Pole. More and more land is being consumed by drought and destroyed by severe weather events like Hurricane Katrina. Rising waters all over the world are submerging and ravaging low-lying communities and threatening our beloved shores. 2005 was the hottest year on record since 2004 and 2003 and 1999, which was the hottest year in the 20th century.

We cannot pretend that global warming is someone else’s problem. Maryland produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 78 nations on earth. We simply have to act.

I want us to make Maryland the model state government in terms of energy conservation and investment in renewable energy technologies. We need general laws that will require clean cars and green buildings and create powerful incentives for home insulation and energy efficiency. We must resist the pressure to pave over close-in farmland. We need political leaders to focus on future generations rather than present campaign contributions.

We are choking on traffic, wasting millions of hours of our time every year sitting in cars. We need a comprehensive transportation strategy that liberates us from three decades of traffic and gridlock. Whatever its other merits, the Inter-County Connector is not that. Even the State Highway Administration tells us that the ICC will not reduce traffic on I-95 or the Beltway, and it is going to soak up a million dollars a week for the next five years from the general fund, diverting money from public transportation.

We need to invest in major road improvements and construction, better bus service and expanded mass transit that will give us precious time back with our families. This is a critical quality-of-life question for our region.

Above all, we need to break the logjam over the inner Purple Line light rail system by designing a political strategy to get it done. Imagine what our area would be like today had we not made a visionary investment back in the 1970’s in the Metro system. Every day the Metro moves more than a half-million people —what if all those people were driving instead? We need to be equally visionary today about expanding mass transit and making it convenient, beautiful and conducive to positive growth. Our current leadership has placed all the eggs in the ICC basket, leaving the Purple Line and mass transit high and dry.

As District 20’s State Senator, I will champion:

• Creation of a Mid-Atlantic environmental compact between states, similar to the Kyoto Protocol, to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the region.
• Rejecting bad, short-term, and short-sighted fixes such as Beltway widening and toll-lanes and promoting instead a comprehensive public transportation strategy based on the inner Purple Line and major bus and light-rail improvements.
• Positive teamwork and synergy between state, county, and federal officials to make environmentally conscious growth and transportation policy a reality.
• Investing in major road improvements and construction, better bus service and expanded mass transit that will give us precious time back with our families.
• Supporting preservation of public lands, the agricultural reserve and Montgomery County’s rural heritage.
• Tax incentives for clean cars and green buildings, including for small business owners, who often cannot afford the overhead needed to convert to renewable energies.
• Abolition of corporate and partnership campaign contributions and institution of “clean election” campaign financing to make these progressive changes possible.