Stop wasting tax dollars on bad planning

I am troubled by the assumption of PlanMaryland opponents that they have an inalienable and eternal right to our tax dollars to support their high maintenance and energy consumption lifestyle. The purpose of the PlanMaryland legislation, like smart growth before it, is to withhold state funding for bad choices about how and where to live made by local government. If they persist in turning cornfields into vinyl McMansions, they shouldn't do it on my tax dollars.

It's bad enough that any corporate functionary should get a mortgage interest deduction for living in a house with a profligate carbon footprint and commute on roads newly built on some of the best farmland on the planet. But that provision of the tax code is the federal government's idiocy which Maryland can't do anything about.

The whole point of Maryland accommodating the BRAC newcomers is finding homes near their work and transit hubs. In this light, why should Maryland spend state money paying dearly for all the pricey accouterments of far-flung exurbia where the local primates cannot even reconcile themselves to a commuter bus?

Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore