Glendening

Although this fact may not have been apparent to readers of The Sun's recent article on the future of the Rosewood Center site ("Hospitals' acreage is lure for developers," June 15), this land is situated directly across the road from the Caves Valley conservation area.

Eugene "Gene" Raymond Lynch III, a member of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's Cabinet who orchestrated the preservation of Deep Creek Lake for future generations, died of metastatic bladder cancer Friday at Casey House, a Rockville hospice. He was 50. The former governor described his friend and colleague as a "renaissance man of public service," given Mr. Lynch's background as a civic activist, labor organizer and small-business owner. "Very few people brought that kind of diversity of background to his service," Mr. Glendening said.

Former Gov. Parris N. Glendening endorsed New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for president yesterday, citing the fellow Democrat's commitment to environmental protection and fighting global climate change. "As secretary of energy, he was a leader on mass transit and smart growth issues," Glendening said in a statement released by the Richardson campaign. "As governor of New Mexico, he has turned around an economy while also protecting the environment." A former two-term Democratic governor, Glendening is best known as a champion of anti-sprawl development policies.

Nancy S. Grasmick, one of Maryland's most tenacious political survivors, won't be evicted easily from the Nancy S. Grasmick Building. With a combination of sterling professional credentials and shrewd political maneuvering, the nation's longest- serving state schools superintendent has managed to hang on to her office under four governors. Yesterday, the State Board of Education gave her the glimmer of a chance she might serve under a fifth. It awarded Grasmick, 68, a new four-year contract that would keep her in her job until after the 2010 gubernatorial election - if she can hold on. The board acted in brash defiance of the state's three most powerful elected officials - Gov. Martin O'Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch.

The architect of Maryland's decade-old Smart Growth policy spoke up for it yesterday, arguing that despite its shortcomings at curbing suburban sprawl it has helped revitalize dying downtowns across the state and kick-started a national movement to build more transit-oriented, walkable communities. Speaking in Annapolis at a conference reviewing the growth-management law he crafted, former Gov. Parris N. Glendening acknowledged that a few metropolitan areas and states such as Oregon and Seattle have had more success than has Maryland at reining in low-density development.

Albert F. Goetze Jr., a decorated World War II veteran who headed his family's meatpacking business and later became an advocate for the Chesapeake Bay, died of cancer Aug. 25 at his St. Michaels home. He was 84. Born in Baltimore and raised in Mayfield, he was a McDonogh School graduate. He left his studies at Cornell University to enlist in the Army. He was assigned to an infantry unit fighting in Europe during World War II. According to notes Mr. Goetze kept, he fought continuously from November 1944 through February 1945 in Belgium and Germany.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and his Cabinet closeted themselves with former Gov. Parris N. Glendening and out-of-state planning experts yesterday to hash over ways to reinvigorate Smart Growth, the state's decade-old sprawl-fighting effort that some say has failed to live up to its promise. "The public is crying out for this," O'Malley said in opening the two-day internal workshop on growth management at an Annapolis hotel. Though welcoming up to 60,000 new jobs to the state from military base realignment, the governor said Maryland needs to figure out how to accommodate the new people while still preserving its environment and quality of life.

There's a new lead singer, but the band is back together. Gov. Martin O'Malley's latest round of hires brings to eight the number of officials from Gov. Parris N. Glendening's administration who have been brought back to head state departments. He's not done with his nominations yet, but already more than a third of O'Malley's Cabinet has been culled from the ranks of the last Democrat to hold the chief executive's office in Maryland. Glendening alumni are heading the departments of Budget and Management, Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation, Planning, Environment, Natural Resources, Housing and Community Development, and General Services.

History may look more kindly on Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s term as governor than voters did last November. At the moment, any report card would probably offer a Gentleman's C for his four years in office. The accomplishments of the term are modest, but nothing disastrous took place and he won't leave office tomorrow as unpopular as Parris N. Glendening was. What happened during Mr. Ehrlich's time in Annapolis seems, in retrospect, to have been inevitable. Elected the first Republican governor since Spiro T. Agnew, the former congressman inherited a difficult budget mess (chiefly a downturn in tax receipts with an uptick in education spending)

Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley will include full funding for a key land-preservation program in his budget for next year, keeping a major campaign promise to the state's environmentalists, his administration announced yesterday. Money from Program Open Space, which is funded through transfer taxes on real estate transactions, was shifted to other programs in recent years to help balance the budget. Although O'Malley faces a small revenue shortfall this year and larger ones in the near future, he said in a letter to environmental groups that he will fully fund the preservation program in the fiscal year that starts July 1. "The structural deficit will force us to make difficult decisions together and require structural reforms to make our government more efficient, but we must also continue to make the critical investments necessary to move our state forward - investments in programs like Program Open Space," O'Malley wrote.