Steve Burns
WMAL.com
ROCKVILLE – (WMAL) In another first-in-the-nation move, the Montgomery County Council is set to vote Tuesday on a bill banning pesticide use by homeowners. The ban would go into effect on January 1, 2017, though county parks would be exempted from compliance until 2020.
“It will make a major statement nationally,” said Council President George Leventhal. “I don’t think a property owner has the right to inflict harm on adjacent property owners.”
The bill is expected to be passed on a 5-4 vote, splitting the normally harmonious council as a competing bill to come out of the Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy, and the Environment Committee, chaired by Councilmember Roger Berliner, would call for a step-by-step, long-term ban over a number of years.
“A bill of this nature to be passed on a 5-4 vote, to me, is not the greatest outcome,” Berliner said. “I don’t think you go, out of the box, to a ban. I don’t think that’s responsible government.”
Berliner cited an opinion from the State Attorney General’s office that a ban is “likely to be unlawful.”
Leventhal downplayed the danger.
“Our legal staff does not believe that Montgomery County is pre-empted in this area. We don’t know whether we’ll be sued, but the risk always exists,” Leventhal said.
The Attorney General’s office doubled down, according to Berliner, when asked for a second opinion.
“I called the Attorney General personally and said, ‘Mr. Attorney General, you do realize, this is a very significant opinion. Would you make sure you are comfortable with it and your office reviews it?’ They did review it and sent an even stronger letter a second time,” Berliner said.
Under Leventhal’s plan, the ban for homeowners would go into effect in 2017, though there will be certain exemptions. “The use would be banned for lawns. The use would not be banned for a variety of exceptions in the bill. Noxious weeds, invasive species, stinging and biting insects,” he said. County parks would not have to comply until 2020.
Berliner remained concern about public backlash.
“I think they’re going to have a referendum, and my own personal view is that referendum would prevail and we would lose the public on this issue, and I hate that kind of pushback from the public.”
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