Assateague Island Administrative History

Maryland Gets Involved

In response to this organized public interest and upon the formal request of the president of the Maryland Senate and the speaker of the House of Delegates, Governor Marvin Mandel on August 12, 1971, appointed a Joint Executive—Legislative Committee on Assateague Island "to review all aspects of the ownership, development, and utilization of Assateague Island and to make recommendations as to the proper course to be taken by the State of Maryland." The advisability of transferring the state park to the Federal Government was to receive particular attention. [23]

The committee reported to Governor Mandel in March 1972 after a series of meetings at which concerned Federal and state officials and private citizens offered their views. As strongly advocated by James B. Coulter, secretary of the Maryland Department of Forests and Parks, the report supported retention of the state's only seashore park. But it recommended severe curtailment of the development proposed therein, advising that individual campsites be limited to 350 units rather than the planned 500 and that other facilities be minimized and directed to day use. It further recommended that the Federal Assateague legislation be amended to delete the mandates for the connecting road and concession accommodations, and that Maryland join with the Federal Government in a new seashore master plan respecting the ecological sensitivity of the island and bay. The conservation interests were clearly in the ascendancy; the only dissenting committee member was Delegate Russell O. Hickman of Worcester County, who filed a minority report opposing repeal of the development requirements. [24]

In a letter of April 7 to Rogers C. B. Morton, now Secretary of the Interior, Governor Mandel endorsed the recommendations of the Joint Executive—Legislative Committee. Secretary Morton responded the following month, suggesting that the time had come for a review of the Assateague legislation with Maryland and Virginia officials. In September, Secretary of State Planning Vladimir A. Wahbe, who had chaired the Joint Executive—Legislative Committee, told the Environmental Matters Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates that his committee's report had been favorably received by representatives of both state governments and the Interior Department. The legislature approved a resolution in May 1973 commending the committee and urging the Governor to work toward implementing its recommendations. [25] These events and expressions of opinion followed closely upon a well orchestrated and highly productive letter—writing campaign by the Committee to Preserve Assateague and sympathetic organizations.

Worcester County, as represented by Delegate Hickman, was the last holdout for major development on Assateague. In January 1974, however, the attorney general of Maryland advised that state law would not authorize real property taxation of the concession accommodations the county had fought to prescribe on the island, so that county assessments would be limited to the personal property associated with the concessions. "In balancing the minimal losses of revenue derived from personal property tax against the preservation of non—commercial natural environment of Assateague Island, together with supportive commercial enterprises on the mainland in Worcester County, I can only find that the scale weighs heavily for the latter alternative," Secretary Coulter wrote the county commissioners. [26]