3176                                                 VETOES

directed towards the land not towards such people or
entities. An analogy drawn from the doctrine of standing
provides support for our view that the effect on persons
outside the county is too remote and speculative to
result in House Bill 1785 being held a public general
law. While a Baltimore County paper—hanger wishing to do
business in Baltimore City would clearly have had
standing to challenge the law involved in the Dasch case,
a person seeking construction employment or permanent
employment in connection with the development of one of
the facilities prohibited by House Bill 1785 would
certainly lack standing to challenge the bill whether he
was from Anne Arundel County or not. Owners of property
adjoining a proposed site for such a facility would have
standing to challenge a zoning ordinance or other law
allowing its construction, but it is at best questionable
whether they would have standing to challenge a law
prohibiting its construction — and this would be so
whether their adjoining land was located within or
without the county. The only person or persons who would
have standing to challenge House Bill 1785 would be
persons either owning land located within the county or
persons with contractual rights to utilize Anne Arundel
County land. While such persons might well be from
outside Anne Arundel County, their standing to challenge
the law would turn on their ownership of or interest in
Anne Arundel County land. He believe that a strong
argument can be made in the area of land use that any law
which is aimed solely at the land within a single county
and which does not clearly involve the protection of some
significant State natural resource or other State
interest must be viewed in a somewhat different light
than laws which regulate directly the activities of
people.

As indicated above, we recognize that oil refineries
and other uses covered by House Bill 1785 (or the absence
thereof) may have an impact beyond their immediate
surroundings and may be of concern to persons outside of
the county. While an argument could certainly be made
that this impact and this concern would justify
characterizing House Bill 1785 as a public general law,
we do not think such an argument would prevail. Our
conclusion is considerably reinforced by the limited time
period for which the bill would be effective (and its
correspondingly limited impact); and our view of the
inappropriateness of this legislation is further
reinforced by the actions recently taken by the Anne
Arundel County Council to control the very same type of
use.**

Finally, we should note that House Bill 1785
purports to amend Article 66B of the Annotated Code, an
Article which contains a provision (Section 7.03) that
"[a]nything contained in this Article shall not apply to