Owens leaves legacy of growth :
By JEFF HORSEMAN, Staff Writer

Anne Arundel boomed during her 8-year tenure


Say she's too nice. Mock her wardrobe. But if you really want to tick off Janet S. Owens, call her Queen of Sprawl.

The title, once used to name a larger-than-life effigy of the county executive, sums up the feelings of many environmentalists and civic leaders who accuse Ms. Owens of letting developers run rampant.

But Ms. Owens says she did what she had to do to pay for essential public services in a tax-averse county. And she maintains that her critics don't understand how zoning works.

As her eight-year run as head of Anne Arundel County government ends tomorrow with the swearing in of John R. Leopold, how Ms. Owens is remember may hinge on how people view the county's robust growth.

So far, they're pretty dismayed.

In an October poll by Annapolis-based OpinionWorks, Ms. Owens scored low marks for managing growth and development, with 29 percent of respondents giving her a C, 18 percent giving her a D and 24 percent giving her an F. Overall, her approval rating was 48 percent.

The daughter of a south county tobacco farmer, Ms. Owens made preserving farmland one of her top priorities. More acres of open space were saved under her administration than ever before.

Having narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for state comptroller this fall, the 62-year-old Millersville Democrat plans to retreat from the public eye, no longer having to endure the endless demands for her attention or the phone calls at all hours of the night.

A married mother of two grown sons, Ms. Owens is the county's sixth executive and the first since O. James Lighthizer to serve two four-year terms, the maximum allowed by law.

Ms. Owens said the $102,000-a-year job took over her life.

"The responsibility never leaves you," she said. "I have personal friends and relatives who joked along the way, 'Well, we'll see you in eight years.' And that's true. We've not had a dinner party at our house going on nine years."

As county executive, Ms. Owens oversaw a government of 24 departments and agencies, more than 5,000 employees and a fiscal 2007 budget of more than $1 billion.

From Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole in the east to an influx of military-related jobs in the west, Anne Arundel continued under Ms. Owens to shed its image as a backwater county. Its population grew from 476,000 to 510,000 during her tenure, making it the fifth most populated of Maryland's 23 counties.

As Ms. Owens leaves office, the county enjoys a budget surplus, a strong bond rating, an unemployment rate below the state and national average and high real estate values.

But she warns of tough times ahead.

A real-estate market slowdown combined with new demands for retiree health care and 10 expiring union contracts await Mr. Leopold. Ms. Owens is highly skeptical of her Republican successor's plan to cut the size of county government.

Tough tasks

An Orphan's Court judge who ran the county's Department of Aging and public housing authority under Mr. Lighthizer, Ms. Owens faced long odds in her 1998 campaign to unseat Republican County Executive John G. Gary Jr.

Democratic Party leaders convinced county councilman Diane Evans to leave the GOP and take on Mr. Gary. She upset Mrs. Evans in the primary, and then beat Mr. Gary 58 to 42 percent. In doing so, she became the county's first woman executive since the start of charter government in 1965.

Ms. Owens raised more than $500,000 for her 2002 re-election bid, which she won by defeating Republican Phil Bissett 52 to 48 percent.

Ms. Owens won her first term promising to improve school funding, save rural land and bring civility back to the Arundel Center, where Mr. Gary had earned a combative reputation.

Education funding grew dramatically under Ms. Owens, with the school system's operating budget going up $70 million in her first year. Half the current county budget goes to public schools.

Of the 12,084 acres of agricultural land preserved by the county since 1979, nearly 7,000 were saved in the Owens era.

Restoring civility, Ms. Owens said, has been one of the more difficult tasks. "I was going against the tide on that one."

She said she needed a thick skin "more than I thought. I never was fully aware of how negative the press is, the presumption that government is bad. Because I never operated on that assumption."

Being a woman, Ms. Owens said, presented unique challenges.

"There's always a double standard," she said. "I don't think other male county executives get immediate feedback from constituents on how their hair looks, on how they're dressed."

Even Ms. Owens' appearance became an issue in the comptroller race. Incumbent William Donald Schaefer compared her to Mother Hubbard.

Early on, Ms. Owens had to fight the perception that she was too nice to be county executive and that her husband, Baltimore attorney David Sheehan, ran county government behind the scenes.

"The expectation that I didn't have a brain came as a shock. It really did," she said.

Ms. Owens grappled with lots of weighty issues. But she also had the chance to help people like Margaret Ratliff one by one.

Desperate for help, Mrs. Ratliff of Pasadena called the county executive's office in March. Ms. Owens returned her call that night and spoke with her for an hour and a half. She then helped Mrs. Ratliff get a grant to attend Anne Arundel Community College.

Today, Mrs. Ratliff said she is enrolled in computer classes and her life is getting back on track.

"(Ms. Owens) kept me from having a nervous breakdown," Mrs. Ratliff said. "I cannot thank her enough."

Ms. Owens said being able to help people like Mrs. Ratliff is "a piece of what's made the job such an extraordinary privilege. Because you do get to help people everyday, and I've loved it."

Finding the money

People look to the county to fix their roads, teach their kids and protect their homes.

The problem, Ms. Owens said, is getting them to pay for it, especially when the county tax cap restricts how much additional property tax revenue the county can take in each year.

"People like the fact that we have low taxes," she said. "And yet many of the new folks coming in seem equally unwilling to pay their way. ? I ended up worrying about money all the time."

Ms. Owens sought to boost the county's coffers by expanding the commercial tax base.

She expedited the redevelopment of the boarded-up Parole Plaza shopping center into the $400 million Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole. The project's developer also wants to double the size of the Village at Waugh Chapel in Gambrills.

On the Broadneck Peninsula, developers are supposed to turn a former Navy research lab, the David Taylor Research Center, into an office, retail and hotel complex.

Military base realignments will bring about 5,300 jobs to Fort George G. Meade in the coming years, with thousands of private sector jobs to follow.

Ms. Owens is proud of what she calls the "Gold Coast" - the area around BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport that is home to a number of high-tech firms and defense contractors. In all, 9.2 million square feet of commercial space is in the pipeline, along with 4,000 homes in west county alone.

With the county becoming a popular place to live, home prices skyrocketed. The resulting income from recordation and transfer taxes gave Ms. Owens millions to pump into her last two budgets.

Down with the Queen

But Ms. Owens' detractors say the county's growth has a steep price in the form of traffic-clogged roads, overcrowded schools and stormwater pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

Torrey Jacobsen Jr., president of the Greater Crofton Council, said Ms. Owens "was not a good friend" to his community.

"On one side she's trying to save all the farms, and on the other side she's trying to develop all the properties," he said. "Money talked and the rest of us walked."

Drew Koslow, riverkeeper for the South River, said Ms. Owens shut the public out of the planning process for Annapolis Towne Centre, creating an oversized, ill-conceived project.

While economic growth is a good thing, "I really think we've sacrificed quality of life," he said. "She was so desperate to make (Annapolis Towne Centre) the signature of her administration that she sold us out."

Critics said while Ms. Owens came to office with a slow-growth agenda, she gradually became beholden to developers, who gave her tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in recent years.

Opponents of Safeway's plans to build a supermarket in Deale in 2000 made a 12-foot-tall effigy of Ms. Owens and named it "The Queen of Sprawl."

The moniker angers Ms. Owens to this day. She said the County Council sets the zoning that dictates what can be built on a piece of land.

"I think it's very unfortunate that so many people do not understand land-use policy," she said. "They forget that there's a constitution, that there are property rights. And they think that the county executive can just stop things."

Bob Burdon, president and chief executive officer of the Annapolis & Anne Arundel County Chamber of Commerce, said Ms. Owens wasn't biased toward any one group.

"Nobody got everything they wanted from Janet," he said. "Janet was very pragmatic in terms of what had to be done and what she was willing and not willing to do."

The future

During his campaign, Mr. Leopold pledged to trim the fat from county government and restore the public's trust in its ability to handle money.

Ms. Owens said she shrunk government as much as she could. When Mr. Leopold talks about slashing the bureaucracy, "I just sit back and laugh," Ms. Owens said.

She said she's not sure what kind of executive Mr. Leopold will be.

"Many of his comments in the paper I think demonstrate that he doesn't fully understand the workings of county government," Ms. Owens said. "He'll learn."

She said the county is poised for greatness. But she said labor unions will want pay increases on par with the 6 percent raises the teachers got this year. Now that the county has binding arbitration, an arbitrator could force the county to raise taxes to cover the pay hikes, she said.

Then there's retiree health insurance. New accounting rules will force the county to plan ahead for the health care costs of current and future retirees. The county could be on the hook for $75 million to $137 million a year.

Still, Ms. Owens said she would have liked to have had a third term, at least so she could manage the growth in west county.

"I've spent seven years putting the pieces in place," she said.

As for her future plans, Ms. Owens said she talked with Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley, but "nothing definite" is on tap.

"People keep asking 'What are you going to do?'" she said.

"And I really don't know. And I don't want to think about it right now. I truly want some down time. I want time to worry about the farm, which has been neglected. And I want to spoil my husband a little bit."

When asked how she wanted to be remembered, Ms. Owens wiped away tears.

"I loved the county, truly," she said.

Published December 03, 2006, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2006 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.