Update from MHC President Steuart Pittman:

  *****MHC Save the Horse Farms

"Remember the bill that we wrote and passed in Annapolis last year that says that what we do on our horse farms is agriculture? Well, many of our county officials still tell us we are something other than agriculture. They hit us with absurd zoning laws that either prevent people from establishing horse farms, limit what we can do, or sometimes even put us out of business.

By the time you read this MHC will have held its first statewide meeting to kick off a campaign to fight back. The first phase is research. We will collect not only every county's laws that affect horse farms, but also those that are being used against us simply because of the way bureaucrats interpret them. We also need to know all of your case stories. We understand that when folks are trying to get zoning permits, or are trying to avoid being caught out of compliance, the last thing they want is publicity. That's OK. We won't share your stories if you don't want us to. We just need to know how the county laws are being used against us so that we can write new laws.

Once the research is complete we will issue a report along with model county laws that can be applied anywhere. The final phase will be for MHC members in each county to take their proposed changes to their county councils for adoption. Horse people in any county are encouraged to call themselves the (county name) County Horse Council and make themselves a local political voice to represent horse farms. MHC will back you up.

If we are to make Maryland "Horse Country" once again, we must start where we are being hit the hardest:  at the county level. Please get involved in this work. This campaign is an all-volunteer effort. We need you."
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A major focus of the MHC Legislative Committee in 2010 will be a new "Save The Horse Farms" campaign. We are enlisting volunteers from each county to help gather stories about the effect of county regulations on horse farms, as well as to gather local ordinances and recruit local committees who want to work for reform at the county level. The committee has outlined the following objectives for this initiative.

Ø   Draft a detailed survey to inquire into individual farm owners’ experience with county level governmental entities and issues with any specific zoning ordinances

Ø    Name County Coordinator and create County Committees

o     Collect and organize data from farm owners, county council, and county park and planning entities

o       Collection of relevant zoning ordinance language

o       Collection of case history of farms having specific issues with governmental entities

o       Collection of data on horse farms, non-horse farms, and use of open space at the county level

o       Collection of data on grain/hay farms that have now been sold for development purposes

Ø      Review of federal and other legislation to protect and preserve horse farms

o       Kentucky

o       Washington State

o       New York

Ø      Review of federal and state level legislation for agricultural and open space preservation

Ø      Draft and Release Report

Ø      Implement legislative objective arising from the data collection at the state and local levels

Anyone interested in sharing experiences for this effort or in becoming involved in any way should contact Amy Krengel Samman at ajk@FDALAW.com.