The name of my hometown by choice, Baltimore, Maryland, has lately become a synonym for America's urban condition. Baltimore: it stands for police violence and the war on drugs, urban poverty, and the country's historic and unresolved problems with race. Baltimore stands for the growing chasm between haves and have nots. But it also stands for the sought after characteristics or resurgent and thriving cities - it's hip, authentic, home to first rate anchor institutions, possesses an innovative, creative vibe, and with some very successful examples of economic recovery, can serve as a model for other legacy cities. 

Baltimore unrest 2015

After last week, Baltimore also stands as the latest example of the gruesome damage that can be wrought by a conservative governor willing to undermine a more predominantly liberal urban center for political gain. Maryland's governor, Larry Hogan, battling his own mortality having recently been diagnosed with cancer, called a press conference just a few days after revealing this diagnosis during which he delivered a fatal blow to the Baltimore Red Line. The Red Line, a nearly $3 billion transit project, is a fully designed surface-subway light rail line, shovel ready and even recommended by the Federal Transit Administration to receive the very scarce and coveted "New Starts" funding. The Governor approved another light rail project, the $2.5 billion Purple Line in the D.C. suburbs, though with severe conditions that may ultimately prove to be fatal, including a slashed State funding portion down 75% to a measly $168 million. He did all this in the name of "roads and bridges for every county in the state." Yes, that's right, new transportation policy is all about asphalt and concrete!

This is not the first time a conservative state governor has returned federal money slated for trains. Hogan's mentor Chris Christie did the same thing, and so did the governors of Florida and Wisconsin. But here the Republican did more than table a rail project - he brought the entire elaborate and ambitiously pro-transit transportation strategy down with it, a policy carefully formulated by his predecessor and now presidential candidate Martin O'Malley, including a complicated set of gas tax, toll, and fee increases to fund the state share. Hogan first took down the State tolls, a $55 million a year give away allowing bridge and tunnel users, many of the out-of state, marginal savings in the individual pocket. But last week's announcement was a much more deadly blow than the first. Nobody had yet had struck down a critical transportation project with as much gusto, derision and political symbolism as Governor Larry Hogan last week. He did so without so much as a hint of a plan to aid those affected by the decision, and at such a delicate moment for both himself and for the area to be served and by extension for the country.