Has commitment to ICC gone out the door with Ehrlich administration?

First out of the box was the Department of Legislative Services with its annual report on the ‘‘Effect of Long-term Debt on the Financial Condition of the State,” published on Dec. 5. The DLS opined that transportation debt ‘‘competes with other state capital projects,” and that Maryland’s unused debt capacity was beginning to shrink, largely due to increased transportation borrowing. Similar tut-tutting emanated from the Spending Affordability Committee and the Comptroller’s Office.

The (Baltimore) Sun followed almost immediately with an editorial giving the governor-to-be permission to postpone big capital projects, ‘‘even the proposed Intercounty Connector.”

When Montgomery County Councilwoman Nancy Floreen sought to introduce a resolution after the 2006 election affirming support for the region’s big transportation capital projects — the Purple Line, the Corridor Cities Transitway and the Intercounty Connector — it quickly became obvious that including the ICC in the legislation would render it a non-starter. Floreen got her resolution, but it named only the two transit projects.

Meanwhile, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission decided to delay selling land needed to construct the ICC to the State Highway Administration until O’Malley made clear his intentions regarding the road. While the SHA seems to be proceeding with standing orders, M-NCPPC Commissioner John M. Robinson told The Washington Post that he wanted to see ‘‘an affirmation from the council and the [incoming] governor that this is still transportation policy.”

Then, just days before his inauguration, O’Malley himself, with his transportation secretary designee, John Porcari, at his side, told an anti-ICC questioner at a town meeting that, while he wasn’t prepared to announce he would pull the plug on the ICC at that forum, he would ‘‘keep an open mind.”

Which bring us to the fiscal 2008 budget, unveiled two weeks ago, with a $53 million hole where the ICC used to be. This $53 million represents the first installment of the vaunted general fund payback to the transportation trust fund. The general fund payback was once so important to lawmakers it had been enshrined in statute, so the administration actually needed to introduce a bill to undo the previous action. This initiative, Senate Bill 73, until now an obscure piece of the O’Malley legislative agenda, has a hearing in the Budget and Taxation Committee next Wednesday.

In the meantime, O’Malley aides are making soothing noises, insisting that MDOT doesn’t need the cash for the ICC just now. Porcari told The Post that ‘‘the project is moving at full speed” with no ‘‘change in commitment” to building the road from that of the Ehrlich administration.

‘‘No change in commitment?” Has O’Malley given Porcari the same unwieldy middle name that Ehrlich slapped on his transportation secretary, ‘‘Bob ‘If-you-don’t-build-the-ICC-you’re-fired’ Flanagan”? Doubtful.

For the last four years, progress on the ICC was propelled by the relentless attention of the project’s primary backer, Bob Ehrlich. As long as Ehrlich was governor, Montgomery officials could ignore the ICC and focus their attentions on other projects.

But Montgomery’s Annapolis contingent already has a pretty full plate. Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction got little more than a bundle of unpleasant surprises when O’Malley’s first budget was unveiled. With so much to be unhappy about, where will the ICC be on Montgomery’s list of priorities? The first clue came from county House Delegation chairman Charles Barkley. When making the county’s pitch for school construction funds at the annual Board of Public Works ‘‘beg-a-thon” last week, Barkley bemoaned the missing money for a new courthouse in Rockville, not the missing money for the ICC. Judging by Tuesday’s rally in Annapolis, light rail on the Purple Line seems to be their more immediate concern.

With Ehrlich gone, advocating for the ICC has become the Montgomery County delegation’s responsibility, and ICC supporters couldn’t hope for a better legislative leader than P.J. Hogan. The question is, does Hogan have any followers?

Carol Arscott was the assistant secretary for policy at the Maryland Department of Transportation during the Ehrlich administration, and before that, a principal with Gonzales⁄Arscott Research and Communications.