Farm bureau president wants Gansler ‘impeached or recalled’

Attorney General Doug Gansler (D)W. Michael Phipps, president of the Maryland Farm Bureau, told WTOP he believes state Attorney General Doug Gansler (D) should “be impeached or recalled, whichever is swifter,” for allowing the state Department of Agriculture to release documents on how chicken farms are managing manure and its effect on surrounding waters.

The farm bureau is pursuing a lawsuit against the agriculture department and Waterkeeper Alliance, a clean water advocacy group that prompted the department to make the farm’s ‘Nutrient Management Plans’ public. But Phipps places the blame squarely on Gansler’s shoulders.

"It's pressure, I think, from the attorney general, who actually is supposed to be defending the law that the General Assembly passed and the governor signed back in '98 which states that the plans are to be confidential,” Phipps said. “And… instead of defending the law, he's usurping it.”

Gansler replied, "The notion that someone would call for the impeachment of the attorney general for the attorney general's enforcement of laws that are already on the books is somewhat silly."

Phipps contends that the ‘Nutrient Management Plans’ could be stolen by competitors, but Gansler said the Farm Bureau may be confusing their private plans with the one-page documents that the agriculture department will be releasing.

The Maryland Farm Bureau is a private, non-profit membership organization that touts 27,000 member families in the state’s 23 county Farm Bureaus.