The real reasons people leave Maryland

People have been making a great deal of a Gallup poll earlier this year showing that 47 percent of Marylanders would move out of the state if they could (“Maryland’s unhappy residents,” May 9).

Some politicians and commentators have suggested that the reason Marylanders want to leave is our taxes. In fact, Gallup helpfully provided information about the reasons people have for wanting to leave the state, which should have been better reported in the news.

Of the 17 percent of residents who are actually planning to leave, only 8 percent cite taxes as their primary reason. That comes to less than 1.4 percent of the state’s population.

Good luck to them — especially if they go to Pennsylvania, with its fracking-related earthquakes and flaming tap water.

This state has serious problems to address, including climate change and rising sea levels that threaten the Chesapeake Bay ecosystems, a decaying infrastructure that endangers lives and homes, and gross economic inequality, with large pockets of double-digit unemployment and unequal access to education.

It is a pity the politicians who made it past the primary would rather talk about a poll that they haven’t even the honesty to describe accurately than the real reasons people leave Maryland.

Katharine W. Rylaarsdam