Richard Klein is the founder and president of CEDS. He also serves as our
principal strategist. Richard is the person who has the initial conversation
with citizens who contact CEDS about development-related issues. Through
these conversations we can help citizens to take the first steps towards
formulating a winning strategy. Richard is also the author of
How To Win
Land Development Issues and many of the other publication on our website.
Richard has been helping people with development related concerns for
40
years. He was employed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for
18 years and served as the director of Maryland Save Our Streams for ten
years. He founded CEDS in 1987. In 1990, the American Planning Association
published Richard's first book Everyone Wins: A Citizens Guide To
Development. Though he started out as an environmental expert, Richard has
become familiar with all aspects of winning land use campaigns - technical,
legal, and political. Richard is responsible for formulating the strategies
which allow 90% of the citizens helped by CEDS to win their campaigns.
Others in the CEDS Network
Our network presently includes 135 attorneys
nationwide who specialize in helping citizens with land use, zoning, and
environmental issues. Our network also includes all the other professionals
needed to win a development campaign: traffic engineers, wetland scientists,
land planners, political consultants, stormwater engineers, historians and
archaeologists, and many others.
Why Don't We List CEDS Professionals
Citizens sometimes ask why we do not
post the names of the other CEDS professionals on our website. The reason is
simple. It is frequently a waste of limited resources (time-money) to hire
someone with specialized expertise, like an engineer or even a lawyer,
without first researching which strategy options offer the best chance of
victory. So, instead, Richard helps citizens to form a strategy then calls
upon the other professionals in the CEDS network as needed to win each case.
This approach allows our citizen clients to win far more often at a fraction
of the cost.
CEDS Clients: A Partial Listing
Following are some of the many citizen groups,
nonprofit organizations, and government agencies we've helped across the
nation: Apple Greene Civic Association; Baltimore County, MD; Blue Ridge
Coalition - Floyd County Chapter; Chesapeake Bay Foundation; Citizens For A
Better Flathead; Citizens to Protect Brice Prairie; Coalition Against
Surface Mining; Echo Hill Outdoor School; Friends of Beaver Lake; Mannington
Preservation Citizens Committee; Natural Resources Defense Council; Piedmont Environmental Council; City of
Pocomoke, MD; Potomac River Association; Saddlebrook Estates Homeowners
Association; Shawnee Preservation Society; Sierra Club; Southern
Environmental Law Center; State of Hawaii Office of Planning; Talbot River
Protection Association; The Nature Conservancy; Valleys Planning Council;
Vineyard Conservation Society; West Virginia Highlands Conservancy; Woodland
Hills Homeowners Association; and hundreds of other groups and individual
citizens.
