About CEDS
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 publications 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.
Map of Where We’ve Helped Others
To see the many places throughout the nation where we’ve helped homeowners, citizen groups and others protect their neighborhood and environment click: CEDS Map.
Others in the CEDS Network
Our network presently includes several hundred 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.