After a 30-minute ride through acres of rural land Tuesday morning, Maryland's comptroller said he was impressed with Prince George's management of parkland it bought in 2007 under a state program that is now facing a dramatic funding shortfall.Peter V.R. Franchot (D) said the tour of Charles Branch Stream Valley Park, south of Upper Marlboro, convinced him that the state was right to spend $4.1 million to buy the property from a developer in 2007. He added that he would tell Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) that the park is a good candidate for state investment in the future."Twenty years from now, people are going to look back and say, ‘I'm glad they did that,'" Franchot said after touring the land with a park ranger and Ronnie Gather, the director of the county's Department of Parks and Recreation..."We're going to have this preserved necklace of green all the way through Prince George's County," he told Franchot. "[But] we can't do this without the state's help and assistance."Wagnon told Franchot the park is important because it creates a buffer between the county's rural tier and its developing tier, where county regulations allow for heavier development, and because it contains acres of hardwood forest, active farmland and other resources.The Patuxent Greenway project is especially important because southern Prince George's is expected to see some of the county's heaviest development in the coming years, which could threaten rural land, Gather said.Franchot said he is interested in promoting the construction of bike trails in the park and suggested that he will be open to other ideas for improving the park."This is very forward-thinking stuff," he said of the Patuxent Greenway project. "The idea of connecting this [land] makes so much sense… Any project connected to this site or the greenway, I'll be very interested in."