Feb 8th – Public Hearing on Statewide Issues and Proposed Local Bills

The Howard County Delegation of the Maryland General Assembly will hold a public hearing on Thursday, February 8 on statewide issues. The hearing will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Banneker Room of the George Howard Building, 3430 Court House Drive, Ellicott City, MD.

From Howard County Office of Public Information

The bills that are currently scheduled to be heard are below the fold

Pay to Play? What’s the Price?

To get a “seat at the table” in local government – there are two ways to go… one is to be elected and the other is to be appointed.

I’m not really sure what it takes to be appointed – some combination of political connections, interest, experience, campaign contributions(?), who knows. For the upcoming appointment to the Board of Education, race and/or ethnicity will apparently play a significant role.

“Ethnic diversity will factor into Howard County Executive Ken Ulman’s decision to fill a vacant seat on the school board this month. Ulman said minorities make up a “majority” on his list of candidates.” (Baltimore Sun)

As far as I’m concerned, ethnicity is a fine factor to be included in the mix. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it should be an overriding factor — but for the benefit of the common good, I would be ok with a tilt in favor of a qualified candidate from an under represented community group.

I’d also say that I’d like to see more members of the various ethnic groups in our community become active leaders in the community.

PTA and school committees — the usual routes to a seat on the BOE — have not attracted participation from recent immigrants. However, more established members of the various ethnic groups within the community are better represented on local PTAs and committees than the hand-wringers would have you believe.

So why is that ethnic diversity not better represented in our elected officials?
(from the Baltimore Sun) “C. Vernon Gray, a former five-term Howard County councilman who recently returned to county government, said money and privacy have kept ethnic minorities away from public office.”

“It can be expensive,” said Gray, who recently ended his 35-year career at Morgan State to become administrator of the county Office of Human Rights. “Many people do not want to run because it is politics. They do not want to be examined by the public.”

I do not completely agree with Mr. Gray.

It can be expensive to run for political office – this is true. However, money alone does not make a winning campaign. Just looking at the most recent election – Janet Siddiqui spent a LOT of money on her campaign. Technically much of her campaign material was donated – but $20,000 or so worth of signs is nothing to sneeze at. She did not win. Why?  Apparently money lone cannot buy it.

Pat Gordon and Sandie French spent very little money — and both were elected handily.

Name recognition is the deciding factor – but money alone cannot buy the kind of name recognition it takes to win an election.

This past campaign also had distinctly ethnic names on the ballot – though ironically the names did not necessarily correlate directly to ethnicity. (and in Siddiqui’s case ethnic name plus tons of money was not a winning combo either)

Siddiqui is a middle aged white woman (so am I, that is not intended to be an insult). Aquino is not hispanic. Zou – well, he is Chinese … which did not seem to help him with the Asian vote that much. Bedolla did not get much mileage from his ethnic moniker either. Did Larry Cohen benefit from his ethnicity? Or was it his 20 years in the system?

Mr. Gray may be correct when he asserts that “many people do not want to run because it is politics. They do not want to be examined by the public.”

I don’t know if that is more true for recent immigrants than for second (or later) generation Americans.

Running for public office – when taken seriously – is a mentally and physically exhausting endeavor that is hard on the entire family. To take on that kind of challenge without a realistic chance of winning could be categorized as self-indulgent and/or stupid.

I believe that is a more significant factor in why well qualified folks choose not to “run” for office – regardless of cultural, ethnic heritage. On the local level, examination by the public is not that much of a deterent. Few of us have skeletons in our closets -( unless of course we aready had the job and blew it).

It takes a whole different skill set to win an election than it does to do the job well.

Sadly, many people who would make wonderful public servants make terrible political candidates (present company included). That is why, imho, qualified folks choose not to run.

That said, I do agree at least partially with Mr. Gray’s summary:

“Ultimately, ethnic minorities must take the plunge and run, according to Gray. You’ve got to pay to play,” Gray said. “You’ve got to play to win. Be persistent.”

I would like to see public bodies reflect the cultural and ethnic make-up of the communities they serve – but in order to get there at some point the members of these groups need to step up and take the same beating as the rest of us.

On the other hand … in our tremendously ethnically diverse community, there is a significant flaw in looking at superficially ethnic traits in an attempt to make a panel like the BOE “look” statistically ethnically diverse.

I personally know caucasions named Sasaki, Arabs named Jones, Muslims who are white, Hispanics named Vitigiliano, a black family named Blanco, — and I won’t even start with physical characteristics which do not match “traditional” labels .

Diversity is more than skin color or geographic heritage. It can be more about values, philosophies, and approaches. That’s the kind of diversity the BOE needs.

I am much more concerned about normal looking people who turn out to be Republicans……

Cindy Vaillancourt

management by crisis – again

What a disappointment.   Not a surprise – but a disappointment nevertheless.

The Howard County Board of Education has been busy make decisions to not make decisions – to put of til tomorrow what is not in crisis today.

For reasons that are not entirely without logic – local Boards of Education are not empowered to “fire” the superintendents they “hire”.    The idea is to keep crazy dysfunctional boards from creating perpetual havoc  – one only has to look to our neighbors to the north (Pennsylvania) and the recent creationism fiasco to see why it is a good idea to provide some checks and balances.

On the other hand — the current situation gives a sitting superintendent a little too much autonomy, and places a too stringent burden on the employer (the local BOE and the citizens) to respond to an individual employee (superintendent or not) run amok.  We only have to look to our own experience with John O’Rourke for evidence of how the pendulum swings in the other direction.

When it bacame clear that Mr. ORourke needed to be “let go” and we realized  the existing state level regulations  tied the hands of the local BOE in ways that were detrimental to the ability of the elected oversight body to effectively resolve a downwardly spiralling situation  -  efforts to revise the existing laws to give better balance to the “checks and balances” were begun.

Of course, these things take a long time, and are not effective for the resolution to a crisis situation.  The original crisis was resolved at significant delay and financial expense.  But the problematic regulations are still in place – waiting for the next time they impede the speedy resolution of a local problem.

In spite of support from our state delegation to advance the efforts to provide future Boards of Education with the additional “tools in the toolbox” which might be helpful not only in the event of a crisis – but which simply by being available would likely divert the kind of crisis we had here in HoCo with O’Rourke – our new BOE has made the “puzzling” decision to withdraw its’ support for the legislation to modify the existing policy.

Diane Mikulis said “Right now, it could be helpful to us in the future, but it’s not something we need in Howard County, we’re perfectly happy with our superintendent.”

Pat Gordon “questioned the relevance of the bill today” (The View).

Excuse me — it is either a wise modification or it is not.  It is not a question of whether it is needed  right now.
It is foolhardy to wait until  a crisis is at hand – and then try to fix a legislative flaw.

Should the local Board of Education – the elected oversight committee for the largest publicly financed operation in the county – have the authority to make hiring and firing decisions (within the context of reasonable employment and contract laws) for its’ sole employee, the Superintendent?

The short answer is yes.

There are plenty of other safeguards to make sure the BOE does not run amok and willy nilly fire an effective contractual employee without cause.

But there are really no effective safeguards for the citizenry and the elected officials to respond when this individual employee  runs amok.

But since we are not currently in crisis – our BOE has decided to retract its’ support for the efforts taken up during the last crisis.  Apparently it is their plan to wait until “we need it” or it is immediately “relevant”.

Management by Crisis — what a fabulous idea.

It always works so effectively, and is cost effective as well.

What a disappointment.

But there are more disappointments to come from BOE.  While Mr. Ulman ponders his “diversity candidate” – maybe he could look more toward a diversity in skills, experience, abilities, and philosophies instead of focusing on skin color or ethnicity alone.

Cindy Vaillancourt

Cindy Vaillancourt

Early Voting Bill in Annapolis

Remember the early voting petitions this summer? Did you sign one of the green or the blue petitions? Did you think it was over when the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that early voting is unconstitutional?

Well, now is the time to contact your representatives in Annapolis because of the Constitutional Amendment filed by Sen. Miller et al. as Senate Bill #1

Synopsis: Authorizing the General Assembly to provide by suitable enactment a process to allow qualified voters to vote at polling places in or outside their election districts or wards, and on specified days prior to specified election dates; and submitting the amendment to the qualified voters of the State of Maryland for their adoption or rejection.

Currently, a hearing is schedule for Feb 1st.

Personally, I don’t object to the concept of early voting. I believe that the full participation of an informed electorate will only strengthen and improve our representation at all levels of Government. What I do object to is the purely partisan manner in which some of these measures are enacted. The current gerrymandering is bad enough, but trying to further stack the deck with the locations of early polling locations does not serve the citizens of Maryland well. When you look past the flowery rhetoric and noble sounding language and examine the details of the implementation you can see something entirely different.

However, I can even look past those deficiencies because I believe that a good candidate will still prevail. What I do object to is the lack of the requirement to requiring positive identification of a voter; Yes, requiring a photo ID. If you want to vote early, fine. If you want to vote outside of your assigned polling district, well, I can live with that too. As long as you can only vote once and only you can vote under your name then we can have a fair election.

Every vote must count equally. My vote counts the same as yours. If I was inclined to vote myself and for a neighbor (because I know their name, address and birthday) by voting on different days or at different locations, then my “votes” count twice as much as yours. If I get four “friends” to do the same thing five times, well, we get 25 votes to your one – Hardly a fair system. If my friends and I had to show a picture ID, this type of fraud becomes much more difficult and much more likely to be detected. Just like we need to insure that all votes are counted properly, we need to insure that each voter is properly identified as being cast by a legal, registered voter.

Our election system requires confidence in the system. Just like we require that elected officials and others to act without the “appearance of impropriety” we should demand a voting system that inspires confidence by reducing the potential for fraud and abuse.

Now is the time to contact your state legislator and see you on Election Days!