Last week, I requested by e-mail the mayor's views on a few issues. Answers to the questions I asked will appear in a future column on O'Malley and his opponent in the 2006 gubernatorial election, Gov. Robert Ehrlich. The mayor's responses came with the cover letter below. The column to which he refers appeared last Thursday.

I think yesterday’s column hit on a big part of what this Governor’s race is about: Whose side is government on, and what is it doing to make people’s lives better? Anthony Brown and I believe government is one of the ways – along with families, churches, community groups and businesses – that we can organize ourselves to solve problems.  We’ve tried to act on this belief in ways large and small – including the efforts to encourage carpooling you described yesterday, along with reducing parking fees for hybrids.  Republicans, including Bob Ehrlich, make very clear that they believe government, itself, is the problem.  This is not an insignificant difference.   

In the mayor’s office, we’ve worked to make government more effective and accountable – tackling issues that many people thought were intractable, like childhood lead paint poisoning and drug addiction – because we think government can and should work, and in fact we owe it to taxpayers to make it work.   

For example, we were able to double funding for drug treatment, partnering with the state (although according to the nonprofit Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems, state funding has been cut by $7 million in the past 3 ½ years), by proving its effectiveness through DrugStat.   

We tackled lead paint poisoning in a similar manner, identifying neighborhoods where it was occurring and then holding government accountable for affirmatively preventing it, rather than reacting after the fact.  And we’ve reduced the number of children testing positive for serious lead poisoning by about 65% – even as we test twice as many kids.  Efforts like Operation Safe Kids, Project 5000, Baltimore Main Streets, Healthy Neighborhoods and CitiStat are all acting on the belief that effective government can and should weigh in on the side of citizens to help solve problems.  And, together, the people of Baltimore are reclaiming neighborhoods, like Patterson Park and Reservoir Hill and Poppleton, that some predicted were lost for good.

In just the past few days, we have proposed that our state government join with Illinois and other states to reimport cheaper prescription drugs, helping seniors and others struggling with high costs – despite objections from President Bush, Governor Ehrlich and the drug companies.  And we’ve proposed to have our state government take action to bring small businesses together, giving them leverage in dealing with insurance companies – reducing costs and insuring more people.   

Contrast that with appointing “pro-business” regulators, who do not regulate – harming not just residents, but also small businesses.  We went to court to say that government has a responsibility to do better than our Public Service Commission did  – to at least determine what rate increase is justified, and not just accept what the utility claims – and a judge agreed.  Or denying people a dollar increase in the minimum wage…  Or protecting giant corporations from paying their fair share of healthcare costs…  Or cutting higher education and increasing tuition – mortgaging our future – as the first option to balance a budget… Or selling public forests and parks – or the water beneath them – and cutting open space funds by hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Your question on Smart Growth hits on these same issues: What is government doing to solve problems and help make people’s lives better – thinking beyond the next election?  If you believe government is the problem, you aren’t going to go to work every day, trying to make it more effective – trying to use it as a tool to organize neighbors and solve problems.  A lot depends on who is doing the governing.

Again, these are not insignificant differences.  They go to the heart of what kind of state we want Maryland to be in the coming years.  Government can’t solve every problem.  We’ll need to keep working every day for many years to address the great needs that exist in our city and state.   

But we need to start with the big idea that we can solve these problems together… that “government of the people, by the people, for the people” can and will make a difference.  And that’s a big part of what our campaign for Maryland is about.

Sincerely,

Martin O’Malley