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For a decade, a 50-foot-deep berth at Seagirt Marine Terminal has been on top of the wish list for Baltimore’s port. Good things — including 2,700 permanent jobs — must come to those who wait because it’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas has finally arrived in South Baltimore.

In a first-of-its-kind arrangement for the port, state officials have negotiated a contract to lease Seagirt to a private company, Ports America Chesapeake, for the next 50 years. In return, Ports America would build the much-anticipated berth at a cost of $105 million.

But wait, there’s more. The company has also agreed to invest $500 million to maintain and improve the terminal over time and to give the Maryland Transportation Authority (which has financed Seagirt’s development) $100 million once the deal is approved.

As Seagirt’s sole operator, Ports America would also make payments to the Maryland Port Administration depending on the volume of container traffic. The amount would increase once the volume hits 500,000 containers a year (from the current 350,000).

And in one more important trade-off in the deal, Ports America would surrender 65 acres at Dundalk Marine Terminal so the MPA could expand the importing of cars and trucks. Right now that potentially lucrative trade is at a roadblock because the port lacks sufficient space to temporarily park the vehicles.

The MPA has been looking for a public-private partnership deal for years, but this, at least at first glance, would seem to exceed expectations. In unveiling the arrangement Friday, Gov. Martin O’Malley envisioned it creating a total of 5,700 jobs. That includes the 3,000 temporary jobs made possible by construction at the port and on whatever projects the Transportation Authority chooses to pursue.

Just as importantly, the investment means the port can attract the much-anticipated massive container vessels made possible by upgrades to the Panama Canal that are expected to be completed by 2014. Baltimore’s shipping channel is deep enough to serve such mega-ships, but its current berths are not, nor are the existing cranes large enough to reach across their oversized decks.

Bigger ships mean lower shipping costs for trade from Asia to the East Coast (and then connected by rail to the Midwest). Baltimore is uniquely situated to take advantage of the opportunity. But financing the 50-foot berth through traditional means — the Maryland Transportation Trust Fund — was all but impossible given the competing highway and transit needs.

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Port of Baltimore finally gets its 50-foot berth" »

Posted by Andy Green at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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The recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that mammograms not be given routinely to women under 50 and that the teaching of self-exams be de-emphasized has sparked a spirited debate among doctors, researchers, advocates and ordinary women. That’s a good thing. The questions of when such screenings are most effective and what benefits and risks they provide are too seldom considered in a medical culture that tends to assume more tests are always better. There are thousands of examples of women whose potentially deadly cancers were caught early because of mammograms, and many others in which women suffered unnecessary consequences ranging from anxiety to needless treatment because the tests raised false alarms. It’s a debate worth having.

But using that question of medicine and public health policy as a talking point to oppose reforms of the health care system that will result in vastly greater access to medical care for millions of people is nothing but scaremongering. Opponents of President Obama’s effort to reform the nation’s health care system, from conservatives in Congress to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, are ominously pointing to this recommendation by a previously obscure panel as proof positive that health reform will result in the rationing of care and that people will die as government bureaucrats scramble to cut costs.

This line of reasoning ignores the fact that rationing already exists in the American medical system. Millions of low- and middle-income women are rationed out of mammograms because they lack health insurance. Others find treatment for breast cancer rationed by insurance company bureaucrats who scramble to increase profits by denying coverage, sometimes on the flimsiest of pretexts. And the extent to which private insurance companies now offer coverage for screening tests is often determined by state mandates that they do so. Those mandates, incidentally, are also something many conservatives oppose; when they talk about allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines, what they mean is that they would like people to be able to purchase lowest-common-denominator policies from states that take a minimalist view on what kinds of tests, procedures and treatments ought to be covered. (According to the New York Times, all states except Utah require mammogram coverage for women in their 40s.)

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Politicizing mammogram guidelines" »

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Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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The economic downturn that has caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes and sense of financial well-being has also produced a dramatic increase in the number of people who go to bed hungry at night. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last week that nearly 50 million Americans -- including almost a quarter of the nation’s children -- lacked consistent access to enough to eat in 2008. That was the highest figure recorded since the department began keeping such statistics in 1995.

In Maryland, by most measures the one of the wealthiest states in country, as many as 456,000 residents are at risk of hunger for at least part of the year, according to the Maryland Food Bank, which collects and distributes foodstuffs to needy families and individuals.

Food bank officials say that 205,000 children and 73,000 senior citizens in Maryland are at risk, and that the USDA statistics are already a fact of life for workers at local food pantries and soup kitchens: Since the recession began, demand for such services has gone up 50 percent in some areas, with the biggest increases coming among the working poor and the newly unemployed, many of whom would have been considered middle class just a year ago.

At the same time, the recession has wreaked havoc on donations from food producers and private individuals. This year food bank officials began renting trucks to haul foodstuffs from as far away as Rochester, N.Y., after local supplies fell short. They’ve also revived a classic strategy of the poor: Asking farmers to let them collect the gleanings from a field after the harvest comes in.

Even so, charitable groups are having a hard time keeping up. Demand is growing fastest in Baltimore County and in Kent County on the Eastern Shore. Meanwhile, there’s persistent need in Baltimore City and in the state’s rural areas. Last year the food bank distributed some 18.6 million pounds of food across the state, and that was only enough to satisfy a fraction of the need. Officials estimate the food bank would have to distribute nearly 80 million pounds of foodstuff a year to end hunger in Maryland.

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Hunger at the holidays" »

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Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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Baltimore, long a center of African-American culture on the East Coast, is a natural home for the region's first Negro League Baseball museum, and from a historical perspective, the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor is the perfect place to put it. That area was the center of black culture in Baltimore for decades, and the plan moving forward with the city's blessing calls for the museum to be built next to a refurbished Sphinx Club, which once played host to the likes of Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway.

From a marketing perspective, though, the location is a bit of a risk. Dedicated community members are working to revitalize the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor, but it is most certainly a work in the early stages of progress. A Negro League museum downtown, near Camden Yards, the Sports Legends Museum and the Babe Ruth House Museum, would be a guaranteed smash hit, but getting tourists up to Pennsylvania Avenue, which never recovered after the riots of the late 1960s, is going to take some work. We hope that this development, along with the recent reforms in Baltimore's live music regulations, could help restore the area to its former glory, but for that to happen, the city will need to expand its commitment to the area and enlist marketing partners such as the Orioles to make sure this museum is a success.

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Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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When Gov. Martin O’Malley brought his latest package of budget cuts to the Board of Public Works on Wednesday, some of the loudest objections came from Maryland’s private colleges and universities, which faced a $9 million reduction in the funding they have traditionally received to help pay for financial aid for Maryland students and to support educational programs that public universities don’t offer. They succeeded in knocking the cut to what is known as the Sellinger program down to $7 million, but even that, college officials say, is an extreme hardship. The recession is squeezing families’ finances and forcing students to seek more financial aid than ever at a time when college endowments have taken a beating, and the drop in state aid will only exacerbate a bad situation.

Even so, Gov. Martin O’Malley was perfectly justified under the circumstances in reducing the flow of state funds to private institutions. He has cut more than $1 billion from this year’s operating budget, affecting the operation of every state agency. Drug addiction treatment, mental health care, social services, assisted living for seniors, HIV prevention and homeless services were all cut in this round of budget reductions alone. The private colleges are lucky they didn’t fare worse.

According to an analysis by the Department of Legislative Services, Maryland has historically funded private colleges and universities more generously than any other state, both in terms of the percentage of the state budget devoted to them and in raw dollar terms. Under state law, Maryland is supposed to give private colleges and universities 16 percent of what it would spend on an equivalent number of students at a public university, though that standard hasn’t been met in recent years. If Sellinger were fully funded, it would amount to $66 million this year.

Only 14 states provide any money at all to private colleges, and only two states with which Maryland competes economically — New York and New Jersey — provide money through a formula like Maryland’s. Most just support specific programs that public institutions don’t offer in those states. In fiscal 2007, the most recent year for which Department of Legislative Services statistics were available, Maryland spent 3.4 percent of its higher education budget on private institutions. Pennsylvania was the nearest competitor at just 2.2 percent.

Still, there is a reason Maryland supports private institutions of higher education. When the state comes out of this recession, it should look carefully at all of the things that were cut to find ones that need not be restored. But Sellinger funds shouldn’t be one of them. About 80 percent of the money goes toward financial aid, which is limited to Maryland residents. Helping pay for more Maryland students to stay in state for college is an excellent investment; the $38 million in remaining Sellinger funding probably does as much to help secure Maryland’s economic future as anything the Department of Business and Economic Development does with its nearly $100 million budget.

Maryland has concluded that it should focus its economic development efforts on biotechnology, research, medicine, engineering, computer science and other high-tech fields that take advantage of our already highly educated work force. We may not be able to afford it now, but in the years to come, the state needs to maintain and expand its investments in higher education — including aid to private colleges — if that strategy is to succeed.

Correction: An earlier version of this editorial included an incorrect figure for the budget of the Department of Business and Economic Development. The Sun regrets the error.

Posted by Andy Green at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (108)
Categories: State House
        

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Now that the prosecution and defense have rested in Mayor Sheila Dixon's trial on charges she stole gift cards meant for the poor, at least one thing is certain: The case has painted an unflattering picture of how charity is handled at City Hall. Let's look at some of the facts not in dispute:

Mayor Dixon called developer Patrick Turner, whose projects benefit from millions in city tax breaks, and asked him to donate gift cards for her to give away to city children. He bought the cards and had them sent to City Hall. Some of them ended up being used by the mayor for her personal use. Her attorney claims they arrived in an unmarked envelope, and she didn't realize they were from Mr. Turner. Of course, she never followed up to find out whether Mr. Turner had sent in the cards, and never acknowledged them in any of the times they've seen each other since. (Mr. Turner said on the stand that she may have sent a thank-you note, but he's not sure.) Yet, a year later, when she called Mr. Turner to make the same request again, he immediately got one of his business partners to comply.

Every year, Mayor Dixon and other city officials conduct a Holly Trolley tour of the city in which they drive to poor neighborhoods and hand out gift cards to the people they meet there, whether they're needy or not. Stacks of gift cards purchased with city funds were handed to Mayor Dixon and others to distribute with no way of knowing whether they actually wound up in the hands of city residents or, as prosecutors discovered, in a Victoria's Secret bag in the mayor's house.

In at least one case, a city employee who helped run the Holly Trolley tour did succumb to the temptation of all those gift cards. Lindbergh Carpenter Jr., an assistant housing commissioner who helped organize the Holly Trolley, had about 20 Toys "R" Us gift cards left over after the event. He returned them to his office safe but, later, took some of them to purchase a Nintendo Wii. Had state prosecutors not been investigating Mayor Dixon, his theft would likely have never been discovered. He pleaded guilty and lost his job and is still unemployed.

Continue reading "Gift cards and sloppy accounting at City Hall" »

Posted by Andy Green at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (37)
Categories: City talk
        

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The remnants of Tropical Storm Ida and an early season nor’easter combined to pack a one-two wallop that lashed at Ocean City, along with much of the East Coast, last week. It was a storm of a magnitude that hadn’t been seen for more than a decade at the resort town.

Yet on Sunday as the skies cleared and temperatures rose to a nearly summer-like 70 degrees, the usual Ocean City boardwalk shops and restaurants were open for business as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. That couldn’t have happened a generation ago.

The difference is that Mother Nature’s fury was unleashed largely on piles of sand instead of hotels, shops and the boardwalk. For 21 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been pumping off-shore sand onto Ocean City’s beach, building up dunes like a protective wall running from 27th to 146th streets that kept more valuable property out of harms’ way.

The dunes took a big hit, of course. Town officials estimate that up to half of all the sand used to build up the dunes has returned to the Atlantic Ocean. Some stretches of beach are much more narrow, as thundering waves swept big chunks of that sand back to the deep as well.
But Ocean City’s $8 billion in private property? The damage -- caused mostly by minor flooding from wind-driven high tides creeping up from the bay side -- is hardly worth mentioning.

The so-called beach “replenishment” project at Ocean City has drawn its share of critics over the years. Pumping sand and even building sea walls along the boardwalk can seem a bit like tilting at windmills -- the shifting sands of a barrier island like Ocean City were never meant to stay in one place for very long.

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Ocean City saved by a Great Wall of Sand" »

Posted by Andy Green at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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It's hard to decide which is worse: the notion that dozens of Baltimore City parking lots might not be paying the taxes they owe, or the fact that the city is so disorganized that it's not sure whether they are.

Sun reporter Julie Scharper reported today on a preliminary audit of tax records showing that city workers were unable to find records of tax payments in a city database for 52 parking lots that were advertised online or elsewhere or which they found on walking tours of the city. Are they scofflaws and tax cheats? Maybe, maybe not. Auditors say the lots may be paying the taxes and having them credited to different addresses or different accounts. More than 100 other lots that are listed as inactive might be skipping taxes, or they might now have buildings on them. The city doesn't know, and at a time when government workers are losing their jobs, services are being cut back and municipal offices are being closed for furlough days, that's simply unacceptable.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Tomorrow's editorials
        

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If there are two groups of people held in disregard these days it’s anyone who works for an insurance company or the government. That makes those employed by the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund, the state’s quasi-public auto insurer of last resort, something of a two-fer in the public’s eye.

One can only imagine that reaction of people when the term, "bonus," is tossed in there, too. But that’s what happened recently when state legislative auditors chided MAIF for rewriting bonus plan rules in the middle of 2008 so its workers could remain eligible for $1.4 million in end-of-year pay-outs.

What happened exactly? For years, MAIF has operated an employee incentive plan, something made possible because the organization is not truly a state agency but is funded entirely by insurance premiums. Drivers come to MAIF when they’ve been turned down by private companies either because they have a bad driving record or a poor financial one.

The theory is that MAIF can operate more like a private company. When it does well, the employees get a modest boost – the average MAIF salary last year was $57,500 and the average bonus $3,400.

But how to measure performance to justify the incentive payments? That’s the rub. MAIF doesn’t turn a profit so it’s used two major criteria in recently years – surveys that monitor customer satisfaction and the organization’s financial posture as measured by its expenses compared to receipts. If employees find ways to reduce expenses and improve efficiency, the theory went, that ratio usually improves.

That’s fine in a normal year but 2008 proved far from average. MAIF’s financial situation worsened as the economy slid into recession. That obviously had little, if anything, to do with employee performance and much more to do with fewer people buying MAIF policies and rising costs of claims.

By mid-year, MAIF’s board saw that the bonus criteria was unrealistic and decided to change it. In doing so, they clearly ignored the plight of the state budget which was simultaneously in the process of substantial reductions and employee furloughs.

But so what? If MAIF is truly independent, that shouldn’t matter. Yet at the request of the O’Malley administration, MAIF made furloughs, too. And that was kind of silly since salary reductions at MAIF don’t provide one thin dime to the state treasury, only less in state taxes collected from MAIF employees who had their salaries cut.

Continue reading "Tomorrow's editorials: MAIF bonuses" »

Posted by Andy Green at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

According to the Guttmacher Institute, an elective first trimester abortion costs about $413 on average in this country (although it can run as high as $1,800), so the women employed at the Republican National Committee could have been hit worse. At least RNC Chairman Michael Steele hasn't banned birth control, although that would seem to be the next logical step for the party boss.

For those who may have missed it last week, Mr. Steele decided to drop abortion coverage from the health insurance plan covering RNC employees. Apparently, the health plan has covered abortion as an elective procedure since 1991. That struck the former Catholic seminarian as an inappropriate use of "money from our loyal donors."

Perhaps, but that puts the party in a peculiar moral quandry. What other sacrifices will RNC employees be required to make? Must they all attend a certain church? Are they banned from donating money to stem-cell research? One assumes benefits for same-sex partners is pretty much out of the question.

For all the talk of broadening membership in the GOP, Mr. Steele seems more interested in a stricter adherence to a narrow political faith. And he's headed down a very exclusive path -- only five states restrict private health coverage of abortion.

Continue reading "The Church of the GOP" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: National politics
        

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Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian federal court in New York raises many potential pitfalls, such as whether interrogators' use of waterboarding will taint too much evidence and whether trying the case in open court will reveal too much classified material. But the argument that emerged over the weekend from former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and others that trial would put New York at too great a risk from retaliatory terrorist attacks is the worst possible reason not to seek justice in court. The moment we allow an imagined threat to dictate how our criminal justice system operates is the moment we surrender to terrorism.

Our precedent in handling terrorism cases, such as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, is that we try them in federal court. In particular, the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York has the most experience in such matters, making New York a natural choice for this trial. The move during the Bush years to treat terrorism cases as military matters, to be handled off U.S. soil and in secret, was part of a dangerous miscalculation that we could trade away a portion of our civil guarantees to justice and the rule of law in exchange for security. Proponents of that point of view tended to argue that Islamic extremists wanted to destroy our values -- and then immediately to bargain them away, through everything from torture at Guantanamo Bay to warrantless wiretaps.

Mr. Holder's decision is a crucial step in restoring our credibility in the world. There is no greater blow we can strike against extremists than to demonstrate the power of our open, fair and transparent criminal justice system.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

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Carbon monoxide poisoning killed three members of the Wiley family in July 2005 after the colorless, odorless gas built up to astronomical levels in their Eastern Baltimore County rental home in the Cove Village complex, apparently as a result of faulty installation of the unit's furnace or other appliances. It's not so surprising, then, that immediately after Cove Village management installed carbon monoxide detectors in all the other homes in the complex that firefighters got a string of false alarms from nervous residents.

What's harder to figure is that more than four years later, after Sawyer Realty Holdings LLC, the College Park-based company that owns the complex, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct problems in the homes, the number of elevated carbon monoxide readings there -- including the most serious kind -- is higher than ever in 2009. Sun reporters Robert Little and Nick Madigan reported in Sunday's edition that county officials have found elevated CO levels 39 times so far this year, up from 20 last year. In fact, in the years since the Wileys' deaths, the number of false alarms has steadily dropped and the number excessive or potentially lethal readings has been on the rise.

According to the investigation by Little and Madigan, Sawyer officials have completed complex-wide improvements to address most, though not all, of the problems that likely contributed to the Wileys' deaths, and the company deserves credit for that. But its efforts belie its initial unwillingness to act sooner on many of the problems with the installation and venting of furnaces and hot water heaters that were found by a consultant hired by attorneys for the Wiley family as part of a lawsuit that Sawyer settled out of court in 2007. The company has acted defensively on this point, saying it won't use findings by plaintiffs in a lawsuit as a roadmap for its conduct. But if it had done so in 2005, when it was first briefed on the problems, how many hospitalizations, evacuations and calls to the fire department could have been avoided?

County officials, too, could have acted sooner, and they need to think carefully about what they did and did not detect about the problems in Cove Village. This summer, county permit officials beame fed up with the persistent problems at the complex and threatened to shut down the entire complex. A subsequent sweep of the complex by county officials and Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. technicians found 20 of this year's 39 elevated readings, begging the question of how many elevated levels were still going unreported. Sawyer has made more improvements and replaced more appliances since then, but at least two elevated readings have been made since the summer, including one last week. Permits and Development Manager Timothy Kotroco acknowledged that the county could have acted sooner if it had studied the records of carbon monoxide alarms more closely.

County Executive James T. Smith Jr. is introducing legislation at tonight's County Council meeting to require carbon monoxide detectors in every rental property in Baltimore County. Given the danger posed by buildups of the gas, it makes just as much sense as requiring fire alarms in every home, perhaps even more so given that the gas may not be apparent to residents until it's too late. But if thousands of new detectors are going to be instaled, the county needs to develop a robust system for tracking the alarms and looking for patterns. Fire officials say the number of carbon monoxide calls countywide has been on the rise in recent years, and in some cases, firefighters found potentially lethal levels of the gas. The county needs to make sure it can track patterns of carbon monoxide alerts and spot problems before they turn deadly.

Posted by Andy Green at 7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Baltimore County
        

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By now the dangers of smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke are so well established that hardly anyone disputes the risks they pose to public health and well-being. Every year some 390,000 Americans die from smoking-related illnesses, and tobacco contributes to 1 out of every 6 deaths annually in this country. That’s why we applaud Towson Univerity’s decision last week to ban smoking everywhere on its campus. We only wonder why it took the university this long to take a step that so obviously benefits its students and the entire school community.

Smoking is already banned inside most schools, hospitals, offices, public buildings and restaurants in the state. Lighting up is also prohibited on the grounds of public elementary and secondary schools. But Towson will be Maryland’s first four-year college to ban smoking anywhere on its grounds. Whatever inconvenience that may cause some students and staff will surely be made up for by the prospect of a healthier, cleaner environment for everyone.

Last year, Montgomery College, which offers a two-year program, became the first Maryland institution of higher learning to ban smoking on its campus. It was followed by community colleges in Harford, Frederick and Carroll counties. Nationwide, about 365 colleges and universities no longer permit smoking anywhere on campus, including the entire Pennsylvania state university system.

College students are just entering adulthood, and we ordinarily support their right to be free from the pressure of campus authority figures and allowed to make their own decisions, good or bad. For that reason, last week we supported the University System of Maryland’s decision not to adopt rules on campus screenings of pornography. But smoking is different. First, the nature of second hand smoke means that others suffer the consequences of one person’s bad habit, and second, the addictive nature of smoking makes it one bad decision that can be impossible to recover from.

There’s good reason schools are willing to take strong measures to discourage smoking among the students in their charge. Studies have shown that most adult smokers took up the habit while still in their teens: Some 90 percent of all smokers start before the age of 18, and the average age for a new smoker is just 13.

But by the time young people reach their 20s, their chances becoming addicted drop dramatically. If a young person can stay away from tobacco until he or she graduates from college, the likelihood of their ever falling victim to a smoking-related illness is relatively small.

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Towson U. bans smoking" »

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Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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While the mentally ill this country face numerous inequities -- a lack of adequate health care, employment opportunities and ostracism from the mainstream of society among the more obvious injustices -- it is not an exercise in discrimination but in common sense to try to keep guns out of the hands of the potentially dangerous.

That’s why most states bar gun sales to those with a mental disability -- often defined as someone who has been civilly committed to treatment, declared not guilty by reason of insanity, diagnosed schizophrenic, or in some states, has a history of serious drug and alcohol abuse.

While it is unfortunate that some people pose a substantial risk to themselves or others, it would truly be madness for the rest of us to ignore that fact. Providing a gun to someone who has previously demonstrated an inability to sort right from wrong is not unlike engaging everyone in an unending round of Russian roulette -- eventually it’s going to get people killed.

That’s why it’s somewhat bizarre that North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr is standing behind legislation he introduced last March that would restore gun ownership rights to veterans designated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Justice as “mentally incapacitated” or “mentally incompetent.”

Senator Burr’s beef appears to be that the standards used by the VA for determining mental incapacity were developed from concerns over whether certain veterans can be responsible for their personal finances. If they could not manage their VA benefits, they made the list that, in turn, is used to flag gun purchases under the Brady Act’s background check.

Although an inability to manage one’s finances is far form a perfect measure of dangerousness, it’s not an especially unreasonable standard either. To assume that individuals who have served in the military are not capable of unreasoned violence is to deny reality. Health studies have shown that veterans are more likely to commit suicide than the general public, and when they do so, they are most likely to use guns.

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Veterans should not be exempt from the Brady Bill" »

Posted by Andy Green at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

In his opening statement Thursday in Mayor Sheila Dixon's theft trial, her attorney, Arnold Weiner said it was OK for the mayor to have used gift cards from developer Ronald Lipscomb for her personal benefit because they were gifts of a wooing lover, not donations intended for the poor.

One little problem here: The gift cards in question were provided by Lipscomb in 2005 and 2006. Let's rewind for a second to the statment Mayor Dixon issued on June 23, 2008, when word first surfaced about the other, more lavish gifts that Mr. Lipscomb had provided:

"In late 2003 and early 2004, I had a personal relationship with Ron Lipscomb," Dixon said in the statement. "We were both separated from our respective spouses at the time, we traveled together and exchanged gifts on special occasions. Our brief relationship was personal, and it did not influence my decisions related to matters of city government."

So what's the truth, that the relationship spanned four months in 2003-2004, or that it lasted for three years?

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Categories: City talk
        

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When parking meters were invented about 70 years ago, they were designed for one purpose — to prevent drivers from hogging precious parking in the nation’s urban centers. Without available spaces to park visitors’ cars, merchants couldn’t bring in customers, and the local economy would suffer.

Meters are still helpful in this regard, but today their purpose has clearly expanded. Parking revenue, not just from meters and garages but from citations issued for violations, reliably produces millions of dollars of income each year to finance Baltimore’s government.

Yet surely the inventor of the parking meter did not anticipate that his work would allow Maryland’s largest city to gouge Josh Roberts of Seattle in a manner that, had it been attempted in the private sector, would be regarded as racketeering of the lowest order. At least loan sharks have been known to give their prey a break once in a while; the city is not so easily deterred.

As The Sun reported this week, Mr. Roberts wrote a check for $948 to cover the cost of a single parking violation incurred in 2004 only to find out that he actually owed $64 more. The penalties were adding up so fast that even the city’s collections agent had trouble calculating the full amount.

For a debt to grow from Mr. Roberts’ initial $52 to an astronomical $1,012 in five years is nothing short of breath-taking. Had this been a credit-card company practicing such usury instead of a municipality, someone would likely be going to jail right now, and it would not be Mr. Roberts.

Incidentally, Mr. Roberts claims to have known nothing about the parking ticket before this year. It was allegedly incurred shortly before he moved to Seattle, and the law firm employed by the city to track overdue payments only recently found him.

He had a choice: Either pay the ticket and the penalties that had accrued at a rate of $16 a month or fly to Baltimore, hire a lawyer, and contest it. As that second option would have cost at least twice as much, he really had no choice at all.

Continue reading "Upcoming editorial: Baltimore's parking fine usury" »

Posted by Andy Green at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

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The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. went too far when it thretened the City Council this week that it would halt its social service programs in the capital if lawmakers there approve a gay marriage proposal next month. According to The Washington Post, the church is concerned that the law would force it to extend medical benefits to same-sex partners, to facilitate adoptions in gay households or rent a church hall to a gay group.

As far as church activities funded by public dollars go, let's hope so. No institution, no matter what its guiding principles, should be allowed to discriminate with public money. It is sad that the church apparently believes its misguided effort to ostracize a significant portion of the population is more important than its mission to help Washington's poor and hopeless. Some 68,000 people rely on the church's services, including homeless shelters and health clinics, and it's not right to hold them hostage to the church's political agenda.

This conflict also points out a limitation of the government's habit of relying on outside groups to provide social services. Those who argue for government to play a smaller role in establishing the social safety net often note the ability of private charities to pick up the slack. But as this situation makes clear, organizations that choose to do so can also choose to stop.

Posted by Andy Green at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

Here's a preview of an editorial we're working on. Let us know what you think. The best comments will appear alongside it in the print edition.

We treat children differently from adults in all sorts of ways because we recognize they are not fully formed intellectually, emotionally or ethically. We restrict their ability to see R-rated movies, to buy alcohol, to get tattoos or vote. It's hard to justify, then, the fact that more than 100 people in the United States are now serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes other than murder that they committed as juveniles. Such a harsh sentence is understandable for repeat adult offenders, people whose patterns of behavior indicate they will never change their criminal ways. But given our widespread judgment in all other areas of life that minors are still developing, how can we justify a sentence that doesn't recognize the possibility of change?

The arguments on the issue this week before the Supreme Court appear to have fallen on familiar lines. Four conservative justices were looking for a way to avoid concluding that such sentences amount to cruel and unusual punishment, and four liberal justices were rallying around the opposite point of view, leaving Justice Anthony Kennedy in the middle.

It's not surprising -- he was the swing vote in the case that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional for juvenile offenders -- but it's ironic given the other reason he made the news this week. Justice Kennedy gave a speech recently at the Dalton School in New York, but, before doing so, he insisted that any student journalists covering the speech get his approval for their story before running it in the school newspaper. Justice Kennedy apparently does not believe that minors can handle the responsibility of writing down a few quotes from a speech. Now he's deciding whether minors should be forced to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

During this week's arguments, conservatives said the reason for the death penalty decision was that capital punishment is fundamentally different from other sentences. True. But the decision was also correct because juveniles are different from adults. Perhaps some people who commit crimes as juveniles are really so depraved that they can never be a part of society. That's something for a parole board to decide years after they committed their crimes, not for a judge to speculate about when looking at a child.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

Here's a preview of an editorial we're working on. Let us know what you think. The best comments will appear alongside it in the print edition.

The University System of Maryland Board of Regents made an admirably mature decision this week to ignore political pressure and stand up for the free exchange of ideas on campus, no matter how unsavory those ideas may be. In deciding not to become the first university system in the nation to adopt a policy about how and when pornography can be shown on campus, the regents avoided a thorny First Amendment issue. But they also recognized an important element of their mission. College is a time for young men and women to learn to make decisions on their own, even bad ones. The regents -- and certainly the legislature -- shouldn't be making those decisions for them.

There's probably little chance, given that it will be an election year, that the General Assembly will just let this issue go when it reconvenes in January. State Sen. Andy Harris, a Baltimore County Republican who crusaded against the University of Maryland College Park's plan to screen a pornographic film in the spring, is almost certainly running for Congress again, and there's no doubt he believes this is an issue that can win him votes. He's probably right. Other lawmakers shouldn't take the bait. The legislature has plenty more important things to do, and besides, revisiting the issue could have exactly the opposite of the desired effect. After all, what can make something more attractive to college students than forbidding them to do it?

Posted by Andy Green at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Upcoming editorials