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The latest America's Health Rankings report has good news and bad news for Maryland. The good news is that, compared to other states, we're slightly healthier than we were a year ago. Maryland ranks 21st, up from 22nd in 2008. The bad news: Obesity rates have more than doubled in the last 20 years. In 1990, 12 percent of the population was obese. The figure is now 26.6 percent.

That astonishing increase suggests that we need to begin dealing more comprehensively with the problem of obesity, which presents higher risks for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and a host of other ailments. More than just running public service announcements, we need a strategy that includes more walkable communities, more sidewalks, more bike paths, greater access to nutritional foods in the inner city, higher taxes on sugary drinks and more. The cost of doing nothing is simply too great. 

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After months of deliberation, President Barack Obama is scheduled to reveal his strategy for the war in Afghanistan on Tuesday and, according to numerous news reports over the weekend, he will announce plans to send about 30,000 more troops to the front. That move -- close to the 40,000 troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- may be the safe move politically by a Democrat worried about looking soft in the war on terror, but we fear that it will prove to be a mistake.

Our actual goal for the conflict is to keep the United States safe from terrorism. Afghanistan became the central front in that effort because, under Taliban rule, it was a safe haven for al-Qaeda to train recruits and plan attacks. But the means of achieving that goal -- building a stable, secure Afghan state -- has been confused with the ends. Too many are now viewing success or failure in Afghanistan in terms of whether a flourishing Afghan civil society will remain when we leave, and that goal is looking more and more unattainable in the short term, and maybe ever. Perhaps if we had invested the billions that went to the war in Iraq into infrastructure, schools and economic development in Afghanistan, we'd be in a stronger position now, but no signs have emerged from Afghanistan in recent years -- and particularly in the last few months -- to suggest that any kind of functional state is likely to emerge there, no matter how many troops we send.

It's easy for leaders in Washington to fall back on the reasoning that we should send more troops because that's what General McChrystal requested. But when has a general in the field ever asked for fewer troops or to scale back his mission? And it's unclear whether the full complement of troops the general has requested -- or even double or triple what he wants -- would be enough to do the job he envisions. The porous border beteween Afghanistan and Pakistan makes it extremely difficult to permanently secure territory, and the massive corruption in the Karzai government makes it difficult for our forces to win over the populace.

Wiser counsel was that offered by Vice President Joe Biden, who has reportedly been advocating for a switch from a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan to a more targeted anti-terrorism strategy. There's no doubt that shrinking our presence and ambitions in Afghanistan would come at a cost -- to the safety of the Afghan people, to the rights of women there -- but we simply cannot support an indefinite commitment with no realistic hope for a lasting success.

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It was heartening to see four bids for the Senator Theatre that would continue its use as an entertainment destination in Belvedere Square. One would keep the theater as a venue for first-run movies but add loft-style apartments in back; another would transform it into an adjunct of Towson University's WTMD radio station for movies and concerts; the third would use the theater for Vaudeville-style shows -- some involving puppets -- among other activities, including art house movies; and the fourth, proposed by Charles Theatre owner James "Buzz" Cusack would make the theater into a mini-Charles, complete with restaurant and crepes shop.

Which proposal do you like? Or is there something else you'd like to see in that space?

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It has been at least a dozen years since the U.S. produced, used or traded an anti-personnel mine, yet this nation remains the only member of NATO not to sign an international treaty banning landmines.

Why not turn practice into policy?

Apparently, it's not going to happen anytime soon. A State Department spokesman said this week the U.S. has no plans to join the Mine Ban Treaty during an upcoming milestone meeting in Cartagena, Colombia because "we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed."

About whom is the State Department speaking? A total of 156 nations are party to the treaty and nearly every country that hasn't signed is considered to be in compliance, according to the most recent survey issued by Human Rights Watch.

The U.S. seemed to be on the path toward signing during the Clinton administration, but the policy was reversed by George W. Bush in 2004. Instead, we have become content to stand with China and Russia, which similarly haven't signed the treaty.

Why choose the moral low-ground? Mines kill and maim innocent people every day. Brutal and indiscriminant, they blow off the feet and hands and the vast majority of the victims are civilians. They also last a long time -- landmines dating from World War I are still causing injuries. They hamper post-war recoveries and present a particularly grave danger to children.

The U.S. can't officially oppose these relics of the past? Modern warfare doesn't even require them, as there are better ways to protect borders. The humanitarian costs clearly outweigh whatever strategic value they might have anyway.

As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama voted in favor of the ban. How disappointing that he can't follow his conscience as president.

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The peril of judicial elections was underscored earlier this year with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling critical of a West Virginia Supreme Court justice who failed to recuse himself from a case involving a company whose CEO spent more than $3 million to get the judge elected.

While a majority of the high court looked askance at the justice’s behavior, it didn’t offer clear rules on when a campaign donation becomes a matter of impropriety. If $3 million is bad, what about $500,000? What’s enough to provoke bias or at least the appearance of bias?

In Wisconsin, the state’s highest court has been under similar scrutiny as special interest groups have used their financial muscle in recent years to put more judges favorable to their cause on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Attack ads financed by business interests raised particular concern in a hard-fought race last year.

But the difference between Washington and Madison is that in America’s Dairyland, they don’t take such an assault on the independence of their judiciary so lightly. Earlier this month, lawmakers approved the state’s first public financing of judicial elections.

The bill, which is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Jim Doyle, creates a system much like the one frequently proposed for Maryland’s state legislative races. Candidates for the high court could receive up to $100,000 and $300,000 from the state for primary and general elections by first collecting 1,000 small contributions. Those who qualify can receive much more if their opponents opt out of the system (and spend more than $100,000 or $300,000).

The program is financed by a voluntary $3 check-off on individual state income tax returns — or from the state’s general fund if that fails to collect enough money. Wisconsin is the third state in the nation to adopt some form of public financing for judicial elections.

Admittedly, the law is far from perfect. It does not, for instance, have a mechanism to copensate for so-called "issue ads" run by third parties in the campaign.

But at least its supporters recognize, and have attempted to counter, a serious problem with judicial elections — the opportunity to purchase a favorable ruling. While the gravest threat is posed to a high court (it only requires buying a justice or two), other, lower level, judicial races can be just as problematic.

In Maryland, circuit court judges are usually appointed by the sitting governor but then face an open election for a 15-year term. When those races are contested — as they frequently are — candidates must raise substantial amounts of money to be competitive.

And who donates to a judicial race? Inevitably, most of the money comes from those who have had — and likely will have in the future — business before the court.

Public financing would no doubt prove helpful to maintaining the circuit court’s integrity. Maryland, with its appointed Court of Appeals, has experienced nothing like what happened in West Virginia in 2002, but there’s not much to prevent something similar from happening in contested lower court races.

Marylanders deserve a judiciary that is as fair and impartial as humanly possible. Having candidates for the bench show up at law offices with hat in hand asking for money would seem to be wholly counter-productive toward that cause.

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The nation was in the throes of the Great Depression when Congress debated the creation of Social Security. Progressives were infuriated that it didn’t go far enough, while opponents decried it as socialism under the "lash of the dictator," as one Republican congressman of the era put it.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt got the compromise he wanted in 1935 despite widespread Republican opposition, but it was only the beginning. Over the years, it was updated and improved. Disability and survivors benefits were added, and gradually it evolved into the popular and successful (albeit financially-challenged) poverty-reducing program it is today.

The incremental nature of the legislative process is something to keep in mind as Congress returns this week to rejoin the battle over health care reform. The procedural vote in the Senate on Nov. 22 demonstrated what many already knew: The Democratic coalition is a fragile thing.

To muster 60 votes in the Senate will likely require even further compromises. If the public option survives, it will be watered down like a discount cocktail at a low-rent nightclub. There are too many senators like Connecticut independent Joseph Lieberman who would willingly allow the whole thing to collapse out of self-interest or perhaps misplaced pride, and so the dilution will continue.

Small wonder that public enthusiasm for the bill has been in decline. Between the hysterics of the Republicans (whose views on government insurance programs seem trapped in 1930s amber) and the concessions made by the left to address internal dissent — particularly the House restrictions on access to abortion — it’s a wonder that hospital emergency rooms aren’t crammed with those made queasy by merely witnessing the process.

But it would be a mistake to see the health care reform movement as either being reduced to the proverbial beef-less burger or somehow on the brink of it. What has survived to this point in both House and Senate versions of the bill — and is likely to ultimately emerge from deliberations — is the essential core.

At its heart are three goals: providing access to quality health care for millions of Americans who lack health insurance today, reducing the growth in the cost of health care, and accomplishing both of without significantly adding to the federal deficit.

These are the priorities President Barack Obama set forth at the start of this process — and reiterated in September. Too many Americans are put at risk, both medically and financially, by the status quo for the country not to act boldly, no matter the political risk.

Is the measure strong enough? Not really. There is not enough reform and too much compromise to be terribly satisfied with it. But average Americans can still find much to like from the limits on out-of-pocket costs to the guarantee of coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions.

That’s often lost in the heated (and too often nonsensical) debate over whether offering a public option — a government-run insurance plan that might attract a relatively small percentage of those who buy coverage through a state or national exchange.

Working families are suffering because they can’t afford health insurance and live one medical emergency away from financial ruin. Business are struggling to cope with their share of the burden. Our current system is expensive and ineffective: We are not the world leader in health care that we should be.

With one or two exceptions, Republicans have all but deserted the public on this issue, and so it’s up to Democrats and their delicate coalition to soldier on. Between the House and Senate versions of the bill lies an opportunity to make the sort of groundbreaking progress that comes perhaps once every 75 years.

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The city police union has a point when it objects to the suspension of an officer who helped organize Del. Jon Cardin's boneheaded marriage proposal stunt, in which officers staged a fake raid on a yacht while a police helicopter hovered overhead. Unless it was this anonymous officer's idea -- which seems unlikely -- the blame falls on the elected official. Even a delegate from Baltimore County has influence, and it would be hard for an officer to say no to a request for help, even for a project as ridiculous as this one. Now the officer could face termination as a result of the stunt, while Mr. Cardin can think of nothing better to do than to "apologize ... for the distraction that I caused."

This falls far short of the full accounting of the incident that Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III promised. We don't know who approached whom, who was involved in planning the stunt and how many people knew about it. Unfortunately, the poor judgment connected with Mr. Cardin's proposal seems to know no end.

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Baltimore County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz deserves credit for drafting legislation that would rein in the council's absurdly generous pensions system, which in its present form pays any councilman who retires with five terms of service 100 percent of his annual salary for life. That's about to happen for the first time in county history when Councilman Vincent J. Gardina retires after his term ends next year, earning him $54,000 annually, ad infinitum.  Not bad for a part-time job.

The council has had plenty of opportunities over the years to address a benefit that has grown out of all proportion to its original intent (council salaries were $3,000 a year when it was first established in 1971), but it has done nothing. In fact, it initially looked like the council might still do nothing after Sun reporter Larry Carson started asking questions about Mr. Gardina's pension last month. Only one councilman, Joseph Bartenfelder, expressed any interest at the time in reforming the pension system, and he had the added incentive of a likely run for county executive in his future. However, Mr. Kamenetz, also a likely executive contender, beat him to the punch by announcing plans for his legislation this week.

Mr. Kamenetz's proposal would cap pensions at 60 percent of a councilman's final salary, which is the same level now afforded to state legislators. (Of course, they don't make as much as Baltimore County councilmen, $43,500 to the council's $54,000, notwithstanding legislators' annual 90 days of more than full-time work.)

That's a good start, but the reform should go further. Under the Kamenetz proposal, council members would be eligible for their full pension after just 12 years of service. Legislators have to work 20 years to get their 60 percent. Baltimore City Council members can get up to half their salary for life, but they must serve 20 years and are eligible for no pension at all unless they serve at least 12. Before the bill comes to a final vote, we hope it will tighten the eligibility requirements so that it takes longer for a councilman to achieve the maximum benefit.

Others want even more strict reforms. Steve Bailey, the former Republican state's attorney candidate and co-chairman of the Baltimore County chapter of Americans for Prosperity, wants the change to apply to present members of the council. That goes a little too far. The goal here is not to punish council members but to make their benefits a saner reflection of those received by their peers and by rank-and-file county employees.

Mr. Bailey also suggested that the council ditch pensions altogether and adopt a 401(k)-style benefit. Shifting to a defined contribution plan, like a 401(k), instead of a defined benefit plan, like a pension, is something the county should consider in general because of the burden pension benefits place on the balance sheet -- a problem of which the council pensions are only a tiny part. But any move in that direction should apply to all county workers, not just the elected officials.

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What do you call an economic stimulus program that produces an $8.53 return on every dollar invested? A smashing success? The envy of the White House? The greatest idea to come out of government since the income tax refund? In Annapolis, they use quite a different title: Endangered.

That’s because the enormously successful Maryland Heritage Structure Rehabilitation Tax Credit is set to expire next year because bickering state lawmakers can’t agree on a plan to extend it. Admittedly, the program that gives developers an incentive to renovate older buildings has been hotly debated -- but, in the irony of state politics, the controversy stems from its very success.

From the West Side’s Atrium Apartments on Howard Street to The Can Company shopping and office complex on Canton’s Boston Street, many of the most innovative and valuable commercial and residential redevelopment projects to be undertaken in Baltimore over the last decade have been made possible by the heritage tax credit.

Baltimore is not the only community to benefit from this economic revitalization engine -- small towns from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland have, too -- but the city has clearly benefited the most. There are simply more opportunities to renovate historic (and under-valued) buildings in Baltimore than anywhere else in the state.

But even that fact works to the Maryland’s advantage. With some of the highest concentrations of poverty in the state, the city is also the ideal target for such investment. A report produced earlier this year by the Abell Foundation found that for every $1 million in tax credits, 72.5 jobs are created.

Yet over its 13-year history, the tax credit program has been treated like an unwanted stepchild by the state legislature. Its been capped and cut and tied up in red tape in order to reduce its cost and funnel more of the benefits to other jurisdictions.

Much of the opposition can be traced to one person, House Ways and Means Chairwoman Sheila E. Hixson, who hails from Montgomery County, a subdivision with far fewer historic rehabilitation projects than the city. Delegate Hixson might be convinced to extend the program beyond its 2010 expiration -- but no doubt only in its current form. Gov. Martin O’Malley has sought to upgrade the program to add resources and reduce its waiting period (often of a year or more), but a measure to do so died late in the last legislative session.

Such a stand-off could stop the Baltimore economic renaissance in its tracks. As it is, a project like Tide Point could no longer qualify for the $17.7 million tax credit it actually received nearly a decade ago because the program has been scaled back so much. (It’s down to a total of just $5 million for commercial projects during the current fiscal year).

Enough is enough. The state’s budget crisis can’t be used as an excuse not to renew the heritage tax credit program. The economic recession is proof of how much it’s needed: Cutbacks to the program over the years have likely cost the city hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs.

Putting Baltimoreans back to work doesn’t add to the state’s long-term budget woes, it helps reduce them. More jobs not only means more people paying taxes, it results in fewer dollars needed in safety net programs.

If there’s ever been a more successful economic development program undertaken in Maryland, we haven’t seen it. That lawmakers would even consider abandoning a relatively modest tax credit that’s spurred so much historic preservation and job-creation is stupefying even by State House standards.

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The Obama administration has given U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan $5 billion for a "race to the top" fund designed to encourage states to adopt educational innovations that produce dramatic improvements in student achievement. But in the race to take advantage of this federal largesse, Maryland is limping along at a snail’s pace compared to the rest of the pack.

State Education Secretary Nancy S. Grasmick hasn’t announced a plan to compete for the federal aid, even though the deadline for the first round of applications is less than two months away. Meanwhile Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has said education is one of his administration’s top priorities, hasn’t lifted a finger to remove the legislative roadblocks that put Maryland at a competitive disadvantage in qualifying for funds.

Among those obstacles are regulations discouraging merit pay for teachers and outmoded tenure rules that allow teachers to get lifetime appointments after only two years in the classroom; the state’s abysmal data management systems, which don’t allow educators to track students’ progress from year to year; standardized tests based on minimal levels of competence that don’t adequately prepare students for higher education or for jobs in a global knowledge-based economy; and evaluation procedures that make it all but impossible to fire ineffective teachers.

While Maryland dawdles, other states considered leading contenders in the race — California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Tennessee and Louisiana, for example — have been scrambling to rewrite laws and revise policies likely to be viewed as possible impediments to serious school reform. They have called public meetings, convened task forces and enlisted public figures to rally support behind the need for sweeping changes; in Colorado, the state’s lieutenant governor is personally leading the charge. And they’ve worked hard to get at least a modicum of cooperation and support from the powerful teachers’ unions.

Secretary Grasmick says Maryland already meets all the requirements for receiving federal innovation funds. She seems to be pinning her hopes on getting a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that would allow her to hire a high-powered consultant to write a winning application. But with millions of dollars at stake, surely she and the governor could mobilize funds from the state’s own budget to underwrite the drafting of such an important initiative. Even without the lure of the federal billions, the reforms are worth making.

The larger problem is that neither Ms. Grasmick nor Gov. O’Malley seem to understand that none of the groundwork is in place for a successful proposal, no matter who ends up writing it. The teachers’ unions haven’t been brought on board, even though their support on issues such as tenure, teacher evaluations and merit pay is crucial to any innovation strategy that has a chance of being competitive. Meanwhile, the legislature hasn’t taken any of the steps needed to revise rules on tenure, charter schools or tying teacher evaluations to student performance, despite the fact that the eventual winners in the race for federal funds are likely be states that score highest in just those areas.

Maryland has no shortage of educators committed to innovation and reform, including Baltimore City schools chief Andrés Alonso, who has made great progress replacing failing schools with new public and charter schools. But the state needs to pull its share of the weight if Maryland is to have a realistic shot at winning innovation funds. We’re appalled by Ms. Grasmick and Gov. O’Malley’s seemingly blase attitude toward the prospect of losing millions of dollars the state needs to improve its schools. No one wants to see Maryland end up a day late and a dollar short in the race to the top just because officials couldn’t get their act together to write a proposal the feds will take seriously.

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The New York Times reported Sunday that an attorney for one of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's co-defendants has visited his client in prison at Guantanamo Bay and says the five accused terrorists don't plan to dispute their role in the attacks on New York and Washington but will plead not guilty anyway so they can use their trial in federal court to air their criticism of U.S. foreign policy. That's exactly what critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to bring the men to trial in civilian court were afraid of.

We say, if these demented terrorists think their ranting attempts to justify mass murder of innocent cvilians will be persuasive, if they think attempting to hijack an orderly trial will gain them sympathy, if they think preaching their hate-filled perversion of Islam will win them converts, they've got another thing coming. Certainly this strategy, if it can be called that, removes some of the worry that the government would ever have trouble convincing a jury to convict. But it also speaks to why Mr. Holder was right to opt for a civilian trial in the first place. What the world will see is a choice between the rule of law and the rule of madness. We have little doubt which people will prefer.

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It's welcome news to those of us who frequent Robert E. Lee Park that Baltimore County is taking over its operations and maintenance with plans to devote more attention to this hidden gem than the city, which actually owns the land, has been able to do. The most visible sign of that change, of course, is the replacement of the pedestrian bridge just downstream from the dam on Lake Roland; two weeks ago, work crews tore down the old, structurally unstable bridge, and a new one will be built over the coming months. But the county has more plans in mind in the hope that by improving the facilities it can double park use from about 41,000 visitors a year to 100,000 or more.

No doubt the place could use some improving. The bathrooms have been shuttered for years, and the water fountains don't work. There are significant erosion problems around the lake, and the trails are often blocked off by fallen trees and aren't well marked under the best of circumstances.

But a big part of the park's appeal is its serenity and remoteness. Though tucked in between Towson, Ruxton and Mount Washington, the park is a little bit hard to find and not particularly welcoming in the sense that there's no proper parking lot and the eastern and western sections of the park can only be traversed by scrambling down a steep embankment and crossing over the light rail tracks. The haphazard facilities and maintenance contributed to an aura that the park had been forgotten and was being reclaimed by the wildlife -- and the lucky few people who knew about it. Here's hoping that the county doesn't ruin what's so appealing about the park in the process of improving it.

(Sun photo: Kim Hairston)

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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.

Yet not building a berth wasn’t really an option either. Without one, the port was likely to lose at least one shipping agency, Evergreen, that accounts for nearly a third of current container traffic. Instead of adding jobs, the port would stand to lose many hundreds of them.

Still, there are risks involved, too. As trade grows, Ports America will be able to set licensing and stevedoring rates to the company’s advantage, for instance. The contract ended up attracting only one bidder, and the MPA has had to rely on outside experts to help negotiate the high-stakes arrangement.

Is it the best possible arrangement? Lawmakers have two weeks to review the details before the contract goes before Board of Public Works on Dec. 16.

Carefully scrutiny will be required, but prospects for the deal look good. The port’s work force, Maryland companies that depend on foreign trade, the local economy and taxpayers all stand to benefit from the new facility and the jobs that would be created. After such a brutal economic recession, that’s enough to make the holidays a bit happier all around.

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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.)

The fear tactics on mammograms also ignore another feature of a health care system in which the government plays a larger role. The government, ultimately, isn’t run by bureaucrats but by politicians. It’s no coincidence that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius disavowed the task force’s recommendation after a public outcry, or that the White House’s deputy communications director moved quickly to assure the public that Medicare’s policy on mammograms wasn’t changing. If anything, placing greater responsibility for health care in the hands of government is going to lead to more coverage than necessary, not less.

What’s getting lost is any serious discussion of a set of recommendations that even those making them acknowledge are a difficult call. The task force studied new data from England and Sweden and found that the risks associated with breast cancer screening are much higher for women in their 40s but the chance of detecting cancer is much lower, making for a lopsided risk/reward ratio. Seven years ago, when the same panel recommended mammograms for women under 50 and that screenings be given annually, as opposed to once every two years, members said that, too, was a tough call. We seem stuck in a place where no data is likely to tip the scales conclusively to one side or another. That suggests we need to put resources into developing new, more accurate screening techniques that offer greater benefits at less risk of harm. That would be the proper response to these findings, not a set of politically motivated attacks.

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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.

Efforts to reach needy children are a particular priority because good nutrition is crucial to kids’ long-term physical and mental development. With its local partners, the food bank runs several programs targeted to at risk children, including a so-called "backpack" program for public school students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. The agencies prepare a backpack of food for the children to eat over the weekend when school is out. They also operate school-based food pantries that are open to parents who volunteer to work at their kid’s school.

Such programs are an enormously effective use of limited funds. Every dollar donated to the food bank buys three pounds of foodstuffs, and every five-dollar contribution pays for two week’s worth of school lunches.

Still, the need is profound, despite the fact that in a state as affluent as Maryland it often goes unrecognized. Yet for those willing to see, it’s as close as the face of the child sitting next to yours in school, as familiar as the laid-off worker next door or the elderly neighbor forced to choose between the paying the electric bill and buying groceries.

There have been days this year when the Maryland Food Bank closed to volunteers at 11 a.m. because it was already out of food for them to sort and pack. It’s a reminder that while the holidays traditionally are the busiest time of year for charitable groups, hunger never takes a holiday. We hope Marylanders will remember the state’s neediest in their holiday giving this season, as well as the fact that the need will still be there long after the holidays have passed.

Posted by Andy Green at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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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 (123)
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.

It's a fine thing that the city helps spread holiday cheer to the poor, particularly at a time like this when too many families are going to have to go without. But, as Mr. Carpenter noted on the stand, "there really was no accounting system" for how that charity is conducted. Too much opportunity exists for abuse. If city officials want to continue the Holly Trolley tradition, they need to develop a system tracking exactly where all the gift cards and toys come from, which ones are given to which people to distribute, and who winds up receiving them. We would never accept such lax accounting for public money in any other circumstance.

If the mayor wants to augment the municipal charity with private funds, she needs a much more transparent system than calling up people with millions at stake in business with the city and expecting envelopes of gift cards to show up at her office. How could Mr. Turner, whose Westport project is receiving the largest tax incentive Baltimore has ever approved, say no to the woman with the sole power to make or break the deal? How can the public be assured that the mayor is making decisions about developments and tax breaks based on their merits if she is requesting and receiving thousands of dollars in plastic from the people proposing them? Even if she never used gift cards intended for charity for her personal use, she certainly gets political benefits from playing Santa Claus on the back of the Holly Trolley.

Solicitations like this need to be handled with an arm's length distance between the mayor and people who might do business with the city. They need to be subjected to proper accounting rules and public disclosure through a recognized charitable organization. (We would suggest the Baltimore City Foundation if not for The Sun's report last month exposing inexcusably lax financial controls there, too.)

No matter what decision the jury makes on the question of Mayor Dixon's legal culpability, the public needs to render a verdict on the sloppy way business is conducted 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.

Like sand castles, the artificial dunes can’t last forever -- sometimes no more than a few years. Wind and water are simply too powerful a force to expect otherwise. Officials from the Corps of Engineers, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and local government spent much of this week assessing the damage and shoring up plans to pump more sand next spring.

Such temporary protection doesn’t come cheap. Taxpayers have invested about $100 million in the project so far, and next year’s replenishment efforts could add another $10 million or more to that.

But government engineers estimate that two decades worth of storms would likely have caused nearly $300 million in property damage if the sand and sea walls had not been there to protect Ocean City. That’s a 3-to-1 payoff on the investment so far, and that’s not even calculating how much the local tourist trade has gained from having a wider, more attractive beach.

Ocean City is simply too important an economic asset to the state to allow it to be swept away without a fight -- even if that means pumping offshore sand and replanting man-made dunes every four years.

For the $4 million set aside each year for periodic beach restoration (from federal, state and local resources), Ocean City gets a kind of short-term disaster protection. It’s not without sacrifice -- dunes are created to be destroyed so that the Dunes Manor Hotel and other Ocean City landmarks aren’t -- but last week’s storm demonstrated that it’s a trade-off that works.

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.

While it may not have been MAIF’s intent, preserving the bonuses offset the workers counter-productive participation in furloughs. But that’s not a point of view that will make Gov. Martin O’Malley or legislative leaders particularly popular with state employees or their unions.

This year, the matter is moot as the legislature instructed MAIF not to offer bonuses of any kind. So much for independence.

Admittedly, bonuses may not be the best way to compensate employees, particularly at a non-profit. When MAIF has to tap its reserve funds (as last year’s $20 million shortfall required), it may reflect more on the cyclical nature of the business than employee performance but it’s not exactly a positive indicator either.

The most expensive bonus paid out last year was the $13,000 given to MAIF’s executive director. That’s a lot less than the private industry standard regardless of the earnings situation. If the General Assembly wants MAIF to be run like a private company, lawmakers can’t be terribly shocked when it acts like one.

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.

Admittedly, the chairman had a difficult choice to make. Allow coverage for his employees and it might be seen as hypocritical particularly after GOP leaders in Congress made such a fuss about health-care reform and whether it might enable working-class women to purchase coverage for an abortion.

But denying such coverage to their own employees suggests the GOP finds leaving the abortion question to women too abhorent to contemplate. That's not a good way to attract young women to the ranks.

Now, the question is to what other medical procedures might donors object? Genetics testing? In utero fertility treatments? Birth control pills? The GOP would likely be better off simply by choosing to offer benefits competitive with other DC-based employers and chalk it up to the free market. But, of course, that would be heresy.

Posted by Peter Jensen at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
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.

Towson’s move looks even more significant after the Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday that adult smoking rates crept up slightly last year to 20.6 percent. At one point, federal officials had hoped the rate would have dipped as low as 12 percent by 2010, but the figure has stayed stubbornly stable for the last several years. Anything Towson and other universities can do to make smoking more difficult will help.

Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes into the wee hours while preparing for exams or writing end-of-term papers were once hallowed college traditions. But that was before the long-term health consequences of such behaviors became apparent. Smoking is a bigger killer of Americans than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murders, suicides, drugs and fires combined. It is the single biggest preventable cause of illness and death in the United States today.

Surely colleges and universities should be doing everything possible to steer young people away from such a deadly habit. Towson has done its students and their families a big favor by making it harder to get hooked on its campus after the new policy goes into effect in August.

But it shouldn’t be the state’s only four-year tobacco-free zone. Maryland’s other public colleges and universities need to get on board as well, and for the sake of the health and welfare of their students and staff, the sooner they do it the better.

Posted by Andy Green at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
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.

Last week, the head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence pointed to the shooting incident at Fort Hood that cost 13 lives as demonstrating the wrongfulness of the Burr bill. “This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places.”

Senator Burr responded by going on cable TV and calling the statement an exploitation of tragedy for the “personal triumph” of Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke.

What nonsense. If it’s exploitation to protect veterans and their families, the country could use more of it. If Mr. Burr wants to denounce genuine exploitation, he need look no further than his unwavering opposition to the regulation of the tobacco industry as its products kill thousands in his home state.

If, however, the nation wants to honor those who died at Fort Hood, they could scarcely do better than to stand behind gun purchase background checks that can help spare their families’ lives. As another tragedy, the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech that took the lives of 32 innocent people also demonstrated, a ban on gun purchases by the mentally ill can’t be effective if authorities are not made aware of who they are.

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?

Posted by Andy Green at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)
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.

We might be inclined to chalk this up to one out-of-towner’s bad luck, but there are far too many examples of parking tickets ballooning to epic proportions to dismiss this example so easily. The obvious solution would be to cap penalties so that the overdue bills would be painful, just not ruinous.

City Councilman Bernard “Jack” Young has introduced legislation to do just that. He would limit fines to no more than five times the original penalty.

And how has this idea been greeted by his fellow elected officials? A lot like it came with a highly contagious case of H1N1. Nobody is so much as breathing near it. Both Mayor Sheila Dixon and the council’s president say they are contemplating it. That’s City Hall code for, “Forget it.” The bill has yet to see so much as a hearing in the six months since it was introduced.

That’s because the measure has two things going against it — first, it would cost the city $2.5 million in revenue each year (out of the $9.2 million Baltimore collects annually from parking penalties), and secondly, that’s money coming primarily from people who don’t live — or vote — in the city.

Correcting the outrage requires the mayor and council to act against their own political interests. They must either cut the budget by even more than the painful amount the recession has already forced on the city or raise parking fees to offset the loss in penalty revenue.

We would hope the city would still choose to do the right thing. We are not naive enough to believe it will happen soon.

However, there may be opportunities for a reasonable compromise. At least victims like Mr. Roberts should have an opportunity to fight a ticket without traveling 3,000 miles to do so. Or perhaps penalties could be capped at 10 times the original fine.

Neither action would cause people to lose all respect for city parking restrictions, an argument Parking Authority Executive Director Peter Little has made in opposition to Mr. Young’s proposal. The council had heard that explanation before — from city landlords earning windfall profits from overdue ground rents. Remember the moral outrage? The city’s elected leaders didn’t countenance such excuses then, and they shouldn’t now.

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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.

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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.

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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
        

Student journalists at the Dalton School, a tony private college prep academy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, got a less than encouraging lesson about jounalistic independence last week when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave a talk at their school. Writers and editors planned to cover the event in The Daltonian, the school newspaper, but when Justice Kennedy insisted on vetting anything they wrote before it appeared in print, the school ignominiously caved to his demands.

No  serious journalist worth his or her salt would agree to such terms, which amounts to giving the subject of an article veto power over its content. That's one of the first lessons aspiring journalists are supposed to learn: In a democracy, people in the news don't get to pick and choose who writes about them or to decide what makes it into print. Responsible journalism is about getting the facts straight and everyone's name spelled correctly, not about letting the people you cover tell you what you can and can't say.

We're saddened Dalton's aspiring journalists let themselves be cowed by the arrogance of power. Some of them are old enough to serve in the military defending this country's democratic values; surely they're old enough to write an account of Justice Kennedy's visit that doesn't require his approval.

We're disappointed, too, with Justice Kennedy, who on bench has been a champion of the First Amendment. Why in this case he seems not to have known better than to have made such an ill-conceived request is a mystery. True, Supreme Court justices need to pay close attention to how they are perceived by the public, and Mr. Kennedy may have felt he needed to correct any  inaccurracies in the students' account due to their inexperience. But it would have been better to have suffered a minor factual slip -- and later written a letter to the editor to correct it -- than to have trashed the nation's centuries-old tradition of a free press.

Finally, we're genuinely appalled that Dalton school officials apparently found nothing wrong with encouraging students to surrender their journalistic independence and integrity by ceding control of their story to the person they were writing about. (Neither Dalton head of school Ellen Stein nor The Daltonian's faculty advisor, Kevin Slick, returned phone calls on Wednesday requesting comment). If those are the lessons working on Dalton's student newspaper is supposed to impart, the school would probably be better off without it.

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Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

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A new report ranking Maryland 49th out of the 50 states in its use of federal transportation funds on resources for walkers and bikers was flawed and understates Maryland's commitment to pedestrians. But if it produced an eye-grabbing headline and gets state officials to pay more attention to pedestrian safety, that may be just as well because whatever the validity of the study's methodology, the state remains a dangerous place for those who travel without cars.

State highway officials say the report undercounted Maryland's spending because it looked only at pedestrian-specific projects, not larger developments that have pedestrian-friendly features baked in. The fact that Maryland tends to favor the latter is, arguably, a good thing. But it doesn't erase the fact that pedestrians make up a much larger percentage of those killed on the roads in Maryland compared to other states and that the danger they face has not been declining along with other accidents.

Maryland needs to place much more emphasis on pedestrian-friendly features, not just in its spending of federal highway dollars but in its approach to community planning in general. However we truly rank nationally, it's clear that Maryland has a long way to go before bikers and walkers can share the roads safely.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
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It may sound like State Proseuctor Robert Rohrbaugh is trying to stack the deck by using trial consultant Ronald Matlon to help with jury selection, but under the circumstances, it would have been foolish not to. Rohrbaugh and his staff have no experience with Baltimore City juries -- which prosecutors and defense attorneys alike will tell you frequently come into cases with preconceived notions, even in cases that don't involve the mayor. Rohrbaugh faces issues of race, gender and politics that could easily cloud the jury's impressions, and he is the visiting team playing against a group of defense lawyers who are on their home turf.

Dixon's lead attorney, Arnold Weiner, has often sought to cast his client as the David to Rohrbaughs' Goliath, but it's important to note that the mayor has more lawyers (seven) than the entire State Prosecutor's Office (four). The fact that Dixon's team didn't have a consultant in court doesn't mean they're not using one (or more; Weiner declined to discuss the matter), and it certainly doesn't mean they weren't trying to get a jury they thought would be sympathetic. The mayor's assertion last night that she believed the jury would "provide a good balance and a fair trial" should not be taken to mean that a fair shake is all she (or somebody) is paying those lawyers to get. If Weiner & Co. weren't trying to get the most advantageous jury possible, they wouldn't be doing their jobs. What's wrong with Rohrbaugh trying to level the playing field?

Stranger than the use of a consultant is Rohrbaugh's attempt to introduce testimony from a third developer who is said to have donated gift cards to Dixon to be used "in connection with her church activities." The mayor's lawyers raise a good question about why they were informed of the potential testimony of Glenn Charlow on Friday, when prosecutors interviewed him more than a year ago. How crucial could he possibly be to the case?

At least we won't have to wait long to find out. The trial resumes Thursday.

Posted by Andy Green at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: City talk
        

For all the reluctance to go "all in" on casinos (and only recent acceptance of slot machines), Marylanders know a thing or two about poker. Perhaps it's the nature of a state that wagered against the British Empire in 1776 and took Union (mostly) in the Civil War. We know a winning hand when it's dealt.

But even that can't explain how lightning has twice struck state residents in the biggest event in poker, if not in all of gaming. Three years ago, an Anne Arundel County accountant named Steve Dannenmann finished second in the World Series of Poker No-limit Texas Hold 'em World Championship. Early Tuesday morning, it was a 46-year-old logger from Western Maryland named Darvin Moon who nearly won it all.

If Dannenmann was an unlikely contender (his friends said he wasn't even the best player at their regular game), Moon was an even greater revelation. ESPN viewers who witnessed his performance (and the network surely re-runs the preliminary rounds from this summer frequently enough to include millions of people in this category) saw a player for whom the term poker-face was invented. If emotion ever registered in his face, the cable network never captured it.

In a game that's often dominated by either professional players such as Phil Ivey, who Moon eliminated over the weekend, or on-line players such as eventual champion Joe Cada, a 21-year-old from Michigan, Moon was a throw-back. He doesn't own a computer or even have an e-mail address and isn't exactly a Las Vegas poker room regular.

One suspects most of the cable audience has been rooting for Moon, at least since the departure of Ivey, a formidable player and crowd-pleaser. If nothing else, Moon has achieved a level of celebrity uncommon in his neck of the woods.

Of course, there's also one other thing he's achieved. Second place has its compensations -- a total of $5.18 million in prize money. You have to cut down an awful lot of timber to match that payday.

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Categories: Slots and gambling
        

The Baltimore Health Department confiscated 19 horses from arabbers today saying they found the animals living in inhumane and unsanitary conditions under a bridge in South Baltimore. From the Health Department's perspective, this sounds reasonable -- it can't countenance horses being kept in muddy, manure-laden, trash-strewn, rat-infested tents. But it's easy to see why the arabbers see things differently. The city shut down the last arabber stable on Retreat Street two years ago, and though officials pledged to keep the business alive, they haven't found a permanent home for the horses.

It seems that the city is more interested in keeping arabbers in business in the abstract than in reality. Everybody talks about keeping up a tradition that dates to the 19th century, but when it comes to finding a way to make that tradition work in the 21st, they fall down.

Enough is enough. It's been two years. The city needs to either find a way to make the business viable and safe, or it needs to shut it down. It's certainly a terrible time for the families who run the arabber business to lose their livelihood, but stringing them along like this is doing them -- and certainly the horses -- no favors.

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The new federal rules for protecting the Chesapeake Bay are likely to get a lot of criticism: from farmers, from environmentalists, from state officials, from builders. The regulations take aim at pollution from agriculture, development, sewage, smokestacks and vehicle exhaust, but states are given latitude in figuring out how to achieve improvements in those areas. If they don't, they face unspecified sanctions.

That's considered too strict by some, including Repulicans in Congress who say it's a top-down, Washington-heavy approach that could hurt business. And it's thought by others to be too weak because it relies on states, which have so far failed to control pollution on their own.

But this effort needs to be considered in context of Sen. Benjamin Cardin's legislation to expand federal government authority over the Bay -- and to put up serious cash with which to do it. And even if this step is not everything enviornmentalists want, it is at least a step in the direction of federal involvement in the Bay and the hope that it can trump the uneven cooperation between Bay watershed states that has hampered progress so far. This move isn't everything, but it's a start. 

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The sex trafficking and prostitution charges seemed pretty clear cut -- Carlos Silot was accused of running a brothel near Patterson Park, staffed with illegal immigrant women, from a rented rowhouse, where police found a customer roster, photographs, condoms and more. But the case fell apart this week for a predictable reason: The women refused to testify.

How could we have expected otherwise? Women are brought to this country from Mexico, cut off from family, made to endure countless deprivations, and can't possibly expect that testifying against the man they say was responsible would turn out well. What believable assurances could the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office possibly make that it could protect these women? It certainly can't have helped that prosecutors initially charged the women -- the victims in this case -- with prostitution, only dropping the charges due to a lack of evidence.

It's unclear why local, rather than federal, prosectuors took this case. The U.S. Attorney's Office can bring to bear more resources to investigate the alleged crimes and to offer protection for the women who are the true victims. Moreover, federal laws for such crimes are much stricter, thanks to a law signed by President George Bush in 2005. The federal government also has mechanisms to help provide legal status for victims of such crimes -- the women in this case were in the country illegally -- and to help them rebuild their lives.

Maryland law was tightenened recently to deal more harshly with child sex trafficking, but not with cases such as this one, in which the women were adults. Sex trafficking involving adults is a misdemeanor under Maryland law; if convicted, Mr. Silot faced at most 10 years in prison on a charge of pandering. That needs to be changed.

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--As monumental a step as it was for the House of Representatives to pass a health care reform bill that promises to extend coverage to millions and improve the system for those who already have insurance, the legislation would do significant harm to the ability of women who need abortions to get them.

Longstanding rules have prevented federal funds from being used to provide abortions, and the right thing to do would have been for this legislation to preserve that arrangement. But thanks to an amendment approved over the weekend, the bill would prohibit health plans that participate in the government health insurance exchange and accept people who receive subsidies from offering coverage for abortion -- even to people who pay the full premiums out of pocket. Not only would the government be prohibiting the use of public money to provide abortions, it would prevent women from spending their own money to get such coverage. The suggestion that women would be able to purchase extra coverage to pay for the procedure is laughable -- who would buy it? Nobody expects to need an abortion one day.

The health care debate is not the venue to expand or restrict access to abortion in this country. We hope when the Senate takes up the legislation it approves a more sensible course to maintain the status quo.

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--Despite what now seem like obvious warning signs that Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was troubled, it would perhaps be a stretch to conclude that Army officials should have anticipated that he posed a danger and acted before he could. In truth, there is no way to know when someone will pick up a gun and commit such a horrible act of violence. But it is fair to wonder whether the Army missed signs that indicated he was not suited for counseling soldiers traumatized by war.

The fact that Major Hasan received counseling while a psychiatry resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is not in itself a red flag -- it is apparently common, given the nature of their work -- but other signs, such as his inappropriate speeches about his radical vision of Islam in professional contexts, should have singled him out for greater scrutiny. Fellow doctors found his behavior odd, and he led an increasingly isolated life as his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq grew stronger. His complaints of anti-Muslim harassment should also have gotten the attention of his superiors. The Army can't countenance a soldier trying to avoid being sent to war, but when that soldier's job is to safeguard the mental health of others, it can't ignore signs of instability either.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly demanded Friday that the Afghan government rein in corruption, saying he is “not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption.” He insisted that the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai demonstrate clear progress in five areas: security, governance, reconciliation, economic development, and engagement with Afghanistan's neighbors. If Mr. Karzai’s government fails, Mr. Brown said, it will have “forfeited its right to international support.”

There have been hints in recent days that President Barack Obama is delivering a similar message and similar demands in the closed-door world of diplomacy, but making such a public statement — and setting out benchmarks for Afghanistan to achieve — packs more force and is the kind of thing we need to see from the Obama administration if it is going to ask us to support sending thousands more troops to such a vexing war.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
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The first public corruption trial against Mayor Sheila Dixon, on charges of theft and embezzlement in connection with the use of gift cards meant for the city’s needy at Christmastime, begins Monday. Ever the fighter, ever defiant, Mayor Dixon has said she will attend her trial (as well as the one yet to come on charges of perjury), and in recent days she has said she is looking forward to it because the truth will finally come out.

We certainly hope so — the mayor is absolutely right to suggest that in this case so far, truth has been in short supply. We’ve seen plenty of evidence from the prosecutor: dates, times, amounts. We have gotten glimpses of testimony from those whose own potential legal liability has made them cooperative. And we’ve heard plenty of theories from Ms. Dixon’s lawyers about whether any of the mayor’s alleged conduct is actually against the law. But of the things Baltimore residents really need to know about their mayor — what her actions say about her moral compass, whether she regrets anything she’s done or whether she feels her conduct has been beyond reproach — we have heard precious little.

There’s probably not much chance that we’ll get answers like those in this trial or the next one. A criminal trial is suited to answering narrow questions of legal guilt or innocence, not the broad ethical ones that matter in the world of politics and governance. In fact, the threat of prosecution has probably hindered any deeper accounting; under sound legal advice from her many excellent lawyers, Mayor Dixon has said little about the charges she faces other than to proclaim her innocence. And the focus of Maryland State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh has, for good reason, been on those actions for which he has been able to secure indictments, not on other questionable conduct in Ms. Dixon’s past.

But as long as the mayor is offering up the hope for truth, here are the questions we’d like to get real answers to:

When, if ever, did Ms. Dixon conclude that her relationship with developer Ronald H. Lipscomb was fundamentally incompatible with her role in city government? Ms. Dixon had a brief affair with Mr. Lipscomb, one of the city’s most prominent developers, when she was City Council president. Prosecutors say he spent thousands of dollars on her for travel and shopping sprees, even as he was appearing before the Board of Estimates, which she chaired, to seek millions in city tax breaks for his projects. In one case, prosecutors say, she voted on one of his projects in the morning and hopped on a train with him to New York that afternoon.

This is a prime case in which the question of right and wrong has been subverted by the question of legal guilt or innocence. Dating a developer isn’t illegal, but failing to report on ethics forms that you’ve received gifts from someone doing business with the city is. Consequently, the issue has devolved into arguments that are absurd in the real world but crucial in court: Can prosecutors prove that Ms. Dixon knew about Mr. Lipscomb’s business; and does what he did, under the definition in Baltimore’s ethics law, technically constitute doing business with the city? Those may be the crucial questions in court, but they aren’t the ones to which Baltimore residents deserve answers.

Regardless of whether prosecutors prove that Ms. Dixon wound up using gift cards solicited for the needy to buy electronics for her family, does she see any ethical problem with calling developers whose fortunes are tied to the permits and tax breaks she controls and asking them to make those donations in the first place? Does she think they could legitimately say no? And if the prosecutor does prove that she used those gift cards, what does that indicate about her understanding of the separation of her personal life and her professional responsibility?

When Ms. Dixon insisted as City Council president that more municipal business go to a company that employed her sister, did she know that the firm was bogus and incapable of doing the work in question? Either way, does she think she was justified in advocating public policies that would directly benefit her family? Although Mr. Rohrbaugh got a guilty plea and a pledge of cooperation from Utech President Mildred Boyer, he has filed no charges related to Ms. Dixon’s advocacy on behalf of her sister’s one-time employer. That doesn’t mean Mayor Dixon has nothing to answer for. The same goes for the case of Dale G. Clark, Ms. Dixon’s former campaign chairman, who was paid $600,000 over six years to develop a computer system for the City Council. He had no contract for five of those years and was instructed by Ms. Dixon’s staff to submit bills in increments of less than $5,000, the amount that requires Board of Estimates approval. No charges against the mayor have been filed in connection with Mr. Clark’s work, but that doesn’t make it ethical.

How is Ms. Dixon paying for her team of lawyers? Does she entertain the possibility that taxpayers may one day pick up the tab? If she were completely exonerated, she could make the argument that she should not have to pay to defend herself from a rogue prosecutor, but even so, would that justify a blank municipal check for the doubtless pricey legal team she’s assembled at a time when city employees are being laid off? Is she benefiting from a legal defense fund? If so, who is soliciting money for it, who is donating, and what business do they have with the city?

And most importantly, does Ms. Dixon regret anything she has done? Has her sense of what is right and wrong evolved at all during the course of this investigation? How can we be assured that the mayor is leading the city in the best interests of all its citizens, not just her family and friends?

That’s the kind of truth we’d like to see.

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We would think that after 14-year-old Destinee Parker, a Montebello Elementary/Middle School student with no underlying health conditions, died this fall from the H1N1 virus that city parents would take seriously the need to get their children vaccinated. Furthermore, we would think that the news of vaccine scarcity, long lines at clinics offering the shot and continued reports about how widespread the virus has become would make parents eager for the city's offer to set up vaccine sites at their children's schools. Yet days before the first ones are due to begin, just 1,800 of the 80,000 consent forms the city school system sent home have been returned. You could get a better response than that for a field trip to Ft. McHenry.

Most cases of H1N1, also known as swine flu, are mild, but it has been disturbingly deadly in children. More than 1,000 kids have died nationwide from the swine flu, and half of the cases serious enough to require hospitalization are in children. Many people have anxiety about vaccines, particularly this one, since it was produced and tested quickly. But ask Destinee's parents which risk they would take -- the vaccine or the disease -- and they wouldn't have to think long before giving the answer.

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Baltimore failed fire cadet Racheal Wilson when it sent her, ill prepared and ill equipped, into a live fire training exercise that violated dozens of federal safety standards. Her death is the deepest stain imaginable on the department, and there should have been no priority higher than doing everything possible to make recompense to her family. Now the city has failed her again by bungling the paperwork for a federal death benefit from the Department of Justice that would have paid nearly $300,000 to her children.

Mayor Sheila Dixon's reaction -- that the failures occurred under a previous fire chief -- doesn't cut it. For one thing, the request for information that the department failed to provide came in the last few months, and for another, she is responsible for setting matters straight no matter which fire chief was involved. Ms. Dixon needs to take charge of finding a way to take care of Ms. Wilson's children financially without forcing all taxpayers to cover for some employee's mistake.

Anyone who had a hand in this failure doesn't deserve to be working for the fire department. Racheal Wilson lost her life because of carelessness. Losing a job seems like a small price to pay by comparison.

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While headed to a football game last weekend, more than a dozen members of the Morehouse College “House of Funk” marching band were injured in a crash on Interstate 75 south of Atlanta, Ga. Not one of them was wearing a seat belt, as the vehicle lacked passenger restraints of any kind along with many other common safety features.

That’s because they were riding on a bus -- or what the industry calls a motorcoach -- which is not required to have safety belts or crash-resistant roofs or many other protective features U.S. consumers now take for granted in their cars and trucks.

The Morehouse students were fortunate that no one was killed in the rollover accident, but others have not been so lucky. Last year, 17 people were killed and 39 injured when a motorcoach was driven off an overpass on U.S. 75 near Sherman, Texas. Since that Aug. 8, 2008 disaster, there have been at least 42 more bus crashes and fires elsewhere in the U.S.
Each year, the nation’s buses provide transportation to more than 600 million passengers, and ridership is rising, particularly as the cost and headaches associated with airline travel grow.

Yet Congress has failed to act on National Transportation Safety Board recommendations to improve the industry’s safety standards.

That buses lack seat belts is a particularly egregious example of neglect, as rollover crashes are a major cause of bus passenger fatalities. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 70 percent of occupant deaths in bus crashes were the result of ejection from the vehicle.

Glazed windows that are less easily broken in a crash would also be helpful in this regard. As would stronger, crush-resistant roofs.

Tougher standards are needed to ensure that bus drivers are in good physical shape and receive adequate training. NTSB has found drivers involved in severe crashes have sometimes had medical conditions that impaired that ability to drive safely but which were not previously detected.

Also troubling is the way some motorcoach companies with a history of safety violations have been able to “reincarnate” by re-registering under a new name to avoid enforcement actions, a pattern identified by the General Accounting Office in a report issued in July. The company that owned the bus involved in the Sherman crash had been ordered out of service two months earlier.

Last year, about 300 people died in bus crashes in the U.S. That is a small number compared to the thousands killed in car accidents, but it could be made substantially lower at a relatively small cost if Congress will pass the necessary safety legislation.

Improved crash worthiness, better driver training and testing, closer oversight of bus companies, requiring event data recorders, fire suppression systems and other safety features, all are included in the pending legislation. The measure would also provide a tax credit of up to $45,000 to help companies either upgrade an existing bus or purchase a replacement built to the higher standards.

Many of these requirements would be phased in over time, a reasonable approach given the costs. But Congress needs to act soon because any additional delay will inevitably lead to more lives lost. Buses may never meet the elaborate safety standards of passenger jets, but they ought to be held to at least the same minimum requirements as their fellow vehicles on the road.

Posted by Andy Green at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

On the eve of the first anniversary of Barack Obama's election as president, his party lost the governor's seats in Virginia and New Jersey, both by fairly decisive margins. They're both states that the president carried last year, and they're both elections in which he campaigned for the Democrats this year. What does that mean? Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele was on CBS's "The Early Show" this morning saying the results showed a "transcendent" Republican Party that the GOP "has really found its voice again."

That's a bit of a stretch.

Those results certainly aren't a great sign for the president, but then again, the sitting president's party, whichever one it is, routinely loses the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. The exit polls in both states showed more voters approved of President Obama's job performance than not, and most people in both states said he had nothing to do with how they voted. (In fact, those who said the president was a factor were evenly split between showing support and opposition to him)

People expressed much more concern about the economy than anything else, but local issues in both states -- Democrat Creigh Deeds' inability to connect with voters in Virginia, and a desire for change in scandal-ridden New Jersey -- also played major roles. (ABC News has a good rundown of the numbers here.)

But if anything belies the notion of a "transcendent," unified GOP, it's the victory of a Democrat in the solidly Republican 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York. In that race, Republicans nominated a socially liberal Republican, Dierdre Scozzafava, only to see conservatives rally around a much more right wing candidate, Doug Hoffman. National Republicans, including Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, endorsed Hoffman, and Scozzafava dropped out over the weekend. She endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens, and recorded robocalls on his behalf. He won.

So what voice exactly has the GOP found? The moderate one that brought victory in Virginia and New Jersey, or the hard-line conservative one that flopped in New York?

Posted by Andy Green at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (85)
Categories: National politics
        

The 7-foot-2-inch bronze statue of William Donald Schaefer that went up at Harborplace over the weekend bore little resemblance to Hampden's now-famous giant pink flamingo, but in spirit the two works are equally monuments to Baltimore's renaissance. When Mr. Schaefer first took office as mayor of Baltimore in 1971, the Inner Harbor was a collection of rat-infested, rotting wharfs and the working-class community of Hampden was a place outsiders rarely dared venture after dark. By the time Mr. Schaefer left the mayor's office for the governor's mansion in 1986 Harborplace had become a national showcase of urban revitalization and Hampden was sprouting trendy boutiques and art galleries heralding the onset of gentrification.

 Mr. Schaefer never claimed that Harborplace was his idea, but he was perhaps more than anyone else responsible for making it such an extraordinary success. Who can forget his zany antics wearing an old-fashioned striped bathing suit in the seal pool to promote the opening of the National Aquarium in Baltimore in 1981? Or his famous "Do it now!" credo that kept city bureaucrats hopping to pick up strewn garbage and fix the potholes he spotted during his periodic jaunts through unprepossessing communities like Hampden? He was a combination of jovial Big Daddy and demanding Mr. Scrooge, and just unpredictable enough that you never quite knew which you were going to get on any given occasion. The one thing you could be sure of was that when Willie Don said, "Do it now!" things got done.

Over the years we've had our our share of disagreements with Mr. Schaefer, both as mayor and Maryland governor, over issues ranging from crime and municipal finances to housing and the parlous state of the city's schools. And we're generally leery of heaping laurels on living politicians by naming buildings and bridges after them or by casting their likenesses in bronze. But Mr. Schaefer truly was an exceptional politician by any measure who gave this city hope when it needed it most. By erecting his statute at Harborplace the city has recognized the crucial role he played in Baltimore's rebirth as a great American city, and we happily allow the honor should all be his.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City talk
        

Public whining over speed cameras appears to have, at least momentarily, softened hearts at the Maryland State Highway Administration. The SHA has decided that motorists shouldn't have to pay a $40 fine for driving too fast in construction zones for another two weeks.

While that's great for scofflaws, it would seem to thwart the original purpose of the measure: to make work zones safer for both construction crews and motorists. The law has been in effect since Oct. 1, but so far 900 warnings have been sent to violators.

Under the law, motorists only face a fine when they drive at least 12 mph over the speed limit, a generous standard to be sure.

Last year, 11 people lost their lives in work zone crashes in Maryland. Nationwide, there were 720 fatalities. Speeding and driver inattention are considered to be leading factors involved in these accidents.

SHA officials say the delay was necessary chiefly because the first violations weren't mailed out until Oct. 14, so extending the warning period to a full month would seem to be in the spirit of the original 30-day reprieve. On the other hand, that the contractor has employed only two specially equipped SUVs for the job and has recorded so many violations in so short a period of time suggests the need for enforcement is substantial.

Nothing gets a driver's attention quite like a speeding ticket. One can only hope that a warning has as positive an effect.

Posted by Peter Jensen at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Transportation
        

Justin Fenton's report this morning that police are investigating a series of rapes, many concentrated in East Baltimore and others near bus stops, has many in the city on edge, both because of the danger and because of questions about how quickly the department has been able to inform people about the risk. In the wake of the department's slow warning about a series of rapes in the Mount Vernon area a year ago, there was reason for concern. As Fenton pointed out, the department did not initially seek to spread the word through the media or through its Twitter and Facebook pages.

Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told me today that the department, as a rule, doesn't tweet rapes because of the sensitive nature of the crime. That's reasonable in the case of an individual rape, but maybe not once police start to think there's a pattern going on. Guglielmi said the department wanted first to disseminate information to community leaders and later did decide to send an alert through the media and its various means of electronic communication.

In the end, the department got to the right place, but it might want to be quicker to turn to social media in the future. Certainly the department should continue to work directly with community leaders, who often have close working relationships with the police and can help turn up leads in addition to spreading the word. But the police now have tools at their disposal to directly reach a group of people who connect to their community in a different way. In this kind of situation, it's crucial to get information out as widely as possible so that potential victims can take precautions. When it comes to deciding which medium to use to communicate that message, it shouldn't be either-or, or one then the other. It should be all of the above, right away.

Posted by Andy Green at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Law and criminal justice
        

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 news that Black & Decker's merger with Stanley Works will result in the loss of yet another of the Baltimore area's Fortune 500 corporate headquarters is sure to set off another round of civic tooth-gnashing about why the city always seems to be on the losing end of these transactions. But this deal is no occasion to bemoan Maryland's business climate or to compare ourselves to such supposed corporate havens as Dallas.

For starters, this deal had nothing to do with Maryland and everything to do with what looks like a natural marriage between two big players in the same industry. Stanley effectively brought more money to the table, so it gets to keep its home turf.

For another thing, the question shouldn't be whether Maryland is hanging on to these established companies but whether it is incubating the next generation of corporate giants. With the state's stellar educational system and burgeoning high-tech industries, particularly centered around the biosciences, we have the opportunity to develop the titans of tomorrow -- provided we keep our focus on nurturing our intellectual capital.

Certainly, the loss of jobs and philanthropy that goes with Black & Decker will be a blow, but if there's something to get upset about for the long term, it's not this merger but the news last week that the Department of Energy had awarded grants to 37 efforts to produce breakthroughs in renewable energy production -- none of them in Maryland. If there's news to be excited about, it's that Maryland researchers were awarded more than 400 National Institutes of Health grants to pursue their work under the federal stimulus program. Those are the kinds of developments that will determine how prosperous we are in the future.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Upcoming editorials
        

With Montgomery County now on record as supporting raising the age at which Maryland students can legally drop out if school, Baltimore state Sen. Catherine E. Pugh says the city has gained a powerful ally in its push to require students to continue their education until they reach 18. Sen. Pugh, a Democrat from the 40th District, says that by joining Prince George's County and the city in pushing to raise the drop-out age, Montgomery County will add a large bloc of delegates supporting new legislation in the General Assembly next year, making passage of some kind of reform more likely.

"I see a continued groundswell of support around the issue," Pugh said Monday, adding the "we are hoping to focus this year on moving compulsory attendence to 17, and then raising it to 18 the following year."

 The argument against raising the minimum age at which students can legally leave school has long been that it would cost the state more to educate the additional kids who otherwise would have dropped out -- up to $40 million a year more a year, according one estimate by the state legislative services department.

"What that amounts to is planning for our kids' failure," Ms. Pugh charges. "Instead of planning for them to succeed in school, the state is basically projecting a certain number will drop out each year and then calculating how much it will save by not having to educate them."

But does allowing students to drop out at age 16 really save the state money?

When you count up all the other costs associated with high school dropouts -- higher rates of unemployment and incarceration, physical and mental health problems, lower lifetime earnings and tax contributions -- it's not at all clear that Maryland comes out ahead by letting kids drop out. For example, it costs about $10,000 to keep a kid in school for one year, but it costs more than $40,000 to keep that same kid in a drug teatment facility, juvenile detention center or prison for a year.

Nor is it certain that kids who drop out would spoil their classmates' chance to get an education  by being disruptive. Baltimore, P.G. and most other jurisdictions already have programs to deal with disruptive students. In Baltimore, for example, students on short-term suspension are required to attend an alternative school in the department's North Avenue headquarters until they are deemed ready to be returned to the classroom.

The bill Ms. Pugh and her colleagues are contemplating won't prevent educators from removing a disruptive student from the classroom, nor will it prevent teachers and principals from suspending or otherwising sanctioning students with serious behavior issues. On the other hand, it recognizes that in a knowledge-based global economy that depends heavily on having a well-educated work force, it makes no sense to enshrine in stone a legacy of the state's rural past when teenagers typically left school at 16 to work on the farm.

As Ms. Pugh noted dryly, "there are no farms in Baltimore City."

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Education
        

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.

After months of political posturing, legal maneuvering, strong-arm tactics and heated rhetoric, Constellation Energy Group and Electricite de France on Monday accepted the conditions imposed by the Maryland Public Service Commission on the proposed sale of half of Constellation's nuclear business, resulting in an agreement that looks like a good deal for Baltimore Gas and Electric customers -- and the $100 rate credits they are to receive are the least of it.

We get legal protections to prevent BGE from being harmed should Constellation's finances take a turn for the worse, as they did last year when the company neared bankruptcy; measures to prevent Constellation from extracting dividends from BGE that the utility can't afford; an infusion of cash to help shore up BGE's standing; and a delay in requests for rate increases. In terms of BGE's long-term stability and the reliable supply of power in Central Maryland, those provisions may be the most important ones.

We also get a strong possibility that Constellation and EDF will move forward with a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs. While that won't benefit BGE customers as directly as it would have if Maryland had never deregulated the electric industry, it would still substantially increase the amount of power generated in the state and, the laws of supply and demand being what they are, help hold down rates in the long term. Plus, it would help alleviate an energy supply imbalance in the state and do it without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. And even if Calvert Cliffs 3 doesn't happen soon -- or ever -- we still get the U.S. headquarters for EDF, which is seeking to start building nuclear plants across the country.

The deal offered some reassurance that the Public Service Commission is able to act independently despite significant political pressure from Gov. Martin O'Malley and others. The commission ignored some of the governor's demands, including that it limit Constellation CEO Mayo Shattuck's compensation -- a worthy goal, perhaps, but not the PSC's business -- and modified others to make them more reasonable.

Finally, there's the $100. It doesn't begin to soften the rate shocks we've seen over the last few years, but at a time when family budgets are tight, $100 isn't so bad.

Posted by Andy Green at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
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.

--Tuesday's vote in Maine on whether to accept the decision of that state's legislature to legalize same-sex marriage is being viewed as a test of the national mood on that hot-button issue, but whichever way the vote goes, there are signs that gay marriage is steadily gaining acceptance. To take just two examples locally, the Washington D.C. City Council is considering legislation now to allow gay marriage in the city, a few months after nearly unanimously deciding to recognize gay marriages from states where the practice is recognized. And Montgomery County is considering legislation that would require government contractors to provide the same benefits for domestic partners that they do for spouses in straight couples. The entire nation may not be ready to accept gay marriage today or tomorrow, but just a few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that the topic would even be up for debate. That's clear progress.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)
Categories: Upcoming editorials