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. 

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Andy Green at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (37)
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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)
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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)
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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.

Posted by Andy Green at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
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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)
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Part of the sentence handed down yesterday for developer Ronald Lipscomb after his guilty plea in the City Hall corruption investigation was that he'll stop donating to any city political candidates during the next three years. Fortunately for Maryland politicians, he's already donated thousands of dollars in this election cycle, and for that matter, most of his money goes to people outside the city anyway.

According to the Maryland campaign finance database, he has given personal donations this election cycle to Gov. O'Malley ($4,000), Sen. Anthony Muse of Prince George's County ($2,000) and Sen. Ulysses Currie, also of Prince George's, also under criminal investigation by the feds ($1,500). That puts him at $7,500 for the cycle, better than halfway to the individual contribution limit of $10,000.

But that's a mere pittance of his actual campaign contribution activity. Doracon Contracting Inc. has given $18,500 to candidates -- $6,000 over the limit, but that includes the $12,500 to Councilwoman Helen Holton that got him in trouble in the first place. The other cash went to Currie (another $2,000) and Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold ($4,000). Doracon also gave $25,000 to the Democratic State Central Committee and $2,000 to the B.U.I.L.D. political action committee.

Then you've got Doracon Development, LLC: $3,000 to Muse, $3,000 to Comptroller Peter Franchot and $30,000 to the Democratic State Central Committee.

Next up: Doracon Development of Puerto Rico: $4,000 to O'Malley and $4,000 to Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett.

Then there's the assortment of other companies Lipscomb uses for development projects (and donations) all headquartered at his 3500 E. Biddle St. offices. Lambda Development: $4,000 to O'Malley, $2,000 to Currie, $2,000 to Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith and $500 to Warren Maurice Branch. Various iterations of companies bearing Lipscomb's initials (RHL Arizona Crossing, RHL Devleopment, etc.) have given: $9,000 to O'Malley, $4,000 to Leggett, $4,000 to Currie, $4,000 to Franchot, $3,000 to Muse, $2,000 to Holton, $2,000 to Smith, $2,000 to Branch and $2,000 to City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. 301 E. Lombard Street LLC has given: $2,500 to Franchot, $2,000 to O'Malley, $2,000 to Holton, $1,250 to Rawlings-Blake and $1,000 to Mayor Sheila Dixon. 6th Street LLC: $2,500 to Franchot, $2,000 to Dixon and $1,000 to Leggett. Arizona Crossings LLC: $2,000 to Muse, $1,000 to Dixon and $2,000 to the Community Coalition Advocacy Slate, which benefits various Prince George's candidates, including Currie.

That comes to a total of $148,750 in two years. (Any contributions he's made since January aren't in the database yet.) Maybe Lipscomb should lobby Judge Dennis M. Sweeney to extend the prohibition to all Maryland political candidates; it could save him a bundle.

Posted by Andy Green at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: City talk
        

Mayor Sheila Dixon is playing hardball with the city's fire and police unions to get financial concessions out of them as she seeks to close a $60 million budget shortfall. With other departments, she's getting savings by furloughing employees. But the fire and police unions argue they're understaffed to begin with and that furloughs would endanger public safety. They probably have a point there.

Still, public safety makes up the largest chunk of the city's budget ($584 million, or about a fifth of the total). It would be hard to completely hold police and fire harmless, and proportionally speaking, Mayor Dixon is asking less from them in concessions than she is from other departments.

WBAL radio is reporting that the Dixon administation and the fire union came to an agreement on pay reductions in the form of some furlough days and some non-paid vacation, but there's no word on negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Police.

Given the city's twin problems of budget deficits that are only going to get worse and major public safety issues, should the mayor be seeking cuts from the fire and police departments, or should she leave them alone?

Posted by Andy Green at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (57)
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How do you spell trouble? Try Suite Ultralounge.

City officials have been trying to close this so-called "bottle club" -- a night spot where patrons bring their own booze rather than purchase it on the premises -- for more than a year. Over the last two years the club in the basement of Mount Vernon's Belvedere Hotel has been linked to a string of shootings, assaults and other crimes in the area that have terrorized neighborhood residents and led to calls for the city liquor board to yank its license. But so far a loophole in the state liquor law has allowed the club's owners to avoid cleaning up their act through endless delays in court.

Now city police commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III wants to padlock Suite Ultralounge under the city's public nuisance law. Police used the law last year to shutter a North Avenue liquor store that had become a magnet for crime and the scene of a fatal shooting, and earlier this year the department again used it to compel an East Oliver Street bar called Shirley's Honey Hole to install video cameras with a direct feed into police headquarters so authorities could keep an eye on suspected drug dealing there. (Officials later thought better of the direct feed to police HQ, but the cameras stayed.)

We hope Mr. Bealefeld succeeds in padlocking Suite Ultralounge. But if that fails, police must at a minimum require video monitoring of the establishment and its patrons. If patrons know they are being watched they may be less likely to make trouble, inside or outside the club. As things now stand, the club is a continuing menace to public safety and someone shouldn't have to be killed or seriously injured there before authorities can take action against it.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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It's sad news today that Cafe Hon owner Denise Whiting has removed the giant pink flamingo that was attached to her building on The Avenue in Hampden rather than pay an $800 fee to the city. It's sad not so much because we've lost some important work of art but because nobody in City Hall seemed to have enough brains to make this permit problem go away.

Surely the issue for Ms. Whiting wasn't the money. I'm guessing that if she'd put a "Save the Flamingo" jar on the counter of her bar, she'd have gotten $800 in donations in no time. It's the principle of the thing. The flamingo has been there for seven years, not hurting anybody, and embodying in its own way the spirit of the place. As Ms. Whiting pointed out to The Sun's Brent Jones, when The New York Times ran a story about Baltimore a few weeks ago, the picture the paper used was of the flamingo. You'd think sombody in City Hall would realize this and tell the inspectors -- who suddenly decided the flamingo was intruding into the public right of way and needed a permit -- to buzz off. Ms. Whiting said she called 10 differnt city departments to try to get some accommodation but failed.

Mayor Dixon, here's your chance to do one small thing that will make a bunch of your constituents happy, will cost nothing and will harm no one. Make a phone call, get the inspectors to drop this permit business, and ask Ms. Whiting to put the flamingo back. Maybe she'll even invite you to the re-hanging ceremony. It would be the best photo op you'll get all year.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (45)
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There was a curious juxtaposition on page two of today's Sun: One story by Justin Fenton details the Baltimore Police Department's decision to demote the major in charge of the Southeastern District, in part because he had started an outside business as a life coach at a time when homicides were up in his area of command. Another story by Justin Fenton reveals that the department has decided to allow one of its attorneys to continue working in private practice, provided she doesn't take on criminal cases, especially those involving Baltimore cops.

In the case of the lawyer, it certainly makes sense to keep the attorney, Kim Y. Johnson, from doing criminal work. It would pose pretty clear conflicts of interest if the lawyer who heads the department's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was in court cross-examining police officers. But it begs the question of how she would manage her time. Many police officers moonlight as security guards, among other things, but the key there is the "moonlight" bit -- they can hold those jobs outside normal working hours. Doing bankruptcy work? Not so much, at least in as far as court appearances are involved. Seems like a situation that bears watching by the department's command staff to make sure they're getting their $94,000 worth from her. (Prosecutors in the city State's Attorney's office, incidentally, are forbidden from having outside law practices).

In the case of the major (now lieutenant), Roger Bergeron, the official word is that the problem in his case was the results; homicides in his district stand at 21 in 2009, compared to eight at this time last year. Fenton reports that sources in the department say there was concern that Bergeron wasn't spending enough time on the streets. But it sounds like there may be more to this story. Bergeron was suspended last month and stripped of his badge and gun, and the department was investigating his office computer. Seems that if the department was worried that he wasn't spending enough time on the streets, taking away his badge and gun for a month would be an odd way to rectify the problem.

Posted by Andy Green at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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The Avenue in Hampden is the capital of Baltimore kitsch, so for years the city got along just fine having that huge pink flamingo mounted above the landmark Cafe Hon. But now a city inspector has suddenly discovered that  -- gasp! -- the big bird may actually be in violation of some ordinance or another.

Whatever. The city should have fixed that years ago. But since it didn't, the Big Bird should stay. 

There's no need to pretend this long-necked fowl is great art. It's pure kitsch, as it was intended to be. Kitsch is the opposite of the complex, difficult, provocative and occasionally infuriating art in museums. It's art for everyday people going about their everyday business, which is what folks tend to do on the Avenue in Hampden. 

Clement Greenberg, the late great critic of The Nation magazine, railed against kitsch his whole career and never quite reconciled himself to anything made after about 1970. Greenberg thought the Pop art of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and others -- along with everything that followed -- was tawdry and cheap and more or less wholly unworthy of being called art. If you asked Greenberg the difference between art and kitsch he could have summed it up in two words: Pink flamingos.

But hardly anyone nowadays pays much attention to those ancient pronouncements from on high. Today's most adventurous postmodern critics deny there's any difference at all between art and kitsch -- witness the acclaim heaped on artist Jeff Koons' gigantic aluminum sculptures of beach toys and porcelain statues of Michael Jackson with his chimp.  In the contemporary art world anything can be art, including pink flamingos, especially if they happen to adorn a building in Baltimore housing a restaurant named Cafe Hon.

That's why Hampden's Big Bird should be preserved, if only as a memento of a certain wacko sensibility dear to Baltimorean hearts. It's a monument to the city's prescience in celebrating the shock of the new when it really was still new.

Pink flamingos are as much as part of this city's distinctive visual aesthetic as are multi-colored Christmas tree lights and statues of William Donald Schaefer by the Harbor. If Mr. Schaefer were still mayor, there's not the smallest doubt he would come up with a way to make sure the pink flamingo over Hon's stayed put.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
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There are plenty of problems with Baltimore's fire and police pension system, but probably the most egregious is an unusual benefit retirees there receive. When the stock market does well and the pension fund grows by more than 7.5 percent, retirees get a share of that extra money -- every year for the rest of their lives. When the stock market does poorly and the pension fund doesn't grow -- or, as in recent years, declines in value precipitously -- they don't get additional increases, but they still get the bonus payments determined when times were good. That gives retirees all the up-side of the stock market and none of the downside, an enviable, but unsustainable, position.

What's the impact? To keep up, the city would need to double its contribution to the retirement system this year and cough up $165 million at a time when it is already furloughing employees, cutting services and facing more revenue shortfalls to come. To pay for this benefit, city property tax rates would have to go up by almost 25 cents per $100 in assessed value.

Ordinarily, pensions take the gains from good years and plow them back into the fund to make sure it's healthy in lean years. But this benefit has limited the city fund's ability to do that, and now the pension system is badly underfunded. It's understandable that fire and police retirees would be reluctant to give this up, but they risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg. 

Posted by Andy Green at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney was right to reject the attempt by Mayor Sheila Dixon's attorneys to throw out perjury charges against her through a ridiculously expansive interpretation of the legal principle that protects her legislative acts from prosecution. It was frustrating, albeit understandable, that Judge Sweeney threw out an earlier indictment on the same perjury charges because prosecutors had relied on Ms. Dixon's votes to prove she was aware that her former boyfriend Ronald H. Lipscomb and his company, Doracon, were doing business with the city. The notion that votes and debate, specifically, would be exempt from prosecution speaks to our values about the separation of powers in government. But the idea that any act Ms. Dixon commits while an elected official -- standing at a ribbon-cutting, for example -- should be exempt would eliminate any possibility that she or any other politician could be held to a standard of ethics.

It would be amusing, however, to hear Ms. Dixon's explanation of how she came to know Mr. Lipscomb without being aware of what he did for a living. Did they meet at the gym? Match.com? (Interests: Municipal contracting?)

It's also important that the charges not be dismissed on a technicality but be tried to determine Ms. Dixon's actual guilt or innocence. Not only is it harmful to her ability to govern the city if there are lingering questions about her ethics, but it also presents a logistical hurdle to routine municipal business. Doracon is, in fact, a major player in Baltimore's contracting scene, and the current unanswered questions about the propriety of the mayor's relationship to the firm and its owner are a hindrance to city business. Last week, a $39 million contract for renovations at the Montebello Reservior was delayed as the Dixon administration faced a choice between awarding a contract to a bidder without sufficient minority participation and one that had achieved its minority goals in part through the inclusion of Doracon. This week, the issue is a $120 million renovation of the Patapsco wastewater treatment plant. The low bidder, which had Doracon as a partner, was disqualified. Now the city's law office is arguing the second-lowest bidder should also be disqualified for technical reasons and the job rebid.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
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At the behest of Mayor Sheila Dixon's legal defense team, the theft and perjury charges against the mayor will be separated into two trials. Her lawyers aren't talking about the strategy behind the shift, but other attorneys tell Annie Linskey in her story today that trying the charges separately might make Ms. Dixon look less culpable -- it lessens the possibility of a cumulative effect on jurors in which they think, "Gee, she's charged with a lot, she must be guilty" -- and could also give her momentum in the second trial if she prevails in the first.

The mayor's lawyers are very good (or at least plentiful and expensive), so I'll defer to their expertise on such strategy, but it seems like the question could be argued the other way, too. Who in this town isn't aware that the mayor is facing multiple charges? And the trial that comes first -- on charges that Ms. Dixon stole gift cards intended for the needy -- is generally considered to be the one on which she would likely garner less sympathy from the jury.

But aside from the strategic questions, this division definitely means one thing: The city's leadership is going to be in a state of limbo for a lot longer. The first trial is due to start Nov. 9, and we have no idea when the second might come. The mayor has gamely moved on with big issues -- switching to once-a-week trash pickup, cutting the city budget -- but it's impossible to believe that the impending trial is not a distraction. It has certainly quashed any benefit Baltimore might get from her early support for President Barack Obama, who has steered clear of her since she was indicted. Moreover, it extends the time in which she is running up legal bills, the payment of which she has refused to discuss. Will taxpayers ever be on the hook for them? Is she benefiting from a legal defense fund? If so, who has given to it, and what business do they have with the city?

Maybe splitting the trials is good for Dixon's defense. But it's certainly not good for the city.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
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Baltimore City general services department director Khalil Zaeid said Tuesday that preliminary lab results on fuel that fouled the engines of about 70 city police cars indicated "unusually high concentrations of ethanol" that may have contributed to the breakdowns. Mr. Zaeid said officials initially thought the tanks at the city fuel depot where the cars filled up over the weekend might have inadvertently been stocked with diesel instead of the unleaded gas city patrol cars use. But now it appears that ethanol is the culprit.

That's probably good news for the city: Avi Amoyal, owner of auto repair business Roland Falls Service, says ethanol is likely to do less damage to the vehicles than diesel. Mechanics should be able to get the cars running again simply by draining the tanks and replacing the fuel filters.

That still leaves the question of how this mix-up happened. Mr. Zaeid said it's likely the ethanol in the city's police cars came from a tanker truck that fueled the pumps at the city's gas depot at Falls Road and Gay Street. But he said it's still unclear whether the mixup occurred there or at the terminal where the truck picked up its load. The truck and driver were subcontractors of Norfolk, Va.-based IsoBunkers, a wholesale fuel supplier that holds the contract to supply fuel to the city and that also supplies heating oil to the U.S. military and federal civilian agencies, according to its website.

In any case, Mr. Zaeid said the contractor is liable for the damage to city vehicles as well as for the cost of cleaning and refilling the tanks at the city gas depot. City lawyers have told him it's a relatively straighfoward case and that they don't expect IsoBunkers to fight paying up, he said. Meanwhile, city police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says the department is making do with other fleet vehicles until the prowl cars are fixed.

The city uses about 5,000 gallons a day of unleaded and 3,000 gallons a day of diesel; that adds up to a yearly fuel bill of about $10 million. With that kind of money at stake, the contractor ought to be happy to pick up the tab for this kind of snafu -- and also fire whoever was responsible for letting it happen.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Baltimore announced some very encouraging news last week: Since switching to once-a-week trash and recycling pickup, the amount of trash the city is picking up from people's homes is down 29 percent, and the amount of recycling is up 53 percent. Sounds great; just as Mayor Sheila Dixon said, people found they could recycle many of the things they'd been throwing out.

But there's just one catch. Those figures mean that Baltimore is picking up about 2,300 fewer tons of trash every two weeks but increasing the recycling collection by just 334 tons every two weeks. So what happened to the 1,966 tons of trash? The head of the city's solid waste bureau says they initially found overflowing public trash cans on city streets but that the problem has subsided. What's going on? Are people conserving more, or are they just getting more creative with their illegal dumping?

(Sun photo)

Posted by Andy Green at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
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Several leaders of the Baltimore ACORN office came to meet with the editorial board this afternoon to explain themselves in the wake of last week's video showing a man and a woman posing as a pimp and prostitute getting advice on dodging taxes and obtaining a house to be used as a brothel for underage sex slaves trafficked from El Salvador.

First the good news: They did not try to excuse the behavior of the two workers caught on a secret videotape talking to the man and woman. The two workers have been fired, and the ACORN leaders repeatedly described their actions as reprehensible. They said they have changed their protocols to make sure people like that wouldn't even get in the door in the future, and they said they have engaged in retraining of their staff.

Then the bad news: They had no sense of how the filmmakers were able to get such help from workers not only at the Baltimore office but also, at last count, at four others around the country. The two women captured in the Baltimore video were not new hires and had, by the ACORN leaders' account, been trained repeatedly over the years in proper conduct and standards. Yet they not only failed to bat an eyelash about the supposed illegal activity, but they seemed eager -- and skilled -- at providing advice on how to fake tax returns and claim phony deductions.

(Sun photo)

Continue reading "ACORN explains itself" »

Posted by Andy Green at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
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The Baltimore Sun is reporting today that the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 to make ACORN ineligible for Housing and Urban Development grant funds. This makes good sense given that the secretly videotaped encounter between two Baltimore ACORN employees and a man and a woman posing as a pimp and prostitute started off as a conversation about how ACORN could help the pair buy a house to start a brothel. The action comes a few days after the Census Bureau severed ties with the organization.

The lopsided Senate vote points to something that has been missing in a lot of the discussion about the ACORN videos: a sense of perspective about just how influential ACORN is. What seems to have elevated the story from a curiosity to a full-blown national outrage is the apparent sense that ACORN is pulling the strings in Washington. But if this were an organization that really had much influence, do you think it would have been dropped this quickly? If it was the trial lawyers, or the insurance companies, or the bankers, or Halliburton, would the reaction have been this swift? I'm guessing not.

I'm not excusing the behavior of the ACORN employees or suggesting that the organizaiton as a whole doesn't bear the responsibility for it. I'm not disagreeing whatsoever with the decisions to cut off funding. I'm just saying that in my experience, I cannot recall an instance when ACORN appeared to be wielding any influence whatsoever in a government decision I covered. The powers that be seemed to pretty much ignore them. We'll see how the House of Representatives reacts to the Senate vote, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see ACORN kicked to the curb.

Posted by Andy Green at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (59)
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Want to confirm all the negative impressions you may have gotten about ACORN from its many critics? Watch this video.

Yes, taped with a hidden camera, two Baltimore ACORN workers give advice to a man and a woman identifying themselves as a pimp and a prostitute on how to evade the authorities and cheat on their taxes, including how to claim 13 underage El Salvadoran sex slaves as dependents. At no point in the video do the ACORN workers bat an eyelash or give any impression that they find this unusual.

Once the video became public, ACORN promptly fired the two workers, though it's hard to know how seriously to take the organization's reaction. Baltimore ACORN board chairman Sonja Merchant-Jones told WJZ-TV that "We've investigated and we found nothing that they did to be illegal. Absolutely zero." Really? Advising someone to claim girls trafficked into the country illegally as sex workers as dependents on her tax returns?

At the end of the day, though, what does this prove? Certainly that these two ACORN workers displayed astonishing stupidity. But does it show that ACORN is as lawless as its critics contend? It's important to note that the two filmmakers, Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, were turned away when they tried the same stunt in other cities. If they wanted to prove something about the organization as a whole, they might have tried a less salacious scenario. Of course, that would have been much less likely to rocket them to YouTube and Fox News stardom.

UPDATE: There's a second video out now of the same pair doing the same thing at the Washington ACORN office. In this case, the workers suggest a way that Ms. Giles could set up a phony business to conceal the nature of her earnings.

SECOND UPDATE: For those of you criticizing me for defending ACORN here, I'd like to say the existence of the second video has erased what little benefit of the doubt I was willing to extend before.

THIRD UPDATE: Please vote in our ACORN poll.

ALSO: Check out our editorial on the subject here.

Posted by Andy Green at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (234)
Categories: City talk
        

Three hundred dollars? That's all Baltimore County Del. Jon S. Cardin ends up owing the Baltimore City Police Department for the marine police boat, the helicopter and the officers manning them who took time off from their duties to help the lawmaker make a splashier marriage proposal? Why can't I get a deal like that?

The Sun's Julie Bykowicz reported Thursday that Mr. Cardin paid 300 smackers as reimbursement for a "mock police raid-cum-marriage proposal" at the Inner Harbor this month that a friend arranged so he could pop the question to his girlfriend. While a Foxtrot hovered overhead, two marine police officers boarded the friend's boat where the couple was lounging and pretended to search it for drugs. When one of the officers ordered the girlfriend to turn around so he could cuff her, she discovered Mr. Cardin behind her, on his knees holding out a ring.

Never underestimate the romantic ingenuity of a lovestruck politician. Of course the girlfriend said "yes" -- what woman could resist being the center of so much macho attention, especially with the pounding blades of that whirlybird overhead?

But all for $300? That hardly covers dinner for two at some restaurants around town, let alone renting an aircraft, a boat and your own private theatre troupe-cum-security detail. Something here doesn't add up, and Mr. Cardin owes the citizens of Baltimore more than just a few hundred bucks: He owes an explanation.

Who was the "friend" who made all this possible, and what strings did he pull -- or rather whose? How much did it really cost to stage this elaborate bit and who in the police department authorized spending officers' time and taxpayers' dollars to pull it off? Helicopters cost hundreds of dollars an hour to operate, not including salaries of the pilot and observer. Who told them it was OK to burn up fuel lollygagging over a pleasure boat in the harbor that just happened to have a state lawmaker with a famous family name on board? 

Until such questions are answered, Mr. Cardin can hardly claim to have discharged his debt to this city. It's time for him to acknowledge that he needs to pay up.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (23)
Categories: City talk
        

Some of the experts quoted in Annie Linskey's story this morning about State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh's new indictments of Mayor Sheila Dixon are scratching their heads, wondering why he brought new charges that are basically the same as the old ones:

Attorneys not associated with the mayor's case said it was unusual for a prosecutor to re-indict without adding significant new charges or adding defendants. "Typically, a new indictment indicates a stronger case," said Steve Levin, a criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor.

But that misses some subtle differences between the last indictment and this one, all of which look attributable to the cooperation of developer and former Dixon boyfriend Ronald Lipscomb. The old indictment left some dots to be connected -- the couple went on a shopping spree in Chicago in which thousands in merchandise was charged to Dixon's AmEx; Lipscomb later had a corporate check made out to cash for thousands of dollars; Dixon and one of her aides deposited large amounts of cash at ATMs; Dixon wrote a big check to AmEx. You can guess what might have been happening there, but the old indictment didn't spell it out.

The new indictment adds some key details, like Dixon asking Lipscomb for money to pay her bill and then going back to him to say she needed more.

It's the same thing with the gift cards the mayor is accused of misusing. The old indictment presents two theories -- either they were gifts to Dixon that she failed to report, or they were gifts to the City Council president's office, which she stole. Now, with Lipscomb's testimony (and that of developer Patrick Turner), the new indictment clearly indicates that the developers understood the gift cards to be donations to the office to be used to help  the poor.

Are these new, blockbuster revelations? No, but they shore up weak points in the case. Moreover, the new indictment does not rely on any of Dixon's official acts as evidence, likely preventing defense attorneys to use the same strategy they did before to get several perjury charges against the mayor thrown out.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

Ever since stumbling across chef/author Anthony Bourdain’s hedonistic food/travel show "No Reservations" on cable a couple of years ago, I’ve imagined him taking on Baltimore. Clearly we’d see him elbow deep in crabs, Old Bay and Natty Boh; talking shop with the young owner of any of the myriad hip new restaurants that have sprouted up in town in the last few years and maybe visiting the bakery where they make the world’s most calorie-dense food, the Berger Cookie.

In retrospect, though, I’m not sure why I was surprised to learn that Mr. Bourdain went on a "Wire"-tastic tour of some of Baltimore’s most depressed neighborhoods, feasted on lake trout and paired the city with Buffalo and Detroit in a Rust Belt-themed episode. The man goes nuts for Cleveland, and this is the treatment we get?

Writing about his Charm City trip on his blog, Mr. Bourdain tries to pre-empt my civic dudgeon:

“There has been predictable apprehension about this show on blogs and in the Baltimore press — from the same folks, I suspect, who were less than pleased with The Wire’s portrayal of their town. They probably don’t find much to love in the early, hilariously funny works of John Waters either. Like it or not, I would say to them, those are your ambassadors. You made them. The greatest dramatic series in the history of television (whose subject, to be fair, is really much larger than Baltimore), and a great, filthily funny auteur—the John Ford of the American underbelly. Neither could have happened anywhere else. ...

“I think that troubled cities often tragically misinterpret what’s coolest about themselves. They scramble for cure-alls, something that will ‘attract business,’ always one convention center, one pedestrian mall or restaurant district away from revival. They miss their biggest, best and probably most marketable asset: their unique and slightly off-center character. ...

“I arrived in Baltimore apprehensive. I left a fan.”

And that’s when I figured it out. Mr. Bourdain, like so many out-of-towners, has been snookered. David Simon and John Waters are not Baltimore’s greatest ambassadors. They’re our decoys. They are like the magician’s gesticulating right hand that distracts the audience from the work being done by the left, their flashy quirkiness making visitors think this might be a charming place to visit for an afternoon and totally masking the fact that Baltimore is, actually, a truly fine place to live.

Continue reading "Baltimoreans fool another out-of-towner" »

Posted by Andy Green at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

Baltimore City is getting a touch of Venice with a fleet of water taxis to whisk commuters downtown from Fells Point, Canton and Locust Point via the Inner Harbor. Though the snappy blue-and-white vessels aren't quite on a par with Venice's famed Vaporettos -- which are more like floating buses than boats -- they certainly make city commuting more scenic, and on top of that, they're free.

But should they be? The system, which is being built with a $1.6 million federal stimulus grant, costs about $150,000 a year to operate. But so far, it's only attracted about 90 passengers a day, which seems a lot for a relative handful of commuters, most of whom probably could afford at least (excuse the pun) a token contribution toward their fare.

 Jamie Kendrick, deputy director of the Baltimore Department of Transportation, says judging whether the city is getting its money's worth depends on how you count the costs. Most of the expense of operating the system is coming out of the 20 percent parking tax increase approved by the City Council last year. And Mr. Kenrick expects ridership to increase to at least 300 people a day over the next few months.

 More important, he says, the water taxis are intended to ease traffic congestion and reduce air pollution downtown by encouraging people to leave their cars at home. The water taxis, he says, are part of the planned downtown circulator, a free transit system that includes buses carrying commuters back and forth through the central business district.

So let's do the math: If the water taxis carry 300 people a day, that's a yearly ridership of about 78,000. Divide that by the operating costs and you get a daily fare of about $1.98 -- comparabale to the bus, light rail and subway.

But here's the rub: It's not the amount of the fare that determines whether people use mass transit, but the convenience. Mr. Kendrick thinks if the service is free people will use it more, and that through use, the way they think about mass transit will begin to change. Eventually, they'll even be more willing to pay for the service. (Another way of looking at it is that people who travel downtown for work already are paying for the service through higher parking taxes.)

As a general principle, we think people should pay for city services, even if the amount is modest. But the water-taxi idea has multiple goals, not least of which is to encourage greater use of the city's buses and other forms of transport. Viewed from that perspective, a trip to work over the water could prove to be a very seductive concept.

(Sun photo)

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City talk
        

Developer Ron Lipscomb's guilty plea to a campaign finance charge -- and his promise to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against Mayor Sheila Dixon -- could be an important development in the years-long public corruption probe at City Hall.

As I noted earlier, Lipscomb can say what his understanding was of his purchase of gift cards that Dixon is accused of misusing when she was City Council president. If he says he intended the cards as donations to Dixon's office as part of a Christmas charity program for the poor, it would bolster the prosecutors' theft case against the mayor, the only charges left standing against her.

And if State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh intends to try to reindict Dixon on the perjury charges that a judge threw out earlier this month, Lipscomb could be useful there, too. Most of the charges that were dismissed stem from Dixon's failure to report gifts Lipscomb gave her when the two had a romantic relationship several years ago.

Rohrbaugh's contention that Lipscomb bribed City Councilwoman Helen Holton would likely have been difficult to prove -- it is unclear whether he had any evidence of a quid pro quo beyond her votes in favor of tax breaks for Lipscomb projects -- so this outcome may be the best-case scenario for the prosecutor.

Posted by Andy Green at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: City talk
        

Annie Linskey reports that the state prosecutor's office has filed new charges against developer Ron Lipscomb, who is set to go on trial Monday morning on charges of bribing City Councilwoman Helen Holton. We'll find out soon what that means, but it may well indicate that he's come to some sort of deal with prosecutors. Campaign finance violations are far less serious than the bribery charge he was facing stemming from his payment of $12,500 for a poll for Holton. Lipscomb and his company, Doracon, have frequently run afoul of campaign finance limits in the past, and that doesn't seem to have hindered his career in the slightest.

This new development could indicate that prosecutors didn't think they could prove the bribery case and took what they could get, or it could mean that they've secured Lipscomb's cooperation for the trial they're much more interested in: the public corruption case against Mayor Sheila Dixon, set to begin in the fall. Lipscomb paid for some of the gift cards Dixon is accused of misusing, so his testimony about what he believed they were for could be a key factor in that case. The prosecutor's office has offered two interpretations: Either Lipscomb and another devleoper gave the cards to Dixon as gifts to do with what she wanted, in which case, prosecutors would argue that she should have reported them; or the developers gave the cards to Dixon's office to distribute to the poor, in which case prosecutors would argue that she stole from the needy. The latter is obviously more explosive. Stay tuned...

Posted by Andy Green at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

On Friday afternoon, City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's spokesman dropped off a hand-wrtten letter to the editor at The Sun office apologizing for her comments a week before on Anthony McCarthy's radio show. She said then that she believed Brian D. Morris had been the focus of such scrutiny in his ill-fated (and short-lived) appointment to be city schools chief Andres Alonso's top deputy because he was black.

The letter is notable in that it contains an actual apology. Ms. Rawlings-Blake does not seek to explain or minimize her comment, merely to say she regrets it. That's refershing.

And she is quite right to point out her not insignificant contribution to the politics of race in Baltimore -- in 1999, she convinced her father, the late Del. Pete Rawlings, to endorse Martin O'Malley for mayor of Baltimore. It would be difficult to overstate the impact of such a prominent black leader endorsing a white candidate.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City talk
        

The only thing better than having a great boss is getting to pick your own great boss.

That's the enviable position Baltimore school superintendent Andres Alonso seems to be angling for by submitting the names of his own preferred candidates to the state board of education, which is reviewing applicants for as many as three vacant positions on the nine-member city school board. None of the postions have been advertised, so there's no way of knowing who else -- if anyone -- is being considered. It would be a pretty sweet deal for Mr. Alonso if no other candidates showed up, since all three of his new bosses would owe their jobs to him.

(Sun photo)

Continue reading "Pick your own boss" »

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City talk
        

To their credit, most people in the Baltimore political establishment thought something was wrong with the hiring of Brian D. Morris as the top deputy in the city school system simply because he negotiated for the undadvertised, $175,000-a-year job while he was still school board chairman and was given the position mere hours after he resigned. Those who didn't think that flawed process was enough reason for him to resign came around after The Sun reported Friday about his 15-year history of bad debts, legal judgments and business failures.

But not City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake. In an interview on Anthony McCarthy's radio show on WEAA on Friday night, Ms. Rawlings-Blake suggested that none of the questions about the hiring process or Mr. Morris' finances would have been raised if he were white. She said:

"He is a professional. … Many of the top-level positions were created for individuals and not advertised. But we are living in a city where a brown person can't get that treatment. If a job is created for one of us, your credentials are questioned, your background is questioned, the process is questioned.

"[Schools CEO Andres Alonso] looked at his integrity, his drive, what he knew of his capabilities. You take a person with ambition, and not every person has a skyrocket to the stars without having bumps along the way."

Continue reading "Stephanie Rawlings-Blake injects race into Morris fiasco" »

Posted by Andy Green at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (38)
Categories: City talk
        

It's simple: Unlike humans, dogs will never let you down. They'll love you no matter how grouchy, lazy, forgetful, incompetent or inconsiderate you are. They'll make you feel like you're the greatest, greet you excitedly when you come home and listen sympathetically to your complaints, grudges, disappointments, jealousies and delusions of granduer. Then they'll wag their tails to remind you they want to be fed and walked.

Of course, by then you've been had. Dogs aren't stupid. On the contrary, researchers studying early canine DNA reported last week that over centuries of evolutionary adaptation, dogs have learned to play us like violins. The goal: to make us take care of their every need, from nutritious foods and a warm spot to curl up to their own health insurance plans and legally binding trust funds.

Far from people having domesticated dogs, researchers say, they've been taking us to the cleaners. The whole relationship can be traced back to no more than five female dogs who lived some 25,000 years ago. These unusually quick-witted creatures somehow stumbled upon an astounding fact of human nature: Cajoling scraps of food out of people with pitiful expressions and rhythmic tail-wagging was a lot easier than killing and eating them.

Ever since, dogs have been cheerfully mooching their way into our hearts. So next time Lassie rushes in to sound the alarm that Timmy has fallen down the well, just remember: She isn't doing it just out of the goodness of her heart. She wants a steak, preferably grilled medium rare, as her reward at dinner that night. Oh, and don't forget the mushroom sauce with capons.

Humane Society Photo

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

Bravo to the City Council for exercising one of its most important functions: providing oversight on the city budget. For the first time in years, the council cut money from a mayor's spending proposal, trimming $1.1 million in frustration over Mayor Sheila Dixon's unwillingness to restore proposed cuts to recreation centers. Now we head for conflict over what happens next -- the council can't actually force Dixon to spend on the rec centers, and she has pledged instead to dedicate it to property tax reduction -- an essentially meaningless fraction of a cent on the city's sky-high rate.

That's power politics, not representative government. Listen to the mayor's reaction: "The council is exercising its legislative role," Dixon said. "Am I disappointed? Yes." Indeed, I imagine she is disappointed that her fellow elected officials aren't rolling over and rubber-stamping her every whim. Now she has to actually explain why it's more important for the city to spend $700,000 on a cable TV channel that produces flattering programming about her than on recreation centers to keep kids off the streets. Good luck with that, Madam Mayor.

Posted by Andy Green at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City talk
        

Reporter Justin Fenton's account Wednesday of the tangled case of 18-year-old Jordan Jennings, whom police have linked to at least two murders, should have raised a red flag for city officials trying to reduce youth violence. According to police, Jennings continued to commit murders and robberies even after he became a participant in Operation Safe Kids, a city-sponsored program aimed at helping at-risk youngsters turn their lives around.

 The program is one of several city efforts to reduce juvenile violenct crime by identifying  approximately 200 youths who are mostly likely to become either perpetrators or victims and giving them extra supervision. Jennings was brought into the program because he already had been charged with several robberies and gun violations. But when police, acting on a tip, arrested him recently at the program's site, they found a .45-caliber handgun in his truck that ballistic experts later linked to at least three shootings.

One could argue that because of Jennings' involvement with Operation Safe Kids, police at least knew where to look for him when his name came up as a suspect in a string of serious crimes -- and that by getting him off the streets they may have prevented more mayhem.

But the case also raises the troubling question of whether such programs are really working as intended. It sounds like the people running Operation Safe Kids didn't have a clue what Jennings was doing when he wasn't with them, and he clearly wasn't getting the kind of supervision he required. Such lapses defeat the whole purpose of the program. City officials need to take a hard look at what went wrong and then figure out how make initiatives like Operation Safe Kids work a lot better than they did in this case, otherwise they'll never be able to do the job expected of them.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City talk
        

It's certainly going to be a difficult adjustment at first for many people, but Mayor Sheila Dixon's plan to swtich municipal trash collection to once a week while boosting recycling pickup is the right thing to do. It saves $7 million and frees up sanitation crews to clean the city's filthy alleys. And it will enourage people, by necessity, to recycle more, which is good both for the environment and for Baltimore's bottom line -- stowing trash in a landfill isn't free, after all.

The mayor does, however, need to follow through with part of the initial promise of her plan that has, for the moment, fallen by the wayside: providing residents with identical, sturdy trashcans with attached tight-fitting lids. That plan has gotten delayed because the cans the city initially wanted to provide were too big for some neighborhoods, but surely that's an issue that can be overcome easily. Given the habit of many city dwellers of dumping unprotected trash bags on the curb, it's important for the Dixon administration to leave no excuse for people to feed the rat population.

The city has lots of problems that are difficult, and maybe impossible, to solve. But trash-strewn streets and alleys are one thing that can be fixed and would provide a real, tangible improvement to public health and the quality of life. Pushing this issue is a wise decision for the mayor, and she's provided a plan that, taken together, could change public habits and improve the city. Increasing recycling, stepping up enforcement and providing the equipment necessary to transition to once-a-week trash pickup could actually make for a cleaner, greener Baltimore. Residents should give it a chance.

(Sun photo: Amy Davis)

Posted by Andy Green at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (39)
Categories: City talk
        

Remember when the stimulus bill passed and people were worried about whether the federal government could manage spending that much money that fast without throwing accounting standards out the window? Never mind. Now that the Justice Department is threatening to withhold money Baltimore was planning to use to put police on the streets, we know that we needn't worry about bureaucrats' ability to keep up.

Julie Bykowicz and Annie Linskey report that the Justice Department is threatening to withhold $8.2 million in grants because of questions about how the city spent federal money TEN YEARS AGO. To put this in perspective, the Orioles were dominating the AL East when some of these grants were issued. Never mind that we're two mayoral administrations on from then, and that the guy who apparently fouled up the recordkeeping was fired in 2001. Or, for that matter, the fact that the justice department fouled up some of its paperwork when the agency initially complained about the matter last fall.

If there were an ongoing issue with whether Baltimore properly accounts for how it spends its grant money, that would be one thing. But there isn't. Instead, we've got the federal government blowing a hole in Baltimore's public safety budget -- and keeping cops off the streets at a time when we desperately need them -- to settle the score on ancient history. By all means, work on resolving the issues from those grants from the '90s, but don't let that hold up vital work today.

Posted by Andy Green at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: City talk
        

It's certainly not reassuring to be told in the same week that crime in Baltimore is down dramatically and that the city still has the highest homicide rate in the nation. (Granted, there's some confusion about whether Detroit underreported murders in that city, and thus may bump Baltimore down to the No. 2 spot; but as our colleague Peter Jensen noted in an earlier post, neither ranking is acceptable.)

Yet what's even more disheartening is the feeling that police can't keep a lid on the kind of garden variety offenses that nevertheless deeply threaten people's sense of personal security, such as the shocking assault and robbery of a nanny in Bolton Hill on Monday. She was attacked shortly before 2 p.m. by two men as she pushed an infant in a stroller. One man grabbed her from behind and threw her to the ground, while the other rifled through the blankets in the stroller. The pair fled after seizing an iPod from the nanny's pocket.

Unfortunately, the police response was anything but stellar. It took them an hour and a half to show up, and they initially reported the incident as a larceny -- simple theft -- rather than as a robbery, or stealing property from someone by threatening or using force. The next day, police wrote up a new report in response to inquiries from The Sun, but this time they got both the time and date of the incident wrong.

 What's going on here? The whole episode would sound like something out of the Keystone Cops except the poor nanny was terrorized and the entire community badly shaken. And the perpetrators are still walking the streets. This kind of imcompetence ought to be just as unacceptable as the city's supersized homicide rate. Is it too much to ask police to quit making dumb mistakes like this and start making some arrests for a brazen crime that took place in broad daylight?     

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City talk
        

The City of Baltimore's lawsuit against Wells Fargo for discriminatory lending practices had always seemed a little tenuous. It appeared to be based entirely on deduction -- borrowers in heavily African-American communities got more sub-prime loans than those in other communities regardless of income level, therefore Wells Fargo must have been discriminating.

Maybe true, but really a bit of a shot in the dark. It had always looked like the city was just trying to get to the discovery phase so it could subpoena records from the company in hopes of finding more direct evidence.

Now we've got something a bit more substantial.

Tricia Bishop reported in Thrusday's paper that two former Wells Fargo employees have come forward alleging systematic, racist practices that steered African-Americans toward subprime loans, even when they qualified for traditional financing.

One of the former employees said the company called the subprime mortgages in minority communities "ghetto loans" and that Wells Fargo targeted blacks through churches and marketing materials translated into "African-American," whatever that means. Another former employee said the company steered qualified borrowers into subprime loans for the full purchase amount even if they could afford a substantial down payment.

Two stories from former employees don't prove anything. But they should be enough evidence to allow this suit to go forward.

(Mayor Sheila Dixon speaks to the press about the City filing a lawsuit seeking to end "Reverse Redlining." The suit accuses Wells Fargo of violating the Fair Housing Act. Sun photo: 2008)

Posted by Andy Green at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: City talk
        

Is cruelty to animals as bad -- or even worse -- than cruelty to humans?

Some people apparently think so, based on statements in Peter Hermann's story about the pit bull that was set on fire in Baltimore, and comments in the Baltimore Sun's blogs and talkboards. A "new low," said one commenter. "It's hard to see children get shot, but to see a dog actually on fire is worse," said the police officer who rescued the abused pit bull.

The horrendous facts are not in dispute. Someone set a dog on fire, causing the animal great suffering. Whoever did the deed deserves certain punishment -- and, one would hope, counseling as well.

But do we really want to get into the murky business of equating an animal's life with a human's? This might make sense for a Hindu who truly believed that all forms of life were sacred and embodied this belief by practicing vegetarianism and not using any animal-based products. But I suspect that few readers of The Sun fit that description.

Continue reading "Animal cruelty and moral equivalence" »

Posted by Michael Cross-Barnet at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City talk
        

If the FBI's statistics on homicide in America's largest cities had come out a few weeks ago they might have seemed like a curiosity. Baltimore had a historic drop in homicides last year, bringing killings in the city to their lowest level in a quarter century. The fact that the FBI numbers show it to be the deadliest city with a population over 500,000, in that context, doesn't seem to mean much. Murders may not have dropped as much here last year as they did in other big cities, but they certainly dropped quite a lot.

But coming as this report does amid reports of random beatings downtown, it will likely only cement the impression that the city is getting more dangerous. No reams of statistics suggesting things are getting better are going to overcome that. City leaders may be frustrated that several incidents in a high-profile neighborhood -- and one report from the FBI -- can overcome a broad overall movement in the right direction. But the fact remains that even if things are getting better, Baltimore is still among the most violent places in the nation. It may be safer than it was, but it's not nearly safe enough.

Posted by Andy Green at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: City talk
        

Baltimore City Councilman Bernard "Jack" Young has introduced legislation to cap the maximum late fee on parking fines to five times the amount of the original ticket. That's surely going to win him a lot of votes from people who've discovered the late fees on their pair of two-year-old, $21 parking ticket have ballooned to more than $700 -- money that must be paid before they can renew their license or registration.

The excessive fees are one of the things that make residents feel the city is socking it to them every chance it gets. On the other hand, the city loses a lot of money from uncollected fines: Parking scofflaws currently owe some $132 million in fines and penalties.

The city hired a private firm to pressure violators to pay up. But think what lawmakers could do if they got their hands on that kind of loot; it makes the $40 million kitty that somehow fell behind the sofa cushions in the city Finance Department -- which council members are desperate to spend on saving parks and recs programs -- seem almost paltry by comparison.

 But how many of those council members will have the courage to stand up and oppose a politically appealing cap on parking fines on the grounds that it would leave even less money for the kinds of programs they're clamoring to save? Not many, I suspect. How about you? 

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City talk
        

It was a tiny, seven-paragraph item in Tuesday's paper that many readers may have skipped right over:  A Reisterstown couple had been indicted on four counts of selling sex with underage girls on Craigslist. According to the indictment, the couple made the girls have sex with customers in a rented room at a Baltimore County Days Inn, then took them to a truck stop in Jessup for the same purpose, where they were arrested.

Most people think prostitution is confined to seedy urban red-light districts like The Block in Baltimore. But that's just the tip of the iceberg; the larger reality is the global trafficking in human beings that authorities describe as a $9 billion-a-year criminal enterprise. Last year, the FBI carried out a nationwide crackdown on prostitution rings that preyed on children as young as 12 in 16 cities, including Atlanta, Boston and Washington, as well as in Montgomery County. The bureau estimates as many as 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk of being exploited by the commercial sex trade.

A Maryland task force of health and law enforcement officials met last year to chart strategies to combat human trafficking, and this week's indictments grew out of that effort. And a Maryland law passed last year makes trafficking juveniles punishable by up to 25 years in prison. But as Tuesday's story indicates, that hasn't stopped the traffickers, and more must be done to reach at-risk children before they fall into the clutches of pimps and drug dealers. As a Sun editorial put it last year, "The waste of young lives is a national tragedy, and it is heartbreaking."

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

The Baltimore City Council's preliminary vote Monday to enact Mayor Sheila Dixon's (right) plan to reduce trash collection to once a week and increase recycling pickup reflects both a willingness to tackle a tough issue and a solid effort by the administration to reach out to communities.

Collecting trash twice a week is simply unnecessary. None of the city's surrounding counties do it, and neither do any but a few big cities. Replacing one trash pickup with recycling will encourage people to take a more sustainable path, which is good both for the environment and the city's eventual bottom line, since it will need to find less landfill space. In a world in which the city is forced to cut the budget, this is one change that will save money and do the right thing, which is a rare combination.

Even so, previous administrations have been reluctant to take this move because city residents have grown so accustomed to twice-weekly trash collection and because they -- not without reason -- are concerned that less pickup will mean more trash on the street and more rats. Here, you can credit the administration's outreach. Valentina Ukwuoma, the head of the city's solid waste bureau, held 83 public meetings to discuss the plan. That's some dedication to getting the community to buy into the plan, and it was the necessary ingredient both to getting the bill through the council and getting residents to embrace the new opportunity for recycling that makes the whole thing work.

(Sun photo: Amy Davis)

Posted by Andy Green at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: City talk
        

Ed Gunts' story on Sunday offered a tantalizing vision for what could be accomplished if the city razed the elevated southernmost mile of the JFX and replaced it with broad boulevards and green space. The idea is to connect downtown to the East Side, potentially opening up a 200-acre swath for prime redevelopment in the mode of Harbor East. Sounds great, but I think a few notes of skepticism are in order here.

For starters, this plan is estimated to cost around $1 billion. Given the city's major unfulfilled transportation needs, it's hard to imagine justifying spending that kind of money to tear down something that isn't broken rather than to build something new. There's some talk about private funding offsetting part of the cost, but it would have to be a lot more than talk before this whole scheme started to sound plausible.

Continue reading "Would razing JFX revamp the East Side?" »

Posted by Andy Green at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

When Mayor Sheila Dixon met with The Sun's publisher and editorial board Friday she was obviously aware of two troubling outbreaks of violence recently that had the potential to mar Baltimore's reputation as a tourist destination.

One was a disturbance at the Inner Harbor earlier this month caused by rampaging youths that left a couple of teenage boys with stab wounds. The other involved separate assaults on two pedestrians last weekend as they made their way home near Charles Street between the Belvedere Hotel and Pennsylvania Station.

 The mayor said she's concerned by the brazenness of the attacks and pledged to work with  Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III to beef up the police presence in the area. But she also said the problem can't be solved by policing alone.

The challenge, she said, is in finding ways to develop the city's underserved "human capital" -- particularly the children who grow up under conditions of poverty, addiction, abuse and neglect. The problems of troubled youth begin early, she said, and solutions likewise have to start while  infants are still in the womb. She went on to cite former City Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein's efforts to increase healthy birth outcomes among poor women and other programs promoting good nutrition, substance abuse treatment and domestic violence reduction for all adults of childbearing age.

The mayor's comments suggested she has thought deeply about the challenge posed by the city's troubled youth, though she acknowledges it's often a struggle to reach them with effective interventions. At-risk kids who don't grow up in loving families, who are left to their own devices much of the time and who don't get the support or supervision they need from caring adults have a hard time learning to avoid behaviors that are destructive both to themselves and those around them.

Asked what she would do for the city if there were no limit on her powers as mayor, Dixon said: "Human development. I would want to make it possible for all our citizens to be able to live up to their fullest potential." 

If only that were possible, the city's crime problem might practically solve itself.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: City talk
        

Leigh Dowdle, who has been fighting the city's new leash law fines, wrote in a counter-point to my pro-leash screed from this morning:

I know not everybody sees my dog as an adorable, sweet, cuddly little furball of cuteness. I respect that my neighbors might not want anything to do with my dog, and that’s cool. What I don’t understand is why there are still people that think an off-leash dog is a great enough threat to merit the increased $1,000 off-leash fine.

Take a look at other Baltimore City offenses and their corresponding fines (according to city code, Article 19) and tell me why the fines for Rover unleashed should be double that of a sexual massage parlor or selling drugs. Use of LSD or similar drugs -- $100, making a fake ID card -- $100, illegal sale of opium-derived prescription drugs -- $100-$250 first offense and $250-$500 second offense, operating a sexual massage parlor -- $500, possession of tools for car break-ins -- $500, giving alcohol to a minor in a public place -- $500.

I’m not gonna lie, in fact I’m ready to come clean. ... I’ve exercised my dog off-leash before. We even played fetch. I’ve also gone over the speed limit, not worn a seatbelt, not come to a complete stop at a stop-sign, and I even drank a beer or two before I was 21 (sorry, Mom). I would like to meet the person who has never broken the law, and take them out and run a few red lights with them – KIDDING!

Even the City Council members who proposed the fine increase have said that it is excessive and will be reduced, which leads me to the crux of the matter. The real issue for me is the city’s lack of dog parks. Like it or not, dog people are your friends and you want us around this city. We are out and about 365 days a year, rain or shine, we are a tight-knit and social community that keeps an eye on things, and we undeniably keep the city safer with our presence. Patterson Park is the most obvious choice for the next dog park location because it is the city’s largest open space, it draws from many neighborhoods, and residents of the area have been asking for it for years. I’m hoping the end result of the outcry over leash laws will be that Baltimore City finally listens up and creates more dog parks.

Posted by Andy Green at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: City talk
        

The city is fining people who let their dogs roam off-leash $1,000. I say good.

I'm a runner, and I can't count the number of times dogs have snapped, lurched and barked at me as I went past. Perhaps even more galling than the canine response in these situations is the human one. Almost without fail the dog's owner will look at me with wonder and bewilderment, as if I must have done something wrong to elicit such a mysterious reaction. You may think your furry friend is cute and harmless, but I've got news for you: He or she is almost never quite so well behaved as you think. I wouldn't stand in the way of the City Council's proposal to drop the fine to $250 -- seems like that would still get the point across -- but I object to many dog advocates' apparent belief that leash laws should merely be a suggestion.

Dog owners may say that I as a runner should understand their pets' urge to go out and stretch their legs, too. The key difference is that I have never barked at anyone while I'm out running, even when they've deserved it. If your dog has so much energy to burn that they need to run around, maybe you should go running, too. It would be good for both of you.

I understand that's not a viable option for everyone, for a variety of reasons, and I agree that if the city is going to crack down on the leash laws, it should also set aside more dog parks. Maybe it could use the new fines to pay for them. But in the meantime, keep the leash on.

Posted by Andy Green at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)
Categories: City talk
        

While out shopping downtown last week, I ran into a shop owner - an Inner Habor exile - with a lot on her mind. Mostly, she's disappointed and angry with Mayor Sheila Dixon for ignoring what she believes are glaring signs of the decline and fall of Harborplace that has put the city's vital downtown tourist and convention trade at risk.

The problem started, she believes, with the $12 billion acquisition of the Rouse Co. by General Growth Properties but really picked up steam over the past two years. Whether it was the burden of so much debt or simply General Growth's inability to properly manage such a unique facility, she isn't certain but what she is positive about is that the decline began with the Pratt and Light Street pavillions and spread quickly.

It started, she says, with little things. Rents increased, the more desirable food vendors left and were replaced by ordinary fare. Upkeep wasn't as good. Teen-agers started showing up in the afternoons and caused trouble. Patrons became discouraged and the lunch crowd was diminished. This trend carried over to other retailers. Stores closed. With fewer choices, upscale customers stopped coming.

What she witnessed next was a snowball effect. The trend carried over to the Gallery and rolled down Pratt Street. Out-of-towners would show up at her store and tell her how much the city had changed - for the worse. Then the economic recession kicked in. She knew it was time to leave or else she'd be out of business.

Continue reading "The Inner Harbor's uncertain future" »

Posted by Peter Jensen at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: City talk
        

City auditors found this week that officials of Baltimore Rising, a city youth mentoring program, could not document every penny of the $900,000 in federal grant monies they received over three years from 2004 to 2007. Surprise! Programs for disadvantaged inner-city youngsters  aren't run by Wharton School MBAs!

Still, there's no suggestion of financial impropriety. The Baltimore Sun's Annie Linskey and James Drew wrote in Tuesday's paper that Janie S. McCullough, a city assistant deputy mayor, admitted the program's fiscal management left something to be desired. The money just got, well, spent somehow. Nonetheless, she insisted, it was spent well.

Our question: But on what? Linskey and Drew report the program provided "job shadowing, family skills training, mentoring for children of imprisoned parents and support to former prisoners." That's sounds terrific -- after all, who isn't for "job shadowing?" And we all could probably benefit from brushing up our family skills. But that still doesn't explain what the 30 "consultants" hired by the program at a total cost of $240,000 actually did for the money they received. Or whether it worked.

Asking such questions isn't aimed at bashing the poor. It's more about asking what's effective, in terms of both cost and effort. We need to find answers to alleviate the desperate poverty that is all too common in cities like Baltimore, but at the same time the need is so dire that wasting money on things that don't work should be unconscionable.

People focus on the money, but perhaps we should instead be focusing on outcomes, then decide whether the money was well spent.  There've been financial audits of poverty programs -- mostly instigated by conservative foes of any aid to the poor -- for as long as such programs have existed. Most can't account for every last dime, though some come close and a lot do very good work indeed.

 Maybe the question citizens should be asking programs like Baltimore Rising is not 'how much did you spend and what did you spend it on?' but 'what were the specific things you did to help people make their lives better today than they would have been otherwise?' As a society, we desperately need answers to that question, and when we find them, we should apply them whenever and wherever we can.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City talk
        

Peter Hermann, The Baltimore Sun's crackerjack crime columnist, recently tagged along with a patrol car officer during his shift and discovered there aren't nearly as many police on the streets as people might think. While the official word from headquarters is that there are more officers than ever on duty, Hermann says that on the day he was out there were times when only a dozen officers were available to cover an entire district.

That raises questions about the police reponse to last weekend's disturbance at the Inner Harbor, during which two boys were stabbed after run-ins with a group of rowdy teens running along Pratt Street and through the pavilions. Did department commanders assign enough officers to cover the district that day, especially after the crowds unexpectedly grew to Fourth of July-day proportions? Though police responded quickly to the incident and arrested two supsects within hours, one can only wonder whether a larger initial show of uniformed officers might have deterred the perpetrators before they could strike.

Now police are saying they plan to beef up the force around Harborplace earlier in the season. That's reassuring. But let's hope they have in mind more than a dozen or so guys trying to keep order amid the 160,000 people present in and around Harboplace on any given day. That truly would be a mission impossible.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 5:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: City talk
        

For the past two months, the murder of Lemuel Wallace was another unsolved crime in Baltimore. The blind, mentally disabled man was found shot to death in a bathroom stall in Leakin Park February 5. Now, city police have charged a 32-year-old pastor with the slaying of Mr. Wallace and their account of the crime is a tale of greed and deceit made all the more despicable by the chosen victim, a vulnerable disabled man.

 Mr. Wallace lived in a group home in the 4500 block of Maryknoll Road that was affiliated with Arc of Baltimore where the accused, Kevin Jerome Pushia, worked until he resigned in January. The alleged circumstances of the Wallace murder: a contract murder to collect on a series of insurance policies that were fraudulently taken out.  Police allege Mr. Pushia convinced Mr. Wallace to name him as a beneficiary on several policies.

When someone tried to collect one for $200,000, the Globe LIfe Insurance Co. made a routine check with police, which tipped investigators off to a possible motive for the crime and their first suspect.

This reads like a made for TV crime with an online twist -- the insurance policy was taken out over the Internet. It includes the classicly, stupid mistake by the suspect -- during a search of Mr. Pushia's home, police found a date book and a notation on the date of Mr. Wallace's murder ("L.W." project completed") -- a confession and an accomplice. A second person was arrested over the weekend in South Carolina and charged in the crime.

Nice work by the police, who also suspect there may be other victims. But it's a grim reminder of the lengths some people will go to enrich themselves.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

Baltimore might easily have avoided a showdown with the U.S. Department of Justice over zoning restrictions on where group homes for recovering addicts, troubled juveniles and the elderly can be located in the city. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act bars discrimination against anyone in those protected groups, but the city's zoning laws don't reflect that because they in effect give neighborhoods the power to decide where and what kind of facilities are welcome.

 Mayor Sheila Dixon has been urging the city council to work out a compromise with neighborhood leaders that also satisfies the feds in order to avoid costly litigation. But council president Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake and others have resisted moving foward on the grounds there aren't enough community safeguards or housing inspectors to field citizen complaints. The process stalled last year and now the federal government is moving to sue the city.

This is a poor way to resolve the dispute, and it points to a lack of leadership in pushing through the tough compromises that will need to be made in order to avoid spending millions of taxpayer dollars for legal fees in a case the city almost certainly will end up losing. The current zoning rules are a clear violation of federal law, and the city's best hope is to mediate needed changes so that neighborhood groups have at least some say over what happens in their communities to the extent the law allows. If the case goes to court and a federal judge has to impose a resolution, they might not even get that.

Continue reading "Coming fight over group homes" »

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

Mayor Sheila Dixon's lawyers presented her case for throwing out perjury charges against her, complaining to Judge Dennis Sweeney Thursday that state prosecutors misread and wrongly  applied the law on disclosing gifts to politicians. Nothing new there from the Dixon team, Arnold M. Weiner and Dale Kelberman. 

And Steve Wrobel, the lawyer for developer Ronald Lipscomb, who is charged in a companion political corruption case, offered a "free speech" defense to charges that Mr. Lipscomb violated the law when he paid $10,000 for a campaign poll for Baltimore City Councilwoman Helen Holton. Nice try, but unlikely to persuade Judge Sweeney that this wasn't an unreported and illegal political contribution.

But Mr. Wrobel continued, choosing to give the judge a lesson in real world politics, according to The Baltimore Sun's account of the court hearing. He explained that people give politicians campaign contributions that exceed the legal limit by forming a limited liability corporation --  in Mr. Wrobel's words, a "popular loophole." It's a contribution, not a bribe, the lawyer said.

It's doubtful that argument will convince Judge Sweeney, a retired Howard County judge and keen observer of history and politics, to throw out the bribery charges against Mr. Lipscomb. But Mr. Wrobel's candid example is reason to close that loophole and keep the political system and its contributors honest.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

The missing money saga isn't over yet.

Baltimore Finance Director Edward J. Gallagher is going to have explain before a public hearing of the City Council just how that $39.7 million in tax revenue mistakenly ended up in one account instead of another, leaving the money off-limits to City Hall for a decade. He shouldn't be shy about giving the council the details -- and assurances that error has been duly corrected.

Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her colleagues announced Tuesday they would hold the April 30 hearing. Citizens' persistent questions to the council have paid off --members have realized they can score some points with the public by having city officials account for the mishap and further explain why the money must be used to pay down the city's debt, which is preferable to spending it now.

As a spokesman for the council president said, "It's the council's responsibility to exercise its oversight." And here we thought members were only interested in finding a way to spend that windfall now. 

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

Some members of the Baltimore City Council can't wait to get their hands on the nearly $40 million in tax revenue that was buried in some account over a decade, a rather embarassing book keeping mistake only recently made public. City Finance Directer Edward J. Gallagher who discovered the discrepancy last summer and alerted city auditors was explaining the mix-up to Council members yesterday. And some members, according to The Sun's Annie Linsky, want to find a way to use the new-found money to restore cuts in city pool hours and recreation centers. They aren't satisfied with Mr. Gallagher's contention that the City Charter requires him to use the surplus funds to offset the amount of money the city borrows annually to finance municipal projects.

Council members are relying on city lawyers to come up with the legal means to justify spending the money on programs instead of debt reduction. If the money had been properly accounted for in the years it was collected, city officials would have had use of it for operating expenses. But not now apparently.

Mr. Gallagher may be overly conservative in his read on the Charter, but what's bothersome about the Council members' interest in a little creative financing is that, paying down the city's debt is not a bad use of the surplus money. Considering the country's economic plight and the spend spend spend mantra that helped get us there, borrowing less means less money to pay off.

Also, asking city lawyers to find a way to justify using the $40 million to cover some operating expenses suggests it doesn't really matter whether it can be justified, just that it is. That undermines the integrity of the process. 

The city law department should review the Council members' request and offer its best advice on the use of the money -- but the response shouldn't turn on telling Council members what they want to hear. 

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: City talk
        

The dismissal this week of charges against two alleged prostitutes who were operating out of a rowhouse near Patterson Park is just the latest episode in which evidence collected by city detectives has failed to turn up when it's supposed to.

The case, which involved allegations of human traficking of two Hispanic women, should have gone to trial last month but was postponed after detectives had a "problem" locating photographs and other crime scene documents that city prosecutors needed to prove their case. When the detectives again failed to come up with the evidence this week, the Baltimore state's attorney's office announced it was dropping the charges.

A police spokesman says the department is investigating the matter to determine if there was any wrongdoing by city detectives. That's a start. But a spokeswoman for the Baltimore city state's attorney's office says this isn't the first time problems with evidence have come up and that prosecutors had been asking the detectives to turn over crucial documents in the prostitution case for months. Prosecutors and police scheduled a meeting for Monday to figure out how to proceed from here.

We don't know who's at fault in this Keystone cops-style mixup but it's obviously not the flawlessly coordinated teamwork between police and prosecutors you'd expect to see on an episode of Law & Order. Instead, what we have here, as the prison warden in the movie Cool Hand Luke famously told a rebellious inmate played by Paul Newman, is "a failure to communicate." Clearly, that's something city police and prosecutors need to work on.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

A  13-year-old  boy who was shot in the ankle after he and three other teenagers were confronted by school police inside the Harlem Park school complex early Tuesday was injured when one of the officers' guns discharged through his pants leg, school officials said this week.

Our question: How could that happen? A school spokesperson said the officer was carrying his .40 calibre Glock semi-automatic pistol in a holster. Holsters are usually worn on a belt outside the pants. So if gun and holster were both outside the officer's pants, how could a bullet that struck the boy go through the officer's pants? That sounds like a ballistic impossibility.

 Officials say the Baltimore city police are investigating the incident and that the school police -- a totally separate agency -- have launched their own internal probe. A school spokesperson said the officer involved is a 36-year veteran of the school security force and that he has been put on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. She declined to identify him by name or say whether he had been involved in other shootings.

The city police were widely criticized last year for not releasing the names of officers involved in shootings of civilians. In response, the department promised to reconsider that policy, and a  department spokesman said Wednesday a decision is still pending.  The school police should consider doing the same.

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

To see more than 400 people show up in Catonville over the weekend to audition for "Survivor" -- some waiting as long as 14 hours  -- had me thinking about just what it would take to compete on the reality TV show. Moxie? Cleverness? Fortitude? Personality? A good body? All of the above? My vote would have gone to the 62-year-old retired Marine who beat colon cancer. That's doing real battle and he has the scars to prove it.

But when it comes to surviving, how about The Senator Theater? It's been on life support and its creditors were ready to pull the plug. But Mayor Sheila Dixon has decided to step in and save the theater from a pending auction and uncertain future. She is seeking Board of Estimates approval to pay off its $900,000 first mortgage, which is in default. That would put the city in the best position to influence what happens next with the grand old movie house, a cultural institution in Baltimore and the reason Mayor Dixon took action. As part of the plan, the city would then foreclose on the $600,000 note it holds on theater. Once the city gained control of the Senator, it would seek proposals for an owner or operator with community input. The theater is closed now  and needs about half a million dollars in repairs.

The city's proposal is part of an agreement reached with Senator owner Tom Kiefaber that would allow him to keep his home in Sparks -- it had been put up as collateral for one of the theater's loans. Another property owned by Mr. Kiefaber would be sold to reduce the city's costs of paying off the mortgage to First Mariner Bank, according to a statement from the mayor's spokesman.

This is government working for the citizens of Baltimore and in the interests of the city. The Senator has been a cultural and community anchor in North Baltimore, and with new management and a clear balance sheet, the historic landmark should be able to continue providing the Baltimore region with a singular movie-going experience.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

A muddle. The 12-count indictment against Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is one big muddle and should be tossed. That's the basic premise of Dixon's lawyers' pitch to get the charges against the mayor dismissed and they do raise an interesting point.

 In court papers filed Thursday, the team of lawyers for the mayor say no jury could begin to see its way through such a "hopelessly confused" series of charges. Here's their question -- how can the mayor be charged with perjury for failing to list gift cards from developers on her ethics form and also be accused of stealing the very same gift cards? Either they were an improper gift or she stole them but how can they be both? Good question.

But here's our question: if the mayor did either of these things, isn't she guilty of something? We don't put much stock in an opinion by the the city solicitor -- an appointee of the mayor -- that says the mayor didn't have to disclose the gift cards on her ethics form because the city didn't maintain a list of  developers doing business with the city at the time she received the cards. Such a list would determine what needed to be disclosed.

Judge Dennis Sweeney will have to decide if the defense lawyers' argments have any merit, but muddle through, he won't. A court hearing will be held April 23 on Dixon's motion to dismiss the indictment against her, according to The Sun's Annie Linskey.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

More than 200,000 Baltimore residents should be receiving a post card in the mail from the mayor's "cleanergreenerbaltimore" campaign, if they haven't already. In its never-ending war on trash, the city is reminding residents that they need to use a trash can with a lid for their garbage -- or face a $50 citation. Leaving trash bagged and on the street increases the potential for rats and other unsanitary conditions, and it's a real problem for the city.  That's a reasonable request, not only because of the rats but because bagged trash on the sidewalk is unsightly and smelly.

But before the city starts handing out citations en masse, it should give its trash haulers a little in-service training. Here's what we've heard from one reader: "The garbarge collectors throw the trash cans and lids any which way once they've emptied (the cans). If you're not home to take the can in right away, who knows where it will be by the end of the day." Sound familiar? 

It's a point well-made -- and hopefully well-taken by the city's trash crews.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

Artist Dan Keplinger's planned nuptials at the Senator Theatre on Wednesday were designed to call attention to the financial plight of the grand movie house. While we appeciate Mr. Keplinger's gesture of support and affection, he and other fans should start lobbying City Hall to take possession of the theater if they want it preserved as a single-theater cinema.

That's the best option for reopening the theater with a new owner, according to a group of civic and community leaders that studied the Senator's financial situation for Mayor Sheila Dixon.

The Senator Theater Strategy Group, which included people with knowledge of the business and the nonprofit world and members of the community, found that the theater was saddled with too much debt to entice a credible buyer unless the theater's books were cleared. It also found that the popular idea of running the Senator as a cultural arts center and a single-screen movie house wasn't as compatible as one might think. The concept posed operating problems that could compromise movie runs and receipts.

Lastly, allowing the Senator to go to auction April 20 posed too many unknowns and could lead to an undesired use for the movie house. As a result, the group felt it best for the city, which holds a second mortgage on the theater, to foreclose on it, pay off the theater's bank debt and, once in possession of the Senator, look for a new owner or an operator who would lease it for a lengthy period of time.

That offers the best chance of preserving and protecting the theater, and it might be the best financial deal for the city. The city is on the hook for about $600,000 for securing the Senator's loan from First Mariner. But in these tight financial times, the proposal may not be doable. City officials  can't sell this solely as a way to secure the cultural and artistic benefits of the Senator and maintain its contributions to the community. A deal like this has to make sense financially and lead to new management or a new owner with the right credentials and mission for the theater.

Continue reading "Senator Theatre prospects " »

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

Do Baltimore's proposed changes in trash pick-up and recycling have you upset, worried, gleeful, indifferent? If the latter, don't be. That's the quickest way for city residents to miss out on an opportunity to let city officials know how you feel about the proposal to collect trash once a week, and ditto for recyclables. The City Council must approve the reduced schedule.

The Judiciary and Legislative Investigations Committee of the Baltimore City Council takes up the Dixon administration's "One plus One" program Tuesday, April 7, at 10 a.m. in the Du Burns Council Chamber, 4th floor, City Hall.

Here's a good summary of the proposed change from public works Director David E. Scott. And you can hear  For your viewing pleasure, Mr. Scott and members of his team discuss the issue with The Baltimore Sun's editorial board. 

The proposed shift in trash pick-up is a prelude to a department assessment of the actual cost of trash services in the city; by that we mean, what does it actually cost per household to remove trash? That review could lead the city to consider privatizing trash pick-up. Baltimore County employs private contractors now to pick up their residential trash, a system in which homeowners must pay a fee to have bulk trash items removed. 

City residents should at least let their council members know where they stand on the mayor's new "One Plus One" proposal.

Continue reading "Talking trash again " »

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

The line separating good and evil pases through every human heart, wrote Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitzyn. But in the case of Ria Ramkissoon, who pleaded guilty Monday to one charge of child abuse leading to the death of her infant son, there may be no equivalent bright line between sanity and insanity

Prosecutors allege that Ramkisson and her four co-defendants, all members of a secretive Baltimore religious cult called One Mind Ministries, starved her 16-month-old boy to death in 2006 after the cult's leader, a woman named Queen Antoinette, told the group he was possessed by demons because he refused to say "Amen" at mealtimes.

Ramkissoon's mother, Seeta Khadan-Newton, said her daughter had been "brainwashed" into believing the boy would be resurrected through group prayers.

Prosecutors allowed Ramkissoon to plead to the lesser charge and receive a sentence of probation with treatment in exchange for her testimony against other members of the group, who they charged with murder.

Ramkissoon's lawyer said his client agreed to the plea deal on one condition: That all charges against her would be dropped if her son is resurrected.

Ramkissoon's plea deal means that although she will be held criminally responsible for her actions, the law regards her as less culpable than her co-defendants. .

But if they all shared the same beliefs, why are they being accused of the more serious crime of murder? Experts say the line between some extreme religious beliefs and delusional behavior can be hard to draw in such cases. What's your view?
 

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

U.S. Justice Department officials are making good on their pledge to take the city of Baltimore to court over legal restrictions on licensed group homes for recovering drug addicts, the mentally ill or elderly in need of assistance. They expect to file a discrimination law suit against the city within weeks, according to reports in our newspaper. The administration of Mayor Sheila Dixon's year-long effort  to rewrite the city's law on group homes has failed to gather the support it needs in the City Council. That's no surprise to many residents in Northeast Baltimore.

They welcome the court fight, because, in their view, there's nothing wrong with the law as it exists and city officials and advocates are simply painting them as obstructionists. They say they have lived with these facilities and know first hand how they can impact a neighborhood. We've read an account from former city councilman and Lauraville resident Jody Landers. But we would like to hear from other city residents who are opposed to this move by the city. What other neigborhoods have problems? Or don't? Isn't there some way to live with these group homes that addresses most everyone's concerns. Surely there is a need out there for such homes. 

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

Bragging about "drag" can be an occupational hazard, especially if you are a prominent Baltimore developer with interests in city contracts and state prosecutors are investigating political corruption in City Hall. The developer allegedly bragging about his influence was Ronald H. Lipscomb, who has been indicted along with Mayor Sheila Dixon as a result of the state probe that has focused on tax breaks given to a development project involving Mr. Lipscomb.

 State prosecutors offered up that latest tidbit from an email during a motions hearing before Judge Dennis Sweeney in Baltimore Circuit Court Thursday.  The email was part of a large haul of documents state investigators seized from  City Hall and Mr. Lipscomb's business. The mayor and Mr. Lipscomb had a personal relationship while Ms. Dixon served as City Council president and sat on the city's Board of Estimates, which must approve all contracts.

Of course, there's no crime in bragging, but what's the email equivalent of "loose lips sink ships?"

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City talk
        

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon was in Annapolis on Wednesday to push lawmakers to clamp down on crime by enacting mandatory, 18-month minimum sentences for anyone caught carrying a loaded, illegal firearm. The proposal is part of a broader effort to combat gun violence in the city and reduce the number of people killed or injured in shootings.

The mayor has lamented the fact that many of those arrested for illegal gun possession in the city are back on the streets "in a matter of days or weeks." She rightly asks: "What kind of message is that sending to them?"

The mayor's staff found that last year, for example, judges gave suspended sentences to 86 percent of convicted gun offenders. That's practically everybody. Dixon also has argued that the 20-year-old charged in the fatal shooting of former Baltimore City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr. last summer had just gotten out of jail after serving an 85-day sentence for carrying a loaded weapon in Baltimore County. Under her proposal, that young man would still have been in the pokey the day Harris was murdered.

I think she's on the right track, but here's my question: Why limit the 18-month mandatory sentence just to loaded weapons? After all, you can't tell if there are bullets in a gun by looking at it, especially if it's pointing in your direction. And what's to keep someone from giving his bullets to a buddy to hold until just before a shooting? Shouldn't the assumption be that anyone found carrying an illegal weapon, loaded or not, is up to no good and deserves a substantial penalty -- no ifs, ands or buts?

What do you think?

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

It's hard to drum up much sympathy for a convicted three-time murderer. But the suicide of 26-year-old Kevin G. Johns Jr., who hanged himself in his cell at the Supermax prison in Baltimore on Sunday, raises troubling questions about how Maryland deals with criminally insane, violent offenders.

Why was Johns being held in solitary confinement at the state prison rather at the state's maximum security psychiatric hospital? Was the treatment he received there adequate to the severity of his illness? And does the law governing defendants judged not criminally responsible for their actions need to be clarified to prevent another tragedy like the Johns case?

Make no mistake: Kevin Johns was by his own account a monster. He spent the first two decades of his life in residential mental health treatment centers and foster homes where his problems were well-documented -- fetal alcohol syndrome, lead poisoning and schizoaffective disorder, which produces psychotic symptoms and wild mood swings. He'd been on medications since the age of 9.

In 2002, soon after Johns was released from state supervision, he killed an uncle whom he accused of physically and sexaully abusing him. Two years later, while serving a 35-year term at a prison in Hagerstown, he killed his 16-year-old cellmate. At his sentencing for that murder in 2005, he warned the judge that he would "do it again." The next day, as he was being transported from Hagerstown to Baltimore on a prison bus, he strangled another inmate, 20-year-old Philip E. Parker Jr.

At his trial last year, Harford County Circuit Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr. ruled that because of Johns' history of mental illness, he was not criminally responsible for Parker's death. After hearing arguments from prosecutors and defense attorneys over where Johns should be confined, Judge Plitt committed the prisonor to the custody of the state Department of Health and Mental Health "for institutional inpatient care or treatment."

Continue reading "Death of a killer" »

Posted by Glenn McNatt at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (33)
Categories: City talk
        

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is reaching out to city residents for their input on the Dixon administration's proposal to reduce twice-a-week trash pick-ups to a "one-plus-one" formula (one day for trash, one day for recycling material).

The council has to pass legislation to move the mayor's program forward because that twice-a-week mandate is in the law. The council president recognizes that this is potentially a hot-button issue -- recycling materials account for less than 10 percent of the refuse tonnage the city collects. And while lots of people are passionate, even fantatical, about recycling, not everybody is a greenie.

Ms. Rawlings-Blake also has proposed an overhaul of the city's illegal dumping law that includes stiffer fines. Illegal dumping is one of the most pernicious problems in the city. You dont need to live near a block of abandoned houses to see the ugliness and unsanitary effects of illegal dumping. It can spoil green space and woodlands as well as alley backyards. 

Continue reading "War on trash" »

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk
        

Last week, the Census Bureau released its estimate of Baltimore's population in 2008 and and the number was down, from 640,150 to 636,919. That 3,231 drop represents a relatively tiny decline -- just a half a percent -- and even that number isn't written in stone.

In five of the last six years, the city has successfully challenged the first Census Bureau count, and Baltimore Planning Department officials are now weighing whether to recommend that Mayor Sheila Dixon challenge again. Last year, the Census Bureau's first count for 2007 gave Baltimore a population of 637,455, but after a city challenge and subsequent recount that number was boosted to 640,150.

A city challenge would be based on an alternative population measure related to the number of occupied housing units in Baltimore rather than other methods used by the Census Bureau, said Seema Iyer, who oversees demographic data in Baltimore's planning department.

Baltimore's population peaked at near 950,000 in 1950, making it the 6th largest city in the nation. As with many older industrial cities, that number plummeted in the decades that followed, dropping to 651,000 in 2000.

But in this century, revitalization has virtually stopped the decline, with the population holding steady near 640,000 for the last six years. That number places Baltimore 20th among American cities and larger than Boston, Denver, Seattle or Washington, D.C.

Posted by Larry Williams at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

The one thing the city should focus on is drugs ... That's what Mark Riteman wrote to us today in response to my post on City Hall priorities. It's hard to disagree with him. But here's the question: Should the city focus more of its resources on law enforcement or treatment? For some, that's a chicken and egg proposition. The Baltimore Police Department's Violent Crime Impact Division has 350 people, and drug enforcement is a big part of their mission. Why, just last month, officers in that unit scored a big bust in southwest Baltimore when they raided a house and snared more than 90 pounds of cocaine worth about $2 million on the street.

Today, city prosecutors announced a 10-year, no-parole sentence for a convicted drug dealer who was arrested two years ago for selling undercover cops $20 worth of heroin. The dealer had a lengthy criminal record, which is probably why he got 10 years (see below). And earlier this year, city health department officials released a report saying the number of deaths by drug overdose in the first three-quarters of 2008 was down 50 percent.

But the question that remains for me is this: Is it enough to lock up drug dealers and suppliers without putting as much focus on the reasons people turn to drugs? If Baltimore could provide treatment to every one in the drug game who wanted it, wouldn't we see a real decline in crime?

Continue reading "Drugs and the city" »

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City talk
        

Baltimore to Baghdad. Sounds like a stretch? Not really. They are among the places I report on, write about and want to discuss in this space. Even in Baghdad, all politics are local.

Mayor Sheila Dixon just rolled out her budget for the upcoming fiscal year. She managed to keep to her priorities -- especially public safety. But are City Hall's priorities the same as yours? The mayor is intending to find out with a poll. It's worth doing, and the editorial board said so, because it could help City Hall better target tax dollars to services voters really care about.

Municipal polls have actually changed the way City Hall – or the local government – does business. City budget chief Andrew Kleine shared with us a few examples:

In Dallas, city officials learned from their poll that residents surveyed rated recycling services 36 out of 100 (just above fair) on the survey. They knew that only 3 percent of residential waste was recycled. To boost recycling and better serve residents, the city provided a free, wheeled container in which families could dump ALL their recyclables. The next survey showed that more Dallas residents – 48 out of 100 — were pleased with the city’s recycling program. Not only did recyclables in Dallas increase, so did the revenue from the sale of those items.

Closer to home, the city of Rockville targeted older residents in a survey to gauge whether the Montgomery County suburb was a good place to retire. It asked older adults to identify services they would like but are lacking. The responses may result in combining fitness facilities with senior centers as a way to keep the city’s over-50 set happier and healthier.

A citizen survey can help provide valuable data for policymakers. But follow-through is what counts; we can all agree on that.

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: City talk
        

Members of the Baltimore City Council are in no rush to make it easier for licensed group homes for recovering drug addicts, the disabled or the elderly to locate in a neighborhood near you.

I decided to call Jody Landers, an able, thoughtful, respected former member of the council who lives in Lauraville. He feels strongly that residents have a right to limit these homes in their neighborhoods and he isn't convinced that the city's law, which requires such facilities to win council approval, is a violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.

Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on the matter: "The proponents have tried to paint anyone who is opposed to this bill as being uncaring obstructionists, who don’t understand the social benefits of having these treatment facilities and group homes, located wherever the facility operators choose, regardless of the facilities' impact on the surrounding neighbors. I assure you that those of us who oppose this measure and support the existing zoning provisions do understand the need for these facilities and the public benefits to be derived, but it comes down to a question of balancing the stability and the well being of neighborhoods against the interests of the program operators and the clients they serve. The zoning law needs to respect this balance, and to a large degree the existing law does respect this balance."

Continue reading "About group homes" »

Posted by Ann Lolordo at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City talk