Tom LoBianco, Maryland politics reporter

(This is almost completely-ridiculous, but I suppose we should leave that for when I blow the Friday Blogger Roundup deadline by a full week next time. Then it will be the (Meta) Friday Blogger Roundup. – TL)

Here’s a wrap of what the State House press corps has been blogging about recently. I’ve tended toward the state’s partisan bloggers in the last two roundups, so the full-time scribblers get their shot here.

Patuxent politics editor Bryan Sears has Baltimore County covered like no one else. Sears’s latest pull is an interview with potential county council candidate Mike Gimbel.

This is a great example of musical chairs shaking the political structure from the top down. With Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith term-limited out of office, a number of Baltimore County Council members are running for the job. In the process they vacate their seats, and so forth and so on.

As potential candidates go, we might have to wait a little longer to see if former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. will run for office again writes John Wagner at The Washington Post’s Maryland Politics blog. It’s been little secret that Ehrlich is considering challenging Martin O’Malley. It’s been a widespread rumor that he was considering announcing his intentions on March 25. And it’s still a big mystery whether he could beat O’Malley.

I’m equally guilty of playing the If-and-when? game, as it tends to grow into standard small talk around Annapolis. The man will run when he’s going to run, or not.

Sometimes you have to fight for political seats and other times you have them handed to you (more or less.) Such appears to be the case with Sarah Bloom Raskin, whose husband Jamie, is a state senator, writes Paul West at The Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog. (Anybody ever wonder why the two big dogs in town share the same blog name?)

Frederick News-Post writer Meg Tully takes on a long-standing debate in Annapolis over whether public funding should go to private colleges. And if you scroll down the page at her blog some, you can find this real gem about freshman Delegate Chuck Jenkins fighting Sen. Alex Mooney over a local delegation meeting and whether dogs should be eating with their owners at outdoor establishments.

(My latest for Center Maryland. … full story here. – TL)

Task forces and study committees often serve in Annapolis as a way of putting off making decisions on tough issues. Kick it to a study, and report back later, goes the thinking in the General Assembly.

And sometimes state lawmakers kick so hard they forget about those committees until the issue they were supposed to be studying pops up again in the news. That’s already happened at least twice during this year’s legislative session, with task forces which were supposed to study sex offenders and juvenile prisoners.

The legislative task force is also occasionally used in Annapolis to defuse hot-button issues in election years.

One such high-profile example was The Commission to Study the Impact of Immigrants in Maryland, which was formed at the height of the hotly contested First Congressional District race in 2008. Two years later that group has still not met, though a spokesman for Gov. Martin O’Malley says the group will start its work this coming summer.

“Very often, they are a way of punting. If you can’t solve an issue, create a task force. If you want to delay action on an issue, create a commission,” says House Minority Leader Anthony J. O’Donnell, a Southern Maryland Republican.

In 2007, O’Donnell sought a study that would detail the number of study committees created over the years and the total cost to the state (and taxpayers.) But he did not remember that request when asked about it last week.

I got something of a kick out of this: the highly-touted Senate whistleblower bill, which is supposed to give trial access to federal employees actually strips protections already in place for national security workers. This is probably news to anybody who missed my first story on this which ran last August. Like, say, Politico.

I thought that whole “problem” was cleared up six months ago. At least that’s what I was told last year when I asked when they were going to clean this thing up. Full story here.

Now, who’s a whistleblower? Well there’s the former FBI forensics expert who detailed major problems in evidence processing which threatened the criminal prosecutions of thousands, including Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh. Then there’s the agent who reported fellow agents who had been looting Ground Zero after Sept. 11. They had some pretty explicit concerns with the legislation when I asked them about it last year – full story here.

Anyway, check in with the National Whistleblowers Center for the real dirt on this issue. Of all the groups who have been working this (Government Accountability Project, ACLU, Project on Government Oversight and other good government outfits) they have consistently argued that this bill was wrought with problems.

Also, whistleblower advocates have pretty much universally praised Chris Van Hollen’s version of the bill in the House as the gold standard.

(Here’s my exclusive for Center Maryland – TL)

The co-chairman of the General Assembly panel that must approve a compromise on tough new stormwater runoff regulations denounced the deal Thursday, calling it “an abomination” crafted with little regard for the environment.

The opposition of Sen. Paul Pinsky, the Prince George’s County Democrat who serves as co-chairman of the Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review Committee, suggests the compromise on stormwater rules remains tentative and could still face a difficult challenge before winning approval.

But House Speaker Michael E. Busch warned that the deal – crafted after extensive negotiations among lawmakers, builders, city and county officials, environmental advocates and others – should be approved as is.

“I don’t know how you can get to a better compromise than this, and I think it would be foolhardy to change any of this,” Busch said Thursday.

Jerry Boden, the former chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown is now making almost double more than what his new boss, Veterans Affairs Secretary Edward Chow makes.

Check out the full corrected blowout story from Erich Wagner over at Maryland Reporter.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Edward Chow said salary figures quoted in yesterday’s story about the department were inaccurate.

Chow said his own salary is $101,000, not the $80,160 mentioned in the story – a number obtained in listing of the salaries of cabinet secretaries by the Governor’s Compensation Commission.

The base salary of Chow’s chief of staff, Jerry Boden, is $117,751. With fringe benefits, that comes to the $145,000 figure used in the story.

Chow’s numbers were confirmed by personnel detail in the state budget books.

Therefore Boden’s salary is only about 15 percent higher than the secretary he serves, not 80 percent higher, as the story initially said.

So a little late, but here it is nonetheless. Here’s my “performance” from Thursday’s Ignite Baltimore #5. Thanks to all the organizers and tech staff for putting together an excellent show and helping me look mildly professional! The audience was great, it was a ton of fun talking mythology and culture with folks afterward.

For anybody following up here from my Thursday talk, I don’t really have anything to sell or an organization. I just get a kick out of Marvel superheroes, mythology and the molding of culture. It’s pretty fascinating when you look at how we are reflected in our cultural heroes and how our cultural heroes reflect our values.

And the IB5 speakers were excellent, I won’t get into all of them here, but here are a few highlights: Bill Mill giving a highly-entertaining and sweeping speech on sex, food and death (as prognosticated by Thomas Robert Malthus.) Ellen Worthing starting one slide in her How To Bushwhack presentation by saying “This is a highly-guarded, well-secured government site …”, then following on the next slide with “… So I broke in!” Baltimore teen Hannah Freedman giving one of the best-crafted talks of the night on finding your passion and then pursuing it (I wish I had been that enterprising back in high school!) All of the videos are available here.

And major thanks to Miles Needer: videographer extraordinaire, Towson bud from back in the day and scholarly gentleman.

(My latest from Center Maryland – TL.)

Homebuilders would have more time to complete projects before they have to meet stricter stormwater environmental rules under a compromise reached between developers, environmentalists and lawmakers.

The new regulations would allow developers to complete their final permitting by May 2013 and would then give them until May 2017 to complete construction.

The rules would also alleviate what had become one of the most divisive issues in Annapolis this year: how to curb runoff pollution as mandated by a 2007 law without completely stifling new development.

The Maryland Department of the Environment is expected to submit the new regulations by Wednesday. Read the full story here.

(Here’s my latest from WYPR – TL)

ANNAPOLIS, MD (wypr) – When Republican Scott Brown won the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, many observers noted that labor’s blue collar rank and file broke from leadership and voted red.

Maryland’s political leaders are now questioning whether labor will be the Democratic stalwart it has been in the past.

Senate President Mike Miller said the dynamic that played out in the Massachusetts election, proves that labor’s support is neither guaranteed, nor as effective as it used to be.

“Union turnout is nice, but it’s not something you count on. They vote for both parties, especially the building trades. What you do is each party’s job is to identify voters and get them to the polls. Now some unions are going to be for the Republicans and some unions are going to be for the Democrats. And despite what the leaders say, oftentimes, the members go just the opposite way. Unions, again, are not the major factor they once were.”

Labor helped carry Martin O’Malley to the governor’s office in 2006, and he’s already received the endorsement of the state’s largest teacher’s union.

But O’Malley has also presided over hundreds of layoffs and furloughed state public employees for multiple weeks as he has struggled to account for budget shortfalls. Read the full story, and get the audio here.

Just got back from an excellent weekend down the ocean with this lovely lady seen on your right, Laura Greenback. Among other things we got were excellent osyters, drinks and brunch, in no particular order, down at Fager’s Island. It’s still pretty brisk down there, but the room prices are right and when the sun pokes out it’s bearable. Ocean City can be a bit grating to those with discerning tastes, but for those of us who grew up with its “charming” kitsch, there’s no other place to get away.

Now, as Ocean City styles go, I’m neither particular nor generally interested. Pretty much anything goes, and some weird stuff is en vogue year to year. That’s where we get to the prominence of Monster Energy drink hoodies. They were at just about every knockoff clothing store on the boardwalk, mashed between the “You’re looking at the best Pop-Pop there ever was, ever!” sweaters and the “Beer Pong Champion” shirts.

And the best part about all of this? The store owner came out and attacked me for taking this photo. He started with a “Bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup!” and then began swinging a plastic coat-hanger. He was tweaking pretty hard, almost as though he’d just downed a few Monsters himself. So I’m guessing these Monster Energy hoodies aren’t sanctioned by the good folks at Monster.

(So here’s your weekly blogger roundup, early by a day because I’ll be down the ocean tomorrow. -TL)

Brian Griffiths at Red Maryland has a fairly amusing, if somewhat crude, political ad taking a crack at Maryland Democrats for accepting corporate donations while they criticize a Supreme Court ruling which struck down limits on corporate fundraising.

Red Maryland’s Mark Newgent takes a shot at Democratic candidate for House of Delegates Judd Legum for alleging that former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele has played down Bob Ehrlich’s chances of success in November. The potshots are a little thin on both sides here – Newgent points to Steele saying he had no idea that an RNC document left Maryland off a list of possible flips from blue to red, Legum says the document inherently carries the Steele imprimatur.

The whole thing’s a little contrived, but everything is always more contrived than usual during election season. Good barometer for an election year: “Does anyone care?”

Speaking of Legum, he’s going after Delegate Ron George pretty hard for a resolution the lawmaker put in calling global warming a “conspiracy.” There’s nothing surprising here: a liberal challenger going after a conservative incumbent on a hot-button issue. What is pretty amusing is that we get George’s response not on Legum’s blog, but over at Annapolis Capital Punishment. (Although it stands to note that Legum did link the rebuttal from ACP and George.)

I addressed the importance of reporting in last week’s roundup. Among other things, there was a fairly obvious error MoCo blogger Adam Pagnucco could’ve avoided with a simple phone call or e-mail. He still has yet to return my request for comment on that post …

Pagnucco continues his attacks on Prince George’s County Executive Candidate Rushern Baker this week pointing out some anti-labor folks associated with the Baker campaign. (Pagnucco’s day job is as a labor organizer.)

I had a good laugh, and will give due credit to Pagnucco for this post. A Rush Baker spokesman excoriated Pagnucco for publishing allegations of campaign finance violations without checking the facts. Pagnucco fights back, pointing to a Gazette article backing his claims.

Anway, if you want to dig deeper on that one, buy a coffee, click that link, and expect to waste at least a half hour.