Coming soon: an excellent post on ethics and writing!
This is probably exciting to about five people in the entire state, but I’m still psyched: Andy Schotz, reporter par excellence for the Hagerstown Herald-Mail and chairman of the SPJ’s ethics committee, will be writing a guest post here!
Schotz will be writing about when it’s fine to disclose your connections and still write about a topic, and when you need to outright recuse yourself. It’s the kind of thing state lawmakers really ought to be thinking about … but it’s equally apt for us scribblers.
I’ve “commissioned” this piece from the good Mr. Schotz, with promises of $1 beers and a hearty thanks. (That ought not break my freelance budget of $5 for the year.)
Check out the SPJ ethics blog here.
WaPo adds 10 years to Vallario term atop Judiciary
The Washington Post put Democrat Joe Vallario atop the House Judiciary Committee for a hot 27 years in this morning’s profile. That’s ten more than he’s actually served, according to the Maryland Manual.
There are plenty of folks around here who will lament Vallario’s “tyrannical” reign, but it hasn’t been that lengthy. When it comes to lengthy, and tyrannical, people around Annapolis tend to think of Senate President Mike Miller.
It’s Official: Ehrlich Vs. O’Malley
(My latest for WYPR … linked here. TL)
ROCKVILLE, MD (wypr) – “Once more into the breach. This time it’s history, part two.”
This time it’s different.
Former governor Bob Ehrlich is challenging the man who ousted him less than four years ago, Martin O’Malley. And he hopes to use his status as the challenger attacking an incumbent in an anti-incumbent year to his advantage.
Now it’s O’Malley who must defend some very unpopular budget choices and a string of tax increases. This is a situation Ehrlich told a crowd of a couple hundred supporters that he is very familiar with.
“It’s not just about the past folks, it’s about the future. While we’re talking about contrast, what do we know? We know they raised taxes and we tried to cut them. We know they spend beyond our means and we spent within our budget. They kill jobs, we help create them.”
So, maybe the talking points aren’t that different from four years ago. But the roles are definitely flipped, and so is the mood of the nation. Now Ehrlich is the challenger in a Republican-favoring election cycle, as opposed to when O’Malley ran as the challenger in 2006 in a Democratic-leaning year.
Bob Ehrlich bonanza
So while I’m writing up my script for WYPR for tomorrow morning’s Ehrlich kick-off round-up, here are a few pics from the morning.
It was this big ...
Ehrlich in the media swarm
Bob Ehrlich confers with senior strategist Paul Schurick at the Rockville Starbucks before taking the stage at Rockville Town Center
Ehrlich's first official cheesy campaign stop as gubernatorial candidate, scoopin' ice cream with the little guy ... he'll never leave you cold.
In the hopper, clean undies
This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for, a ban on the sale of used underwear. Courtesy of Delegate Aisha Braveboy. You can read the bill here.
Don’t get too excited …
Look at all those smilin’ faces. They’re the members of the budget conference committee, hammering out just what the state’s $32 billion spending plan will look like. This is arguably the most important committee in Annapolis because they pretty much have the final say on the budget.
The group is comprised of House and Senate budget hawks, and some Republicans to make it look bipartisan. They pick through pages of spending items, from a few thousand dollars in cuts for state police cell phones to a couple million for stem cell research programs. While we in the media tend to report on the sexier stuff: stem cells, salaries, scandalous spending, what-have-you, the majority of the items are pretty rote. And the faces reflect that.
The members, almost exclusively Democrats, will sit in that room day after day this week until they bridge the gap between what the House and Senate want to do. Warren Deschenaux, the state’s lead budget guru, runs the meetings.
UPDATE: Easterish Blogger Roundup
(Adds Richard Vatz reply below … TL)
I’ll forgo the resurrection analogies for this edition of the blogger roundup and jump straight to it: Bob Ehrlich is going to announce his run for governor Wednesday and that’s going to be the buzz for a long time. (You can debate whether that’s a good thing for his campaign as it detracts from the legislative session and the state budget, which are key debating points for anyone running for governor.)
Over at Red Maryland, Towson University Professor Richard Vatz, a longtime Ehrlich ally, is surprisingly pleased with The Sun’s coverage of Ehrlich thus far. (Full story here.) For anyone unfamiliar, the Sun and the Ehrlich Administration got in some pretty nasty battles during Ehrlich’s four years as governor. Most of it surrounded Ehrlich’s ban on any executive branch workers talking to Sun writers David Nitkin and Michael Olesker, reaching a head in late 2004 to early 2005.
Here‘s an excellent write-up from the Sun’s former ombudsman/reader’s advocate Paul Moore. (For full disclosure, I recently submitted my resume to The Sun. I’ve also been to a handful of Vatz’s bi-annual classes where Bob Ehrlich comes to talk political rhetoric.)
I’m not going into the old battles here because they’ve been pretty thoroughly explored by others more familiar with them than myself. I will offer one critique of this media critique, which is that Vatz has a horse in this race: Ehrlich. Whatever he says — just like whatever former JHU prof Matthew Crenson, an active Democrat, says — needs to be viewed in that context.
I e-mailed Vatz to ask why he’s being friendly to The Sun and will update this post when I hear back. So here’s what Vatz wrote back:
“Honestly, I do not write with ulterior motives… I wrote an earlier piece criticizing the Sun editorial page and an earlier article by another writer as well, but this Bykowicz has really impressed me with her journalism as the campaign starts – especially when contrasted with 2006. Who knows if it will last.”
I was going to link a fairly amusing post by former Ehrlich hack Joe Steffen here, but I have yet to independently verify his information so I’ll wait until later. (This is part of the problem in any sphere, blogos or otherwise. Information can be hard to independently verify, that’s part of the reason why people pay reporters to ferret information. Good info is valuable info.)
So check back a little later today, and I hope to have some (confirmed) news for you.
Former Republican Mayor of Westminster, Kevin Dayhoff, links Doug Tallman’s analysis of what Ehrlich would have to do to win, here.
I’m re-linking the link largely because of this one comment from Dayhoff:
I have always liked Doug Tallman’s work – and I especially like when a writer does his homework and gives me the numbers.
Among other things, as we get into the campaign season, it’s good to remember that we do have certain things bordering on objective benchmarks (to counter the inflated partisan hits) and we reporters do best when we lay out solid information. Doug hits the “if past is prelude” nail on the head in the piece with solid analysis of voter registration. (And another disclosure, I used to work for Doug, and I like his work, too.)
State pension shortfall looms large for Maryland
(My latest for Center Maryland – TL)
Maryland’s pension funding situation is one of the worst in the nation, a panel of financial experts said Tuesday.
The state has chronically shortchanged its pension system since 2002, and payments to another pension system — so-called Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEBs) – have been almost non-existent.
The panel was convened as lawmakers prepare to pass a $32 billion budget, strapped together with massive spending cuts and one-time fund transfers designed to account for a $2.5 billion shortfall.
Lawmakers are staring down an estimated $8.5 billion spending shortfall over the next four years, or more than $2 billion a year.
The combined cost to fully meet state pension and OPEB benefits amounts to about $26 billion over the next 30 years, or slightly less than $1 billion a year on top of the existing shortfalls, according to a Pew Center for the States study.
While that pension number may seem insurmountable, small changes and investments now can easily put the state on stable footing, said financial experts who convened Tuesday at The Maryland Inn.
The Tea Party in Maryland
(Here’s my latest for WYPR – TL)
BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) – Sitting inside the Bel-Loc Diner, Joe Seehusen fiddles with a creamer as he explains the evolution of the Tea Party Movement. It started with the Ron Paul presidential campaign, which Seehusen worked on, and grew with the healthcare debate.
Like the anti-war protests of the 60s, he says, the disillusion with government grew out of college campuses in 2008. But unlike the 60s it was focused on fiscal solvency and the Constitution.
“What was different though is that these people were interested in topics that that were very different from what their parents, the boomer generation, was interested in. And that would be mainly they were interested in Constitutional issues they were interested in issues like the soundness of money, so they were interested in institutions like the Federal Reserve, which is an institution that most of us not really familiar with at all.”
Seehusen is the co-chair of the Baltimore County chapter of Americans For Prosperity, which for all intents and purposes, is the organization at the center of the Tea Party Movement.
Amid the healthcare debate, where the Tea Party has flexed its muscle most, the focus has often swayed from longterm fiscal stability to accusations of socialism taking over America and comparisons of President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.
Looking for a home? Al Redmer has a deal for you!
Former House Minority Leader and candidate for state Senate Al Redmer is helping his kid pimp a sweet crib down in Middle River. For less than $250,000, no less.
The details are included in a Friday e-mail Redmer sent out from his campaign e-mail account, along with some nice shots of the property.
When I first saw the e-mail — with the subject line: “Perfect Starter Home” — I thought it was some sort of clever hit piece. I was thinking something along the lines of: “So-and-so moved into governor’s mansion, but it’s really just the ‘Perfect Starter Home’ for a guy who only cares about moving in to the White House.”
(Look, the pitches only get more contrived as the campaigns drag on. That sort of ploy will actually sound fresh in a few months.)
But when it turned out to literally be a pitch for a “Perfect Starter Home” I was a little disappointed.
I talked to Jared DeMarinis over at the State Board of Elections. He said that while it’s a clear violation of campaign finance rules to use campaign apparatus for any sort of personal gain, it’s a little unclear just how much money is wasted sending an e-mail.
“Getting an ad for a starter house is a definitely not a normal campaign expenditure,” DeMarinis said Monday.
I’m still waiting to hear back from Redmer. UPDATE: Redmer just got back to me, a few minutes after the post went up. It was a mistake, he said.
“Actually, it was a mistake. It was supposed to go from my Yahoo account,” Redmer wrote in an e-mail.
