WCRC meeting – January 2009

For the first Wicomico County Republican Club meeting in 2009, it was time to “lick our wounds and build for 2010” according to club President Marc Kilmer. As always, we opened with the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, minutes from our last meeting in November 2008, and the Treasurer’s Report. There was nothing out of the ordinary in those portions of the meeting, so we moved on to one piece of new business.

There were no objections to sharing the cost with the Wicomico County Democratic Club for co-hosting a City of Salisbury Candidate Forum on March 18th at Chef Fred’s, although one observer did wonder if we could trust the Democrats. Since the Salisbury city election is non-partisan we decided to make this exception.

Our first report came from the Young Republicans, with Dustin Mills filling in for their ailing President Mark Biehl. They had two items of interest.

First, the YR’s will be holding a canned food drive on Saturday, February 7th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in front of the Food Lion stores on Snow Hill Road and Nanticoke Road and the Salisbury Giant Foods store on South Salisbury Drive.

The following Thursday (February 12th) will be the regular club meeting at Flavors of Italy, 213 East Main Street in Salisbury.

With that being said, our Nominations Committee Chair George Ossman announced those who had accepted nominations to serve as club officers for 2009:

President: Marc Kilmer
First Vice President: Dustin Mills
Second Vice President: Michael Swartz
Third Vice President: Ryan Hohman
Fourth Vice President: Deb Longshore
Secretary: Dave Parker
Treasurer: Tom Hughes

Five of the seven are holdovers from 2008, with Mills and Longshore first-time nominees for 2009. Additional nominations will be entertained from the floor during our February meeting; if none occur these seven will be elected by default. (Watch for a battle for that 2nd VP slot, depending on who I upset between now and then.)

Brad Bellacicco of the Chamber of Commerce (who has been gracious enough to play host to our club for many years) gave a brief Legislative Update. Obviously much of it focused on Maryland’s budget woes, as the budget “will absorb most of the time and effort” of the General Assembly. The biggest budget cuts will come from reserve funds, which will decline a whopping 16.9% from FY2009.

Brad also mentioned the possibility of repealing the state’s little-used death penalty as another legislative priority, along with more trial-lawyer friendly tort changes, and possibly card check provisions to echo Big Labor’s national efforts (the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.) There is also some possibility of a $15.5 billion effort to assure health insurance for everyone in Maryland, paid for in part by a 2% increase in payroll taxes.

One point of discussion was raised in a comment by Dave Parker, who teaches at Salisbury University. While Governor O’Malley was adamant about freezing tuition, that would come at a cost for employees who would be hit with unpaid furloughs and no raise for the year. The cuts would also be disproportionate to certain schools, particularly community colleges and private institutions who receive some state funding.

We next heard from our guest speaker, Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis.

A man who was “proud to be a Republican”, Sheriff Lewis expressed a “serious concern” about the death penalty being repealed (however, he “expects” it will be) while also delivering a withering assessment of three suspects arrested for last week’s murder of Anitra Pirkle.

Mike noted that 15 detectives worked on that case, including six from the Maryland State Police and two from the city of Salisbury added at the request of SPD Chief Allen Webster, who was “very willing to help” on the Pirkle case. The relationship between each of the county’s three municipal police departments and the Sheriff’s office was excellent, Lewis opined. He also said that there would be another recent homicide solved in the next 48 hours.

While the most recent homicides weren’t necessarily gang-related, Sheriff Lewis commented that there were gangs in Wicomico County. And while they weren’t as well-organized as those in urban areas, they were more organized than ever. However, the Sheriff’s Department was making “great strides” with gang enforcement, aided by an $89,000 federal grant.

Mike concluded his opening remarks by noting it was “a pleasure” to build on what his predecessor, Sheriff Hunter Nelms, had done and that Nelms was proud of the direction the WCSD had taken under Lewis’s command. The lone black cloud still hanging from Nelms’s tenure was the investigation of activities at the former Wicomico Drill Academy, with two subpoenas served today to deputies working at the Sheriff’s Office. But Lewis pledged the department “will cooperate fully” with the investigation.

The Sheriff then took questions, beginning with whether there was truly a trend toward younger murder suspects. In answering that, Lewis pointed out that he “would love to be more vocal about the schools”, in part because the drug distribution was “out of control” at the county’s junior and senior high schools. The Department of Juvenile Services shared some of the blame as well, with Lewis calling it “broken” and claiming “the state needs to make some changes” there.

When Mike was asked about moving to a single county police force, he guessed that initially it would be “very expensive” but save “millions” long-term. County Council President John Cannon, who was also present at the meeting, noted that it indeed “may reduce” administrative costs. However, it was also said that the municipalities have grown to prefer having their own police forces because of the element of local control.

Answering a question about the thefts at the county landfill, Mike revealed that all five remaining suspects will lose their jobs, but it’s likely only two will be charged. It was hard to build a case with the sheer number of incidents which couldn’t be pinned down to specifics.

Sheriff Lewis simply decried the “culture of corruption” and “sense of entitlement” which existed at the landfill, with one suspect confessing to buying a diesel-fueled pickup truck because he could get fuel for free, and a supervisor allowing the thefts of fuel because he couldn’t otherwise give the worker a raise.

One questioner asked Mike whether our county was better off crime-wise than it was two years ago. Lewis spoke about Wicomico County still being among the worst counties in the state for crime per capita, but our ranking had improved from second-worst to third-worst ahead of Baltimore City and Prince George’s County.

While crime still was an issue, proactive enforcement was leading to increased arrests – especially at traffic stops. A recent traffic stop nabbed two murder suspects, for example. And while Sheriff Lewis expected to have to tighten his belt financially, their goal remained to be proactive in enforcing the law.

Lewis informed the forty or so gathered for the meeting that 86% of crime in the county was drug-related, and that a large portion of the Sheriff Department’s purchasing actually arose from money acquired through drug seizures. In fact, $180,000 of seized cash was used to purchase five new police vehicles, and Lewis stated he’d thought about putting a message on the back of each that the vehicles were paid for by seized drug money – we thought it was a great idea!

Mike came with a reputation as being tough on drug couriers, and he claimed that, while U.S. 13 (which runs through Wicomico County) has a reputation of being a conduit for drug running,  smugglers were now using U.S. 113 “to avoid me.” This was in part because Mike “will never surrender” to criminals.

One final question came in about illegal aliens. Even with the economic downturn, there were “no more or less” arrests of illegals here; it was roughly in line with the state average. But Mike commented that it’s far too easy for illegals to get a driver’s license here, and claimed that in one particular jurisdiction there was a clerk who would pass anyone for the right amount of cash. Illegals would come from several states away to get driver’s licenses in Maryland.

Needless to say, Sheriff Lewis was informative, entertaining, and very quotable!

Our final report came from County Chair Dr. John Bartkovich, who simply plugged our upcoming Lincoln Day Dinner on February 7th (with guest speaker State Party Chair Dr. Jim Pelura) and took notice that President Obama’s pre-inauguration approval rating of 83% had declined to 58% now – at this pace he’d be below President Bush in a couple months, joked John.

Before concluding, one final question was whether the club had considered giving scholarships to students at the county’s four high schools. Another attendee answered that scholarships probably couldn’t be set up in time for this school year, but certainly it was worth considering for the 2009-2010 school year.

With that, we finally concluded our efforts for the month. I spoke briefly afterward to mayoral candidate Mike Della Penna, who told me how he’d been misquoted by the Daily Times. While that’s nothing new for the paper, it’s something I’ll look into further and update as warranted.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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