Dock Daze 2012 in pictures and text
Over the weekend, Wicomico County’s Division of Recreation, Parks, and Tourism went to the dogs, literally.
My significant other Kim Corkran took that shot, as both of us attended the inaugural Dock Daze event at Cedar Hill Marina in Bivalve with cameras in tow. Her shots will be interspersed among the remainder of the narrative.
There were two main components to the event. At one end you had the dock dogs, who on Saturday were leaping into a large swimming pool instead of off a literal dock. For many, seeing dogs get ‘big air’ and land with a splash was the main attraction. (Top photo by Kim Corkran, bottom photo is mine.)
The idea, as you can see in the top picture, was to lure the dog off the dock in pursuit of a toy. Generally dogs would leap between 15 and 20 feet from the end of the dock to the point where the base of their tail hit the water, with the best approaching 25 feet. (Apparently the world record is just over 29 feet.) The other components to the competition, conducted over the event’s two days, were a vertical leap contest and speed retrieve, with an overall winner crowned from the top finishers in each portion.
For their part, the dogs were just happy to get their toy and a little love from the master. (Both photos by Kim Corkran.)
There were one or two shy guys who wanted no part of the water, though. Dogs had 90 seconds on the dock to complete the jump and this one said ‘you want me to do what?!?’
On the other side of the marina there was a boat docking contest underway.
The idea of boat docking was to start at a point, accelerate to get into position, and quickly reverse course to back into the dock. Ropes were to be tossed over the four marked pilings, with the entire process generally taking between 20 and 30 seconds.
But the crowd enjoyed watching.
Another interesting attraction was chainsaw artist Rick Pratt, who demonstrated his ability several times over the two days.
Watching him work with the chainsaw, the random thought I had was whether he can do ‘The Lumberjack’ by Jackyl? I don’t know about that, but Pratt can create some seriously sturdy artistic objects.
Also in between were the usual array of food vendors and other selling wares of some sort. This outfit which sells The Fish Bomb was a key sponsor, and covered the bases well with a couple mobile billboards.
One of my favorite sponsors is moving beyond the Good Beer Festival to become a staple at local events.
Maybe they need to support their Maryland blog? Anyway, this tent had other popular sellers.
But I can’t bring myself to have a breakfast like this.
Maybe the closest the affair came to political was the tent put up by the Maryland Waterfowler’s Association, which advocates for duck hunters and the like.
You may have noticed the sign on the bleachers at the boat docking contest, but the local television program ‘Outdoors Delmarva’ was getting footage at the event for future episodes as well.
Surely there will be a lot of dogs and boats on their program over the next few weeks as the hunting seasons wind down and the tourists move in full force.
Kim gets the last shot. As we were leaving she took this picture looking down the marina. You’d never know there was an event going on nearby given this placid shot.
Since we didn’t stay for the whole day or come back on Sunday, there were a lot of things we missed like the live music, Sunday’s duck calling challenge, or the sailboat and paddle boat races also scheduled for Sunday. (With the heavy winds, those may not have occurred.)
But on the way out I believe I heard that about 1400 tickets had been sold, which would put this event in the same ballpark as the Good Beer Festival. Considering the somewhat small venue and remote location that’s a rather healthy turnout so I would anticipate a second event next year. If we were to go, though, next time we camp out on the hill and watch the tapestry unfold from there.
The state takes over
Tonight the Wicomico Society of Patriots (WSOP) will hold an “emergency meeting” to discuss impending state action on the county’s budget, making the claim that “your property tax cap is dead!” One may ask why the budgetary woes of a comparatively small county on the Eastern Shore are relevant to both the functions of the state and to those reading this piece. To answer that question, a little bit of history is required.
In 2000 the Wicomico County Council, which at the time held both the legislative and executive functions of county government, enacted a huge property tax increase – a whopping 46 cents per $100 of assessed valuation – on county homeowners. Angered by the surge in both taxation and spending, county residents enacted a revenue cap later that year at the 2000 election. This cap limited the revenue from property taxes to an amount no more than 2 percent over the previous year’s take.
(continued at Examiner.com…)
Pork in the Park: the other side
If you hadn’t noticed, I’m taking a couple days off from politics here. Part of this is the simple fact I’m up at the GOP Spring Convention and the computer will stay home. I had issues the last time I took my laptop away so better to be safe than sorry – I will have my camera and notebook, so don’t assume I won’t be busy.
Yesterday I moderated a comment on my Pork in the Park coverage from last weekend, which started a brief exchange. It wasn’t the glowing commentary I usually hear about the event, but I’m sad to say the guy had a point. I happened to find an extended version of the comments on a foodie blog this gentleman, Ralph Rossi, runs.
His contention was that the festival is beginning to become a victim of its own success because the food vendors are so spread out. Some in the food court placed in its traditional location did relatively well, while the others relegated to the stone parking lot struggled to make their rent. Now I can understand where it would be a problem to have rib vendors stacked up on top of each other considering the traffic they can create with the popularity of their items, but I hate to hear anyone having a bad experience at such an event. Even if there’s rain in the forecast, no one should feel the need to cut their losses and leave the day before the scheduled end.
According to the official Pork in the Park website, this year there were over 35 food vendors with just about half featuring barbecue or pit beef. Add to that space for other non-food vendors, the competitors, the stage and picnic area, and the other features and it’s enough to almost make you wonder if they’re ready to outgrow WinterPlace Park.
On a personal level, when I first heard of Pork in the Park I compared it to an event I was more familiar with in my hometown. Originally held along the riverfront in downtown Toledo, the Northwest Ohio Rib-Off was an event more geared for retail sale than competition – over 20 vendors would be serving and it was a challenge to try them all during the three-day event. So only having a handful of rib sellers threw me for a loop the first time I came to Pork in the Park in 2005.
Now I’m not sure what prompted the Toledo event to relocate to suburban Maumee, but it’s now held at the county fairgrounds and that location has advantages: the former ballpark for the Toledo Mud Hens is still there, providing a grandstand for concerts and events – Ted Nugent was the featured performer there last year. There’s also plenty of parking, an adequate amount of open space, and the location is suited for traffic to come and go since it was once a baseball stadium.
Returning to our festival, it looks like Pork in the Park has moved up in stature to have nearly 20 rib sellers (plus a whole lot of other food offerings) so perhaps it’s time to upgrade the facilities as well. Unfortunately the county doesn’t have a space available to it such as Toledo does, but there are some possibilities which intrigue me.
One possibility would be to do a short-term lease (for a week or so) of the vacant parcels of land adjacent to Perdue Stadium. Obviously there’s plenty of parking there if the Shorebirds are away, not to mention the grandstand for entertainment, and if the Shorebirds happen to be home there’s always the possibility to reverse the idea the county has had the last couple years of using the Perdue Stadium parking lot for a shuttle stop for Pork in the Park by using WinterPlace Park as parking. They would also need to close the portion of the northbound U.S. 13 off-ramp which leads to Hobbs Road, but that would be a manageable closing for a weekend.
Another thought would be to use a combination of county-owned facilities which are adjacent to each other: the Civic Center, the parking lot across Glen Avenue, and Wicomico County Stadium. Since we already close Glen Avenue for certain Civic Center events the traffic interruption wouldn’t be unusual. Additional space could come from the land formerly occupied by the demolished Salisbury Mall. The beer garden would have to be across the road from the Civic Center but aside from that there’s the advantage of having indoor facilities in case of rain.
If they’re not planning on moving – and obviously there’s the familiarity of the locale since all nine Pork in the Park renditions have been held at WinterPlace – I think they need to devote more thought to perhaps using the side of the facility where the Equestrian Center sits for the competition side and opening up the side of the park where competitors are now placed to become a long, linear food court.
Whatever the best solution is, the time to think about it is now. With the 10th anniversary coming up next year, the crowds may be bigger than ever. I don’t like people to leave our little corner of the world unhappy (well, unless they are playing the Shorebirds) and reading Ralph Rossi’s complaints made me feel like perhaps changes are necessary to assure the event continues to prosper and help our area tourism economy.
The next step
Now that the primary is behind us and the Maryland General Assembly session will come to a screeching halt by midnight Monday evening, there’s an obvious focus on the three races we will have at our local level: the Republican nominee (most likely Mitt Romney) for President vs. Barack Hussein Obama, the U.S. Senate race featuring Dan Bongino against political lifer Ben Cardin, and the Congressional race which will pit Andy Harris against the most likely Democrat winner, Wendy Rosen (who, by the way, was once a Republican.)
But we also need to keep a couple things in the back of our mind. One is that the citizens here in our fair city are less than a year away from electing a new mayor. (I say new because, quite frankly, what has Jim Ireton done to deserve re-election? Then again, what did he do to deserve election in the first place?) We will also have the City Council seats currently held by Shanie Shields in District 1 and Debbie Campbell in District 2 to vote upon. (For the sake of this post, I’m going to assume the new district boundaries will mostly reflect the old ones – Lord knows the three-person Camden crew on City Council won’t select a model which makes sense and redivide the city into five Council districts because at least one of them would be out of a job.)
It’s my understanding that Shields will not seek re-election in her majority-minority district, and while it would be a tough sell for a Republican to win there it wouldn’t be a stretch to have a conservative win the seat – the city election is non-partisan and has been for some time now.
And while Campbell has faced opposition in both her initial election bid (Mike Dunn in 2005) and subsequent re-election try (Muir Boda in 2009) it seems like prospective candidates are easier to find when the district elects three seats as they did in 2011 than the one-seat race we have in the other cycle coming up next year. But there’s no reason to leave Campbell unopposed should she decide to run again, particularly since she’s part of the Camden crew.
So far only one person has gone public with his intention to run for city office, but there’s been no fleshing out of his platform up until now and the campaign is still in its earliest stages. Unlike federal or state office, there’s really no need to begin a campaign until this fall considering it covers a city of just 30,000 people.
But those conservatives who are interested should be making the push over the summer in attracting grassroots support and financing for their run. Truth be told, the city seems to have fallen prey to a power struggle between the Camden crew and the mayor as to who’s really in charge, and in my estimation both are fighting over a sinking ship as things currently stand. I’ll grant that a lot of dead weight is being placed onboard by the state and federal governments, which will leave a new chief executive boxed in to some extent, but these aren’t times when the city can be placed on a glide path like it could a decade ago.
Nor is it too early to consider what we can achieve for a number of county offices which haven’t had turnover in decades. While the bulk of county Republicans only came into office in 2006 or 2010 (exceptions are County Council members Gail Bartkovich and Stevie Prettyman), most of the Democrats have been there for well over a decade and their offices may not be getting the fresh leadership they deserve. It’s time to make them earn their office rather than let them cruise in for another four years. A good goal for local Republicans would be to fill up the 2014 ballot – actively seeking a person to run for State’s Attorney, even after the filing deadline, paid dividends in 2010.
Focus on 2012, but don’t forget 2013 or 2014.
Where I went wrong (and right)
Okay, the results have come in and I got some sleep and a day at my outside job to consider them, so let’s go back to my prediction post and see how I did.
I was actually correct in the order of presentation on the top four Presidential candidates statewide, but Mitt Romney exceeded even the pollsters’ expectations when he won just under half the vote. I suppose that inevitability factor may have affected the results because it appears our turnout in 2012 will end up about 20 percent less than it was in 2008, when the race was effectively over by the time we voted. Because few people like to admit they’re backing a loser, I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of voters changed from Gingrich to Romney at the end while other Newt backers stayed home. It also proves Ron Paul has support a mile deep but an inch wide since both well underperformed what I thought they might. I actually missed Santorum by less than a point, although it surprised me that Rick only won two counties (Garrett and Somerset.) I would have thought Rick would carry 4 to 6 of the more rural counties, including Wicomico. But once Romney outperformed it was over.
And you may wonder why I had Fred Karger at 2 percent. I thought he would do better because, as a gay Republican candidate in a state which was bound to be a Romney state anyway, voting for him may serve as a message about the gay marriage referendum likely to appear in November. Instead, he got only less than 1/10 of my predicted total and finished dead last. I also managed to garble up the exact order of the also-rans, but with such a small sample who knew?
That same statewide trend seemed to affect my Wicomico result too because Romney outperformed and Gingrich/Paul suffered for it.
And while I didn’t predict it, I find it quite fascinating that 12 percent of the Democratic primary voters selected “none of the above” rather than Barack Obama. However, that statewide average varies wildly from under 3% in Prince George’s County, about 5% in Baltimore City, and just over 7% in Montgomery County to fully 1/3 of Democrats in Allegany County and a staggering 34.7% in Cecil County. In the last comparable election with a Democratic incumbent (1996) President Clinton only received 84% of the vote (onetime perennial candidate Lyndon LaRouche got 4%) but no county came close to getting 1/3 or more of the ballots against the President.
I didn’t miss the “barnburner” aspect of the Senate race by much as it wasn’t called until nearly midnight. But Dan Bongino carried 34% of the vote and won by 6 points over Richard Douglas. (I called it for two points, but I underestimated the impact of the little eight.) I think Joseph Alexander gets the advantage of being first of the ballot, and that accounts for his second straight third-place finish. The rest? Well, the order wasn’t all that correct but they were mostly only off by a percent or two and I got last place right. And to prove it was a close race, both Bongino and Douglas carried 12 counties apiece.
What mystifies me the most isn’t that Rich Douglas carried Wicomico rather easily, but how much support the other eight received – they collectively picked up almost 100 more votes than Douglas did! I would love to know the mindset of the people who voted for most of these minor candidates. I can see a case for Robert Broadus based on the Protect Marriage Maryland group, but what did the others really do to promote their campaigns? At least I know Douglas had radio spots and reasonably good online coverage.
But I did peg Ben Cardin to within 4 points statewide.
On some of the Congressional races: despite the fact I screwed up the percentages, at least I correctly called the Sixth District winners as Roscoe Bartlett and John Delaney. Both did far better than I expected, and I think part of the reason was that both their key challengers’ campaigns imploded in the last week or two. A week ago we may have had something closer to the numbers I predicted. Think Rob Garagiola and David Brinkley may commiserate anytime soon?
The ‘relative ease’ I suspected for Nancy Jacobs was even easier than I thought. I guess Larry Smith didn’t have nearly the campaign as I believed because he came up short on my prediction about as much as Nancy Jacobs was over – I wasn’t all that far off on Rick Impallaria.
While there is a slim chance I may have the First District Democratic race correct, I was surprised that Eastern Shore voters didn’t get all parochial and support the one Eastern Shore candidate, John LaFerla, over two from across the Bay. He only won Worcester, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties, and I would chalk most of that up to Wayne Gilchrest’s endorsement. Kim Letke was about 6 points better than I thought and LaFerla was six points worse because he way underperformed on the Eastern Shore. I suspect no small part of that underperformance by LaFerla was his extreme pro-choice stance, as getting the NARAL endorsement doesn’t play well among local Democrats. There is a 136 vote margin out of about 23,500 cast.
Out of the rest, the only one I got wrong was the Eighth District, and I think that was a case of better name recognition than I expected for Ken Timmerman and less of a vote split among the three candidates from Montgomery County.
As for the Democratic incumbents, I could have wrote “over 85%” and still been right, with the minor exception of Steny Hoyer getting 84.8%.
So this is how the races for November will line up. Sometime this evening I will update my sidebar to reflect this:
- U.S. Senate: Dan Bongino (R) vs. Ben Cardin (D – incumbent)
- District 1: Andy Harris (R – incumbent) vs. Wendy Rosen (D – pending absentees and possible recount)
- District 2: Nancy Jacobs (R) vs. Dutch Ruppersberger (D – incumbent)
- District 3: Eric Knowles (R) vs. John Sarbanes (D – incumbent)
- District 4: Faith Loudon (R) vs. Donna Edwards (D – incumbent)
- District 5: Tony O’Donnell (R) vs. Steny Hoyer (D – incumbent)
- District 6: Roscoe Bartlett (R – incumbent) vs. John Delaney (D)
- District 7: Frank Mirabile (R) vs. Elijah Cummings (D – incumbent)
- District 8: Ken Timmerman (R) vs. Chris Van Hollen (D – incumbent)
So out of 19 contested races I predicted 15 correctly, and I stuck my neck out on percentages a few times as well. I missed Romney by 8 points statewide and 9 points here in Wicomico County. I think the “inevitable” mantle made the difference.
But with Dan Bongino I was only 2 points off statewide. Probably my worst guess, though, was being 19 points off with him in Wicomico County. It’s worth noting that the Douglas late-game media strategy seemed to pay off on the Eastern Shore since he carried six of the nine counties and would have carried the nine-county Shore if he hadn’t been blown out in Cecil County by 1,250 votes. Bongino carried five counties with over 40 percent of the vote (Cecil was one along with Anne Arundel, Frederick, Queen Anne’s, and Montgomery) while Douglas could only claim two such counties (Dorchester and Talbot.)
I saw this possibly ending up as a rerun of the 2010 race where Eric Wargotz had more money while Jim Rutledge had more grassroots (read: TEA Party) support. Obviously media reaches a LOT more people quickly than grassroots efforts do in a statewide race, and the money to buy media is a key element of a successful campaign. That’s where Eric Wargotz succeeded, because Jim Rutledge didn’t raise a lot of money and Eric had a sizable bank account to tap into.
But as it turned out the Douglas bankroll wasn’t all that large, and an abbreviated campaign with a spring primary didn’t give Rich quite enough time to build a support base of his own. Those three or four extra months Dan worked on his campaign (at a time, remember, when better-known prospective opponents like Wargotz and Delegate Pat McDonough were considering the race) turned Bongino from an also-ran into a nominee. By succeeding enough to nationalize the campaign Dan made himself into a formidable opponent to Ben Cardin. Had this been a September primary, though, the result may have been different.
Now we have just under seven months until the general election, a chance for the campaigns to take a quick breather and begin to plot the strategy for November victory. For Democrats, it will be a hope that Obama can fool people into believing he’s an effective President and having long enough coattails. On the other hand, Republicans need to point out the Obama record while spelling out their own solutions – that’s where we’ve been lacking in some respects. We need to give people a reason to vote FOR us rather than AGAINST the other SOB.
So start working on those platforms, ladies and gentlemen. If we are to win, we need to not be a pastel Democrat-lite but present bold colors to Maryland and the nation.
The McDermott notes: week 10
Last week was rather routine in the General Assembly, at least on the surface. But if you read between the lines of Delegate Mike McDermott’s weekly field notes, you can find some interesting observations.
It starts right up with the hearing on HJ12, a resolution co-sponsored by McDermott and fellow Eastern Shore Delegate Michael Smigiel. First of all, this is just a resolution – there is no attempt to change any law here and the sum total of the actions called for would be the redress of grievances to our Congressional delegation. But only 6 of the 20-plus members of the Rules and Executive Nominations Committee could be bothered to show up, according to McDermott.
However, as I recall from my work on the monoblogue Accountability Project, the Rules Committee is a second committee some serve on along with other work. (That’s why I don’t have any of their votes on the mAP, because their three committee votes are covered elsewhere.) So there’s probably some good reason that many Delegates didn’t attend the hearing; moreover, this isn’t a complex bill. Hopefully the bill will get a committee vote, though, so it will be on the record who supports this rebuke and who does not.
Odds and ends number 47
The occasional rundown of items I find interesting and deserving of a paragraph or two…begins now.
In the category of acting locally, thinking globally I’ll pass along the annual dog and pony show against the Wicomico County revenue cap called the Public Hearing for the county’s FY2013 operating budget, which will be held in the Flanders Room of the Wicomico County Youth and Civic Center this coming Thursday, March 22nd at 7 p.m.
Since the deadline for county departments to submit their budget requests only passed this week, we probably won’t see the county’s FY2013 budget proposal until it’s distributed at the meeting. The obvious sword of Damocles hanging over our fiscal head is the prospect of a shifting of teacher pensions to the county, and that hasn’t been resolved at the state level yet.
So there’s a lot of uncertainty in the Government Office Building these days.
A sneak attack (on our county taxpayers)
Two similar (but not identical, thus not crossfiled) bills have been introduced in the General Assembly this term, measures which would thwart the will of voters in Wicomico County and elsewhere in Maryland.
First among them was SB740, which was introduced February 3 by Senator Richard Madeleno of Montgomery County, which is one of the counties that inhibits property tax collections in some manner. (The others are Anne Arundel, Prince George’s, Talbot, and Wicomico.) It’s a bill which would simply allow counties which have this sort of cap to circumvent it, provided the money goes to the county’s school board.
But HB1412, which was introduced on February 28 – and got the extraordinary benefit of a hearing just two days after introduction – would do grave damage to the financial bottom line of several counties, most particularly Wicomico. It’s notable that Delegate Norm “Five Dollar” Conway is a co-sponsor of the bill, which is led by Delegate John Bohanon of St. Mary’s County and also backed by members from Baltimore City and Baltimore, Howard, and Montgomery counties.
Apparently this will affect Wicomico County in two ways: first of all, their maintenance of effort (MOE) won’t come down to a more realistic level based on tax revenues – for FY2012 they were over $14 million short of the $50 million MOE goal, the largest percentage of any of the state’s 24 counties – and our MOE will likely automatically increase up to 2.5% each year after FY2015 because we’ll almost certainly be considered a “below average” county. At a starting point of $50 million, that’s an extra $1 million we would have to come up with (or roughly 1.5 cents per $100 extra on property tax rates, based on what the county currently receives) annually. That’s also faster than our revenue cap would allow, since it’s based on an increase of no more than two percent.
But the other problem the bill will create is shorting other areas of the county’s budget which depend on the state – according to the fiscal note for HB1412, “(i)f a county does not fully fund MOE and has not received a waiver, the county’s income tax revenues will be intercepted and sent to the school board.” In other words, we lose the local control we have on state funding.
Now some may argue that because the state is providing the funds, they should call the tune. I don’t disagree with that, but if they want to play that game I’d like to see an opt-out provision. Call their bluff: okay, if you want to take away our local control of the money then we don’t want to send you our taxes. Obviously that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
And the problem most people have with the local Board of Education isn’t one of necessity. Few would argue that we don’t need public education as an option.
But there are a lot of us who feel money should follow the child, regardless of where the parents wish to send them to school. By bringing that element of competition into it, schools are forced to improve and provide more bang for the buck. Certainly I’m aware that Wicomico County schools have been studied and found to spend a below-average amount on administrative costs, but it certainly seems to me that the things the Board of Education likes to project as cuts are the ones which provide the greatest shock value. Yet what would our financial situation be like if we simply increased the average class size to 25 students? How much help would that provide?
I seem to recall that once upon a time our County Executive vowed he would do zero-based budgeting as he did as Fruitland’s city manager, beginning each year from scratch. It doesn’t seem to work that way at the Board of Education, which seems to assume they are entitled to every dime they can extract out of our pockets and then some.
And, needless to say, this bill would also provide impetus to opponents of the revenue cap to push for its removal – “the children are hurting,” they’ll whine in a tone which will remind me of those who are dismissed as the “Bennett babes.” But that squeaky wheel got the grease, didn’t it?
I suspect the long-term answer, however, may be for Maryland to give local districts taxing authority like they have in most other states. Certainly this has its drawbacks – for example, my alma mater district derives revenue from both a local income tax and a local property tax, which is somewhat rare among Ohio districts – but at least there may be a little bit of a chance for local control and reform. (The reason for this dual taxation practice is that a vast percentage of the district consists of low-value agricultural land but many of the families on the eastern edge of the district have reasonably high-paying jobs in nearby Toledo and moved to the school district for its lower property taxes.) If a school board isn’t doing its fiduciary duty by the taxpayers, the option is there to “starve the beast” until needed changes are made.
I don’t know what the fate of these two bills will be, but if one or both are passed it will change the local financial landscape for the worse. Those on the side of the statists never fail to make everything they do hurt the “country class” like hell, and this will be no exception.
WCRC meeting – February 2012
We were supposed to elect officers last night, and we did. In fact, we did all of our usual business last night. But there were some interesting internal developments from last night’s meeting which may affect the club’s direction for some time to come.
Let’s begin with the usual items: we recited the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, and heard the minutes and treasurer’s report. All went well, and our speaker – John Hall, the newest County Council member – was well received as he related “my journey on how I got to this point.”
One thing I found interesting was that John was active in his community until the 9-11 tragedy – it “changed my life,” he said, and “I withdrew.” But he was encouraged to apply for the opening created by Bob Caldwell’s passing, and even though he didn’t think he did that well with his interview and wouldn’t be chosen, he found out that day he indeed was selected to succeed Caldwell.
Wicomico school board bill now in House of Delegates
It took a little longer than expected but the companion bill to SB99, the bill which would give Wicomico County voters the opportunity to determine whether they want an elected school board, was introduced in the House yesterday. HB966 is the crossfiled version of the Senate bill.
Unlike last year, when the bills were introduced late in the session, not all of the Wicomico delegation is on board as sponsors. Last year’s SB981 had Senator Jim Mathias as lead sponsor with Senator Rich Colburn as co-sponsor; this time the order is reversed. Delegate Norm Conway was listed as lead sponsor of HB1324 in 2011; this year he’s not on the bill, nor is fellow Democrat Rudy Cane.
Instead, Delegate Mike McDermott is acting as lead sponsor, with co-sponsors Delegates Addie Eckardt, Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, and Charles Otto. It wasn’t prefiled as he promised last year in front of the Wicomico County Republican Club, but I would presume he instead waited as long as he could to see if either local House Democrat would come on board. Alas, it was in vain, so he ended up introducing it on the last day before it would have been forced to jump through the additional hoop of the Rules Committee.
More troubling to me is the lack of progress on the Senate version. Originally slated to have a hearing on January 25, that was cancelled a week beforehand. A new hearing was scheduled for next week, but again scrubbed.
I think those who are interested need to put something on the to-do list for this coming week: contact the leaders of the Senate Education Health and Environmental Committee and House Ways and Means Committee and encourage them to get the bills moving.
- Senator Joan Carter Conway (Chair, EHE): (410) 841-3145
- Senator Roy P. Dyson (Vice-Chair, EHE): (410) 841-3673
- Delegate Sheila E. Hixson (Chair, W&M): (301) 858-3469
- Delegate Samuel I. Rosenberg (Vice-Chair, W&M): (410) 841-3297
Certainly it may be of assistance as well to coordinate our efforts with Republican members of these committees as well:
- Senator J.B. Jennings (EHE): (410) 841-3706
- Senator Edward R. Reilly (EHE): (410) 841-3568
- Senator Bryan W. Simonaire (EHE): (410) 841-3658
- Delegate Kathryn L. Afzali (W&M): (301) 858-3800
- Delegate Joseph C. Boteler III (W&M): (410) 841-3365
- Delegate Mark N. Fisher (W&M): (410) 841-3231
- Delegate Ron George (W&M): (410) 841-3439
- Delegate Glen Glass (W&M): (410) 841-3257
- Delegate LeRoy E. Myers, Jr. (W&M): (301) 858-3321
- Delegate Andrew A. Serafini (W&M): (301) 858-3447
There’s already going to be quite a bit on our electoral plate this year, but there’s always room for more. Hopefully in 2014 we can begin to turn over control of our school board from some unelected bureaucrat in Annapolis doing the bidding of the governor to those we select at the ballot box. As I envision it, we would have a school board which mirrors County Council (5 representing districts and 2 at-large) elected in a non-partisan election where everyone has a fair shot. It may not necessarily reflect this in the end, but the time for choosing needs to arrive soon.
Odds and ends number 42
As you likely know, this is the post where I pick out a few items worth a paragraph or three but not a full post. So here goes.
Polling is in the news these days – sometimes as a real reflection of the political scene, and sometimes just to make news and push a particular agenda. There are two recent polls which I believe reflect the latter.
I’m usually not too trusting of polls in which I can’t find a political or geographical breakdown, and a recent Washington Post poll fits this bill. Taken simply as a sample of 1,064 adults in Maryland, the Post poll gives Martin O’Malley a 55% approval vs. 36% disapproval – compare that to the 53-40 split in the recent Gonzales Poll, which I can easily ascertain subgroups and methodology in. Other disagreements: a 50-44 split in favor of gay marriage on the Post poll vs. a 49-47 split in favor on Gonzales and the “key issue” question: the economy was the top choice of 49% in Gonzales but only 32% on the Post poll.
Without seeing the methodology besides the sample size, my guess is that the local Washington D.C. area was oversampled by the Post. Obviously the economy is better there than in some other portions of the state, and since the area is more liberal than the rest of the state (hard to believe, but true) the other numbers seem to point in that direction as well.
A caving on Bennett Middle School?
Update: As projected, District 2 Council member Stevie Prettyman is indeed the one who sold us out in a 4-3 vote. She joined District 4 appointee John Hall, at-large member Matt Holloway, and District 1 Democrat Sheree Sample-Hughes in voting to commit the county to years of debt. Hope the squeaky wheel minority is happy.
According to published reports in both the blogosphere and mainstream media, Wicomico County Council is holding yet another meeting tomorrow morning to discuss the stalled Bennett Middle School project. County Executive Rick Pollitt has already asked County Council to allot a 7 cent per $100 increase in the property tax to help pay for the new school without presenting the remainder of his operating budget. (The phrase for that where I come from is “a pig in a poke.”)
First of all, it’s notable that the meeting will be a daytime meeting rather than an evening meeting, since I thought the intention of having night meetings would be to encourage participation. Perhaps that time worked better within the schedule of the few squeaky wheels who don’t understand that people are tapped out, so no means no. For working folks, it’s not that easy.
And since it will be a legislative session, this will give at least one of the four who originally voted to hold off on the school until funds are more available the opportunity to cave in to the caterwauling of these parents who are more than willing to pay higher taxes. News flash: there is nothing stopping those in Parents in Action from stroking a check to make up the difference in their tax rates; however, the rest of us may want to see a better funding plan for a more affordable school that won’t put those same children who attend the school into decades of watching the county pay for it.
G.A. Harrison opines in his piece that District 2 Council member Stevie Prettyman is the weakest link among the four, and that over the last week there has been a “sometimes mudslinging” campaign against the four who voted to be fiscally prudent – another I spoke to agreed that the County Council is getting “hate mail.” Perhaps supporters of fiscal sanity were a little too complacent.
Of course, there is the slim chance that we are the recipient of some fiscal miracle and the county can afford this project without saddling the next generation in debt or, more importantly, raising taxes on a population which is already overburdened. Harrison suffers from one possible inaccuracy in his report, though – I believe a seven cent rise in the property tax homeowners would result in a staggering 17.5 cent per $100 increase in the personal property tax Wicomico County businesses are saddled with. Certainly local businesses can weather that increase, no problem. </sarc>
Failing that miracle, it bears noting that a County Council which bends whichever way the wind blows is also subject to a primary challenge next time around. I can guarantee you local Democrats will give no credit for voting to raise taxes in the next election and will instead use the 2014 campaign to paint County Council as the obstructionists who rode Rick Pollitt out of a job.
When the time is right, we can build Bennett Middle School – if the state has it as its priority to build schools there will be no “end of the line.” I say call their bluff and hold the line on county spending.
If you can attend the County Council meeting, by all means do so. We need to support the fiscally conservative majority and make sure they can weather the storm presented by a few malcontents who seem to think a new school will solve all our educational problems.
Eastern Shore Political Buzz Examiner
Syndicate
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.
-
-
-
Advertise with monoblogue and you’ll reach a lot of people!
Click on the photo for details.
Link to Maryland Democratic Party
In the interest of being fair and balanced, I provide this service to readers. But before you click on the picture below, just remember their message:
Locals flock to monoblogue
Click on the photo for details on advertising opportunities.
Please note that the opinions expressed on monoblogue are not necessarily those of the Wicomico County Republican Party Central Committee, of which I'm a member. (But they probably should be.)
