Pols Might Not Be Satisfied With Irene’s Aftermath

While the power is back on for everyone by this time, the political aftermath of Hurricane Irene may go on for months — or die down with a whimper.

No question that Gov. Martin O’Malley and his sidekick, Anthony Brown, were all over the airwaves and the web in the run-up to the big storm and its aftermath. O’Malley even got some national exposure on “Meet the Press.” And Politico.com said he and other East Coast governors with national ambitions (in New Jersey, New York and Virginia) passed the hurricane test.

But the restoration of power took BGE so long, especially when compared to Pepco and Delmarva Power, that some pols were already demanding an investigation by the Public Service Commission into whether BGE was “storm ready.”

BGE and its parent, Constellation, have been reliable targets for O’Malley’s wrath in the past. If there’s any hint that the company fell down on the job, he’ll not hesitate to holler.

O’Malley already gave a hint of that when he was asked on Monday whether he was “satisfied” with the utility’s response. No, he said. He wouldn’t be satisfied until everybody had their electricity back on. We’ll see if he’s satisfied after that.

Kittleman Flogged on Facebook

For several weeks in August, Republican Sen. Allan Kittleman of West Friendship was being flogged on the Howard County Republican Club’s Facebook discussion board for his support of gay marriage in a vote earlier this year.

It was principally three or four social conservatives keeping the discussion string going, but Kittleman was accused of splitting the Republican base. Several others came to Kittleman’s defense, including those who said they opposed gay marriage, but still supported the senator.

Kittleman didn’t respond or comment on the web, but he said in an interview that he heard from a lot of Republicans similar to those supporters who disagree with him, but still back him nonetheless. He’s even gotten campaign contributions from some who wish he had stuck with his support of civil unions for same sex couples.

Kittleman was the lone Republican in the Senate to vote for same-sex marriage after he determined that his own proposal to make “civil unions” the standard for all couples, gay or straight, was gaining no traction. His stance caused a split with the GOP caucus and led him to resign as minority leader.

It also led to attention from national media after Senate Republicans in New York helped form a majority to pass gay marriage there.

“A lot of young people are really supporting me,” Kittleman said, and even those who disagree don’t believe “it’s really that big of an issue.”

“It’s not the issue that’s defining me,” Kittleman said.

Like his late father Bob, whose seat he now holds, Kittleman comes from the libertarian wing of the party and is a strong supporter of civil rights. Bob Kittleman, one of the first Republicans elected in the Howard County revival of the party, was a lifetime member of the NAACP and participated in desegregation demonstrations here.

Allan Kittleman believes that his stance might attract a primary challenger like his father had in 1994. Then-Del. Bob Kittleman won by 550 votes against John Clark who ran on a Christian conservative platform.

Kittleman said it also might be a moot point by 2014. If gay marriage passes both houses next year, and then is petitioned to referendum, as he suspects it would be, voters — not legislators — would decide the issue.

Plan Maryland Gets a Little More Time

Under intense pressure from local officials across the state, Gov. Martin O’Malley has given them another couple of months to comment on PlanMaryland, a guide to land use development for the next 25 years.

County officials from all over Maryland, particularly its most rural areas, object to the potential for the state to withhold funds to build roads and schools if state officials object to local developments that contribute to sprawl.

For state planners, the facts are stark. Since 1973, the year before PlanMaryland was first authorized by the legislature, Maryland’s population has grown by 39%, while the amount of developed land increased by 154%. More than a million acres of agriculture and forest lands was converted into homes and businesses.

Fifteen percent of the households are large-lot developments and they have consumed more than 50% of total developed land. They also tend to use septic systems that dump more untreated nitrogen into the Chesapeake Bay through underground seepage.

“We have been failing for a generation or more to grow in a way that is sustainable,” O’Malley told a couple of hundred county officials at the Maryland Association of Counties meeting in Ocean City last month. “The red light is blinking.”

O’Malley insisted his plan “is not going to prevent the counties from making stupid land-use decisions. They’re still free to do that. But we’re not going to subsidize it anymore.”

But one bureaucrat’s stupidity is another developer’s brilliance.

Ulman Running Interference

Howard County Executive Ken Ulman has been running interference between O’Malley, his political ally, and the local officials he represents as this year’s MACo president.

Local land-use decisions are a core function for counties, Ulman said, and the state needs to be flexible in dialogue with local officials. A Baltimore Sun article quoted Ulman as being “taken aback” to find that an original draft of PlanMaryland didn’t include the planned denser redevelopment of Columbia’s downtown.

The essence of PlanMaryland is putting teeth on the smart growth movement started by Gov. Parris Glendening. The state guidelines would force development to areas where infrastructure for highways, schools, water, sewage and parks already exists.

However, the county officials don’t want state officials to be able to force them to do anything in regard to land use. This is particularly true on the Eastern Shore, where elected leaders see it as part of a “war on rural Maryland,” already beset by an attempt to eliminate septic systems, reduce fertilizer runoff and curtail growth.

Once approved by O’Malley, the plan does not require legislative approval. The General Assembly has already authorized the governor to approve the regulatory structure.

Aiming for School Board Diversity

Ulman may have initiated a study of diversity on the Howard County school board, but it is ultimately the local members of the General Assembly that would have to approve any changes. Local boards of education throughout the state are completely a creature of state law. This gives them technical independence from the county leaders on whom they depend for much of their funding.

It is this independence and dependency that is a continual frustration for county executives across the state. They often spend half their budgets or more on education, as Howard County does, but have limited control over how it is spent.

The solution used in many states — where the school districts tend to be smaller — is to give the elected school board limited taxing authority, generally the property tax. But the Maryland legislature has preferred to keep the power to tax under one “fiscal authority” in each county.

The impetus for Ulman’s commission, chaired by former State school Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, is the lack of geographic and minority representation on the school board. The seven-member board is elected at-large in a nonpartisan race, but there are currently no members from Columbia or the Elkridge area (although two of the seven are registered Republicans, one of them half-Iranian).

Running at large gives the board a county-wide perspective. But as Del. Guy Guzzone, who sits on the committee as chair of the House delegation, noted at one meeting, it makes it a difficult campaign with limited funding. Both he and Sen. Jim Robey, who chairs the Senate delegation, seem inclined to go with district elections as the county now has for the five-member county council.

District elections guarantee geographic representation and are more likely to produce minority representation as well. Incredible as it may seem, there was strong opposition to district elections for the council when it was proposed in the 1980s — partly as a cure for Columbia and Democratic dominance of the council.

Montgomery County’s solution to the problem is to have five members of its school board elected by district and two elected at large.

Still the fundamental problem with school board elections is that voters have little understanding of what the board actually does — generally make policy for the schools — and where the candidates stand on the issues.

With up to four candidates to choose from, it’s eenie-meenie-miney-moe. In a campaign based on districts, it would be easier to know the candidates (and likely fewer of them), but whether that would make much difference on the Board of Education is hard to determine.