Archive for June, 2011

Will a mayoral candidate drop out and run for council president?

Posted by ameister on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

The Mayor made her official campaign announcement in front of her childhood home (while other mayoral candidates prepared for a debate that hardly anyone knew about) on Monday.  She is a mayor without any major controversy and with many connections that could lead her to higher positions in the future. Despite the mayor’s solid political standing she has at least four major challengers who currently say they want the position she currently holds. The experts are not giving these challengers much of a chance.

Jack Young is the current President of the City Council. He is a horrible public speaker and he was caught up in a Jayne Miller researched residency scandal. The previous act of that scandal ended comically with the Council President inviting reporters to look at his underwear. Young’s residency tribulations have yet to be totally buried and his arrogant actions and statements after Tom Kiefaber’s act of civil disobedience last week show that he does not fully understand some Baltimore voters.  Young wanted Kiefaber to say he was sorry, but there are plenty of people out there who think Young is the one who should be apologizing for his past actions.

So why does Young have no major competition and the Mayor does? City Council President is a position that many of our recent mayors have held before becoming mayor. I believe there is a decent chance of Rawlings-Blake leaving office in 2014 to run for a higher office and thus making the 2014 city council president the next mayor. Why isn’t anyone taking a chance (as of today) and taking on Young?

At least one of the current candidates running for mayor should switch races and give Young a run for his money. Even though many of our leaders stood up to support Young at his announcement, I do not think that makes him unbeatable. Such a move could backfire for a few council members if their competitors frame things the right way.

I definitely would rather see Rolley or Landers as council president. They are smart, fiscally responsible, and they can speak properly. I hope one of them takes a shot at the very beatable Young.

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What does Paul Graziano consider a success?

Posted by ameister on Monday, June 27th, 2011

Last Sunday there was a controversial article about the Johnston Square neighborhood in the Baltimore Sun.  I am not going to cover the controversy here. You can read the article or one of the letters to the editor about the article. I want to comment on a quote from Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano on page two of the article:

“Asked if he can point to any comparable undertakings in Baltimore, Graziano said the city has successfully conveyed numerous Reservoir Hill houses to developers who then revamped them.”

I hope Mr. Graziano is not talking about SCOPE. You can read my thoughts (from 2008) about SCOPE and Reservoir Hill here.

In theory he could be talking about Pennrose. Pennrose improved some HABC houses, but there have been management issues with Pennrose and some of the houses are filled with unofficial residents who cause many problems in the neighborhood.

15 houses on the 2200 and 2300 blocks of Callow were supposed to be redeveloped by a developer that the city selected in 2004. It never happened. You can watch a 2009 video I made about Reservoir Hill here.  From the 2:08 mark to the 5:50 mark of the video I am walking on the 2200 and 2300 blocks of Callow.  I would not use the word “success” to describe these blocks.

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Nick Mosby has filed to run in Baltimore’s 7th councilmanic district

Posted by ameister on Sunday, June 26th, 2011

A few days ago I checked the 2011 Baltimore City Primary Candidate List on the Maryland State Board of Elections’ site and I noticed that Democrat Nick Mosby of Reservoir Hill has filed to run for city council in the 7th District. Mosby ran for city council in the 11th District in 2007. His house where he lives with his wife and daughter was placed in the 7th District during the 2011 redistricting process.

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Targeted local reporting and government accountability in Baltimore

Posted by ameister on Friday, June 24th, 2011

The New York Times recently came out with an article entitled: A Federal Study Finds That Local Reporting Has Waned.   Even though the Internet has given more people the opportunity to report on local events, our leaders on a local level do not get as much quality coverage and scrutiny as they used to. This is definitely the case in Baltimore. It seems like media outlets are much more likely to trust our leaders and use the positive press releases they send out and call that news.

Up until recently I was worried about the Baltimore political news scene. The TV stations are filled with fluff pieces and the Sun fired a lot of quality people over the last few years. Our local leaders are hardly watched anymore and they can get away with just about anything (unless they are the mayor).

Despite the local media’s limited resources they should be able to efficiently use what they have at their disposal. There are definitely some local gotcha political stories floating around Baltimore that the media does not seem to have time for. These are the stories to dig into. I think a good news person has to really understand the inner workings and personalities of local government. How many reporters out there know the names of every member of Baltimore’s city council? If you take the time to learn a few things then you develop a gut instinct and a nose for stories. The time invested learning pays off with an expanded knowledge base that will allow a person to come up with numerous quality topics for stories in a week.

Reporters should not be scared to reach out to the community. There are many people in Baltimore who want to share information from the darker side of politics that they have become aware of. There are some great leads out there and they are free!  Email gives people a quick and efficient way to exchange pertinent documents and other useful information that an informant can provide.

Today the world is filled with people wanting to take shortcuts who only care about what the product (in this case political news) looks like on a superficial level when it is presented in their respective media. Editors and producers need stop focusing on easy to digest fluff pieces.  Hit our leaders hard with some strategic punches and the stories will begin to flow out of them. The more uncomfortable questions the media asks the more accountability we will have. Baltimore desperately needs some political accountability.

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Filings in Conaway v. Meister, et. al., Case No. 24-C-11-003294

Posted by ameister on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

Here is the original complaint that was filed in early May.

The motion to dismiss that was alluded to in recent news articles was filed on Wednesday.

Venable is the firm listed in the entry of appearance.

Below are links to all of today’s filings:

Entry of Appearance

Motion to Dismiss

Proposed Order

Request for Hearing

Long version of the Memorandum of Law

Shorter version of the Memorandum of Law

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An Otis Rolley ad and big news later today

Posted by ameister on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

Today is a great day! Stay tuned for some big news. I will post it here later today.

Last week’s City Paper has a full page Otis Rolley Father’s Day themed ad in it. This is the first full page mayoral ad I have seen in 2011. It is an interesting strategic move by Rolley. The City Paper definitely appeals to a younger demographic that usually does not get marketed to this early on in the campaign season.  It appears he is trying to get name recognition from a group of people who usually do not vote in high numbers. I assume he is going to try and use social media to get these people to vote. It definitely is an outside of the box non-traditional move, but it is a necessary strategic risk if he wants to have a shot in this race.

The Urbanite has an Otis Rolley article in this month’s edition of the magazine. You can read it here.  It touches on social media and the election and other outside of the box moves team Rolley hopes to make.

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Are local candidate forums worth the effort?

Posted by ameister on Monday, June 20th, 2011

Did you know that there was a mayoral debate on Wednesday at Coppin? You probably did not. Hassan Giordano wrote an entertaining description of what happened at Coppin.

I live near Coppin and I had no idea that a political event was about to take place. I am definitely not out of the loop. In order for a candidate forum to be worthwhile for a candidate there have to be a lot of people in attendance. In order for there to be a packed house there has to be some form of basic advertising and promotion. The mayor did not even bother to show up at the Coppin debate. I can assure you that the mayor will show up at a debate where she knows there will be 500 people in the crowd and multiple media outlets in attendance.

In 2007 when I ran for city council most of the candidate forums in neighborhoods were very small. The crowds were mostly made up of candidate entourages.  I thought that such venues would be great for a person running for a city council seat because you would be able to meet a lot of undecided voters. I was wrong. There were very few undecided voters at any of the forums. It would have been a better use of my time to knock on doors then spend a night in a room filled with people who wanted to support their candidate. Many forums ended up being useless shows.

If each district was able to come up with its own hyped, marketed, and recorded for replay on Youtube candidate forum then I would advise a city council seat candidate to attend. I know of nothing like that in Baltimore though. It actually would make sense for there to be only 14 localized candidate forums during the election season (one in each district). They could be three hours each. There would be an hour for the mayoral candidates, an hour for the City Council President candidates, and an hour (or maybe 90 minutes) for the candidates running to represent that district on the city council. If these forums were marketed correctly then many voters would attend and make it worthwhile for every candidate to show up.

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Cut city spending and then lower property taxes

Posted by ameister on Sunday, June 19th, 2011

The mayor is the only legitimate candidate running for mayor who is not talking about lowering property taxes. She says Baltimore will need more citizens if it wants to lower property taxes. She brings up a valid point without fully explaining what she means.

If Baltimore wants to continue to spend more and more money every year on services, projects, city employees, and just about everything you can imagine then if we want property taxes cut we are going to have to have more people and houses to tax. The mayor refuses to address the elephant in the room. WE NEED TO CUT SPENDING!

The mayor and so many other elected officials refuse to address this very important fact. If you cut programs then a constituency is going to end up angry. Some constituencies do not even live in the city, but they do fund a lot of campaigns (the unions for example). A real leader who truly wants lower property taxes will talk about what expenses need to go. Otis Rolley has talked about getting rid of the salaries of some deputy mayors. That is a good start.

Imagine if every city employee took a 10% pay cut and if 80% of policemen and firemen who only sit behind desks were fired? How much money would those moves save?

In the comment section of the Sun article I linked to, my friend Josh Dowlut posted the following:

“The city spends 14% of its general fund paying pensions to people who no longer provide any benefit to the city, that’s about as much as it spends on education (17.1%). It spends 37.3% of its general fund on public safety, how much of that goes to policing, trying, and and jailing non-violent drug offenders? How many deputy mayors do we have, something like 4 or 5? How many side streets get repaved smooth as glass while major arteries that connect to 95 like Lombard, and Eastern remain pothole ridden? How many $200 waterfront office towers like the new Harbor East Legg Mason building pay ZERO property taxes for the next 15-25 years?”

Cut some fat (spending) and give the savings back to the property tax payers in the form of major property tax cuts. A funny thing will happen once the property tax rate goes down far enough, people will start to move back to Baltimore. The mayor’s team has it backwards, it is not about getting people to move back here and then cutting taxes, it is about getting rid of useless politically connected jobs, policies, and projects then cutting taxes, and then ending up with more people living here!

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Audit of the Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk’s office

Posted by ameister on Friday, June 17th, 2011

You can read the recently published audit of the Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk’s office here.

You can read what a Baltimore Sun op/ed writer thought about the audit here.

Take some time to read the report. It reveals some light on the inner-workings of local bureaucracy.

The regular Sun article about this story is here.  Sun videos pertaining to this story are here and here.

Have a great weekend!

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The Baltimore Environmental Control Board admits it violated the Open Meetings Act

Posted by ameister on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

The Open Meetings Compliance Board’s report at this link is not the easiest or most interesting read in the world. I suggest you skip to the bottom of page five to get to the heart of the matter.

Baltimore’s Environmental Control Board was in violation of the Open Meetings Act because they redacted minutes from Environmental Control Board meetings. They redacted the minutes as if the meetings were closed. The meetings were not closed and thus the minutes should never have been redacted. The Environmental Control Board has agreed to properly close meetings for now on when it is necessary.  It also appears that Environmental Control Board meeting notices may have been unavailable in the past and that copies of minutes from Environmental Control Board meetings may have not been accessible at the Environmental Control Board office.

Complainant Yakov Shafranovich should be praised for taking his issue as far as he did. Now the Environmental Control Board will have to properly/formally close meetings when appropriate, properly present meeting minutes to the public, and inform the public when their meetings are.

I was disappointed with some of the issues discussed in the top half of the report.  I feel that since the board and its related functions and organizations are paid for by the tax payers that every aspect of what they do and talk about at any time should be made public and available for observation. It appears to me that the Open Meetings Compliance Board does not fully agree with me.

It is sad that we live in such a complex bureaucratic world where we actually need an “Open Meetings Compliance Board” to make sure the government is not keeping our information away from us.

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