In an article titled "Stat Governor," the latest issue of Governing magazine ponders this: "Martin O'Malley ran Baltimore by the numbers. Can he make it work for all of Maryland?"
Author Jonathan Walters observes O'Malley wresting stats out of criminal-justice bureaucrats and concludes that the answer is "a qualified yes."
"The O'Malley team has made measurable progress in some key policy areas," Walters writes.
"What has yet to be demonstrated, however, is the extent to which some of the most crucial outcomes of state government lend themselves to the practice. Still, Maryland presents a promising model that more governors may decide is worth a look."
Perhaps more interesting, in the article, O'Malley sounds like he misses his old job. Being a big-city mayor was a cinch compared to being gov, he tells Governing.
"In city government ... you get a call from a citizen complaining about a pothole," O'Malley tells the magazine.
"The mayor calls the head of public works, who tells his guys to fill the pothole. So, one, two, three, you're there." In state government, he said, "it's a much more attenuated chain of delivery. ... Bigger ship, smaller rudder."
William Donald Schaefer could have told him: Mayors have more fun.
One side, Phelps: It's the Caped Crusader
Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff will share tomorrow's parade spotlight with Batman. A guy dressed up to look like Batman, you're thinking. But no, the Caped Crusader in question insists he's the real thing.
"Around eight years ago, I started becoming Batman," says the man, whose secret identity is not Bruce Wayne, cave-dwelling playboy-industrialist, but Lenny B. Robinson, divorced dad from Owings Mills with a commercial cleaning firm.
Robinson, 45, said the bat bug bit him during a snowstorm, when he and his then-6-year-old son, Brandon, were cooped up at home. Brandon was into Batman, so they decided to build a Bat Cave in the basement.
Dad got into it in a big way.
"It was like one of those movies when I was a little kid, the original Freaky Friday, and the mom changed into the daughter and the daughter changed into the mom," he said. "It's so weird, but I just became Batman."
Next thing he knew, he was writing a $65,000 check for a Chrysler Prowler decked out to look like the Batmobile. He paid some costume-maker in South Jersey $10,000 for an authentic Batman suit with custom mask and leather cape and gloves. "I didn't want the ones you go to Party City to buy." (Not that there's anything wrong with that, he hastened to add. Party City happens to be one of his cleaning accounts.)
