City Council President

The block is shaded by pear trees laden with clusters of pale flowers. The homes are immaculately tended — brass door knockers gleam in the sun, and tulips sprout from tidy planters. But around the corner, on the 1500 block of East Madison Street, the homes are somewhat dilapidated. Snack food wrappers and empty cigarette packs are scattered on the sidewalk and a heavy stream of traffic thunders past. It was on this block that City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and his wife, Darlene, bought their first home in 1978.

City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young promised Wednesday to pay Ray Lewis for tickets to the Ravens linebacker's private skybox at Sunday's sold-out playoff game, saying he wanted to follow an ethics law the City Council approved just four months ago to ban such gifts. Lester Davis, a spokesman for Young, said the council president is working to figure out the cost of the tickets for Young and his wife, who attended the 20-13 divisional win over Houston. The game sold out within 15 minutes of the tickets going on sale.

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake can do little more than wait - at least publicly - before learning whether or when she becomes mayor. By law, the council president automatically becomes the chief executive if the office becomes vacant, and Mayor Sheila Dixon's criminal conviction this week could force her out under the state constitution. But Dixon's lawyers are considering whether to challenge the verdict and a suspension, and Dixon insists that for now, she's on the job. That means Rawlings-Blake has scant opportunity to prepare for the responsibilities she might soon undertake as budget woes and crime problems demand City Hall's full attention.

Polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Polling places : Nearly 300 around city. For detailed information, contact the Board of Elections online or (410) 396-5550 Races : Mayor, Comptroller, City Council President, City Council members Other votes : Charter amendments to put aside money for repairing and building schools, and to lower the age for serving on the City Council from 21 to 18.

THE ACRIMONY BETWEEN City Council President Mary Pat Clarke and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke reached the point that if one said it was day you half expected the other to claim it was night. Unfortunately, it now looks as though Mr. Schmoke's relationship with Council President-elect Lawrence A. Bell III won't be any better.Mr. Schmoke gave department heads standing orders not to perform constituent services requested by Mrs. Clarke unless he personally approved them. Conversely, she was said to have moles inside City Hall who secretly gave her the schedule for new public works projects so she could claim responsibility for them before the mayor did.This friction wasn't all bad. It did give the public confidence that the administration would not quietly steamroll its way down some questionable path without Mrs. Clarke offering, at the least, a squawk of protest.

Joseph T. "Jody" Landers III, a key adviser and director for fiscal affairs for Baltimore City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III, was named yesterday as the new executive vice president for the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors.Landers' appointment came after a six-month nationwide search in which more than 100 candidates were reviewed. He will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and overall administration of the GBBR beginning Nov. 10."One of the first tasks that I set for myself is to meet with all the leadership and the officers on the board and then to meet with the staff members here and kind of hone in on what are the key issues that need to be addressed," he said yesterday from the new GBBR offices in Lutherville.

Taking a brief foray back into Baltimore politics yesterday, Gov. Martin O'Malley endorsed longtime ally Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake's bid to become City Council president in what is shaping up to be one of the closest races of this year's election. O'Malley has been working behind the scenes for Rawlings-Blake for months, but the formal endorsement underscored his support at an important time and simultaneously raised questions about whether the state's most powerful Democrat will back a candidate in the mayor's race.

To keep up with the city campaigns, read short biographies of the candidates for mayor and City Council president, and see a list of the council candidates, go to baltimoresun.com/electionsblog

Here are the candidates who filed papers by yesterday's 9 p.m. deadline to enter Baltimore's Democratic and Republican primaries for mayor, comptroller and City Council president. Mayor Democrats Phillip A. Brown Jr. Andrey Bundley Jill P. Carter Frank M. Conaway Sheila Dixon (incumbent) A. Robert Kaufman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. Mike Schaefer Republican Elbert R. Henderson City Council President Democrats Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake (incumbent) Kenneth N. Harris Sr. Michael Sarbanes Charles Ulysses Smith Republicans none Comptroller Democrat Joan M. Pratt (incumbent)

Polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Polling places : Nearly 300 around city. For detailed information, contact the Board of Elections online or (410) 396-5550 Races : Mayor, Comptroller, City Council President, City Council members Other votes : Charter amendments to put aside money for repairing and building schools, and to lower the age for serving on the City Council from 21 to 18.

Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young is calling for increased scrutiny of the city's False Alarm Reduction Program, which he says is partly responsible for the city government's seizure of thousands of homes. "People [can rack up] thousands of dollars in false alarms," said Lester Davis, Young's spokesman. "The city can seize your home over unpaid bills. You want the city to have some teeth, but you also want to be smart. If someone is not paying, does it make sense to take someone's home and now the city is responsible for another vacant property?"

On Tuesday, on a court renowned for housing some of Baltimore's best basketball, Kenyetta Riddick calmly moved into position between the plastic pipes. On her 11th birthday, the exceedingly polite girl with glasses strapped on goalie pads for the first time and was nearly unbeatable in net. Playing at The Dome — where, since the 1980s, the city's elite basketball players have thrown down — Kenyetta and her sister, Kennisha, 13, helped lead the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center team to a 3-0 victory against the Robert C. Marshall squad in the final of the inaugural 2011 NHL Street Hockey Tournament.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has coped with a pair of historic blizzards, closed a record budget deficit and overhauled the police and fire pension system since taking office in February. Now, at 40, she is gearing up for her biggest challenge yet: keeping the position she filled when Sheila Dixon resigned earlier this year. With fewer than 10 months to go until Baltimore's primary election, several candidates have already said they will run against Rawlings-Blake, who was elected City Council president by a tidy margin in 2007 and automatically elevated when Dixon's legal problems created a vacancy.

Any person paid to influence the votes of Baltimore's elected officials — regardless of the amount they receive — would be required to register as a lobbyist under a measure proposed Monday by Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young. Lobbyists would be barred from claiming they could "control or obtain" the vote of an elected official under the proposal. "The public deserves to know how much money was spent and who was involved in a legislative fight," said Young, adding that the measure would help dispel a sense that City Hall has been "plagued by scandal.

City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young's office violated city policy by using the services of a computer contractor hired by the Department of Transportation without negotiating a separate contract, according to a report this week by the city's inspector general. According to inspector general David N. McClintock, Young's chief of staff asked transportation officials if the computer contractor could work on the council's website shortly after Young took office in February.

The 89-year-old father of Baltimore City Council Vice President Edward L. Reisinger III, who had been missing since last week, resurfaced Tuesday night after seeing news reports about his disappearance. Edward L. Reisinger Jr. called his girlfriend after spotting his photograph on TV, his son said. "'He called her up and said, 'Why am I on TV?' " the councilman said. The elder Reisinger, a retired Sparrows Point steelworker, had been staying in a hotel since he left the Morrell Park house he shares with his son and daughter-in-law Friday afternoon, the councilman said.

For John Rhodes, it's the difficulty of distinguishing one from the other. To the Northeast Baltimore resident, all the mayoral and City Council president candidates' messages seem to blur together. For Karen Randolph of Cherry Hill, it's the lack of delivery and record: Why are the crime plans being pushed by these candidates not already in place? MARBELLA Trailing a pair in a tight city race. pg 1b

The race to succeed Mary Pat Clarke as City Council president is being overshadowed by the keen mayoral duel between the incumbent, Kurt L. Schmoke, and Mrs. Clarke. This is a pity because the president will play a pivotal role, regardless of who is elected the next mayor of Baltimore.Four men and a woman are fighting for the Democratic nomination for City Council president. Except for one -- the disgraced former Sheriff Shelton Stewart -- all of them are seasoned members of the council.Even though their background and experience level may seem roughly identical, council members Lawrence Bell, Joseph J. DiBlasi, Vera P. Hall and Carl Stokes are not cast from the same mold by any means.

During the marathon debates this spring over Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake's plans to overcome Baltimore's severe budget crunch, one issue dominated the discussion out of all proportion to its importance to city residents: the fate of the Mayor's Office of Cable and Communications. That's a branch of the city government that runs TV25, Baltimore's public access cable channel. Ms. Rawlings-Blake had been strongly critical of it when she was City Council president, saying it was little more than a $750,000-a-year public relations department for former Mayor Sheila Dixon.

The president of the Baltimore City Council is demanding that the city tap its rainy-day fund to keep public pools open for two more weeks. Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young has scheduled a news conference Wednesday at Southeast Baltimore's City Springs pool to call on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to dig into the fund to reopen the pools, which closed for the season Sunday due to budget constraints. "This is one of the hottest summers that we've had," said Young.