Conference Of Mayors

WASHINGTON - Even as President Barack Obama told the nation's mayors yesterday that they now have a friend in the White House, he warned that he would use the "full power" of the presidency to expose and crack down on them if they misuse the stimulus dollars meant to boost the economy out of its doldrums. The mayors, in turn, encouraged Obama to focus the stimulus on cities, where they said it would have the greatest impact. Giving state governments too much leeway with the funds could reduce the effectiveness of the program, they said.

RENO, Nev. -- The U.S. Conference of Mayors backed off yesterday on recent hints that it might file a joint lawsuit against gun makers, and instead said mayors want to try working first with the firearms industry to pass tougher gun laws and curtail pro-gun advertising."

WASHINGTON -- "In years past, we had to come to lobby for cities. But in this meeting, we were the ones being lobbied. Cabinet officials came to us for help in advancing their agenda. So did congressional committee chairmen. The president asked us for support, too."Winding up the U.S. Conference of Mayors' 66th annual winter meeting in Washington on Friday, those words from Fort Worth Mayor Paul Helmke, a Republican and this year's conference president, came as something of a shock.In recent years, the mayors' conference has often been disparaged for tin-cup politics -- always pleading for extra or special federal aid.Clinton stretchedBut the attention showered on the mayors visiting Washington was not to be denied.

THERE WAS A hell of a fight two years ago in Baltimore over the imposition of an updated juvenile curfew law. New data released this month by the U.S. Conference of Mayors indicates curfews are growing in popularity and are being given partial credit for drops in juvenile crime. The information suggests Baltimore was right to continue its curfew law, but public officials must keep in mind the tool has only limited value.Baltimore first imposed a curfew in 1983 that prohibited unsupervised minors from being on the street after 11 p.m. The shooting of a 10-year-old boy led to passage of an even tougher law in 1994, but it couldn't stand up to constitutional scrutiny.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is joining the call for a congressional probe into charges that a drug ring with ties to the CIA introduced crack cocaine to the nation's cities -- and is urging other mayors to do the same.In letters sent yesterday, Schmoke urged his fellow urban leaders to join the Congressional Black Caucus in asking for an investigation into the charges raised last month in a three-part series in the San Jose Mercury News."You know of the devastating impact that drugs have had on cities in the past two decades," Schmoke wrote.

WASHINGTON -- For the nation's mayors, watching Cleveland struggle to keep the Browns football team has been like witnessing an ugly divorce -- and worrying that they are the next to be spurned.Cleveland has pleaded for the team to stay, demanded it leave name and colors behind, and gone to court, vowing to make the Browns pay for this betrayal.It's not fair, officials insist, because fans have been faithful during the team's ups and downs over a half-century. Taxpayers also voted to raise taxes in order to renovate the 65-year-old stadium.

CHICAGO -- Mad as hell and unwilling to take it any more, leaders of the nation's counties and cities gathered in Chicago November 13 and 14 for the first-ever national convocation of America's local governments.All year long, the officials complained, they've stood by helplessly as Congress, with scarcely a word of consultation, prepared deep cuts in programs vital to them and their communities.And it's not just in Washington, or in White House-Capitol Hill budget negotiations, that local government leaders feel denied a voice or a seat at the table.

Mayor Jack A. Gullo Jr. of New Windsor is making national news tomorrow. He will deliver political commentary on C-SPAN's "Saturday Journal."Although the 26-year-old Republican mayor of Carroll County's smallest town never shies away from the issues, it is his youth, and not any seething controversy, that earned him a call from Washington."

City mayors no longer speak for ''urban'' America. Growing pockets of suburban ''urban'' woes, from drugs and crime to decayed housing and abandoned commercial strips, vary only in degree from those of the inner cities. So do budget dilemmas, welfare and social challenges, economic positioning, environmental issues.The new urban reality, in America and across the world, is regional. Our citistate regions are profoundly interdependent. A conference of mayors of the inner cities is an anomaly.

WASHINGTON -- Thanks to a sore presidential throat, the final meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors started late. But as 160 mayors tumbled cheerfully out of a meeting with President Clinton yesterday, not one of them complained."

WASHINGTON - Even as President Barack Obama told the nation's mayors yesterday that they now have a friend in the White House, he warned that he would use the "full power" of the presidency to expose and crack down on them if they misuse the stimulus dollars meant to boost the economy out of its doldrums. The mayors, in turn, encouraged Obama to focus the stimulus on cities, where they said it would have the greatest impact. Giving state governments too much leeway with the funds could reduce the effectiveness of the program, they said.

After being invited yesterday to join more than 70 mayors for a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House today, indicted Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon was abruptly un-invited hours later, according to her spokesman. "We were really hoping that the mayor was going to make this meeting at the White House," said spokesman Scott Peterson. "But it does not look like it is going to happen." Peterson could not say why the mayor was un-invited to the meeting, coordinated by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Tourism and government leaders lauded yesterday's opening of the $301 million city-owned downtown convention headquarters hotel, promising that a project that survived years of controversy over its taxpayer-backed funding and its Camden Yards location will provide Baltimore with newfound commerce. The 757-room Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel, the city's largest-ever public investment, opened to its first guests yesterday morning, nearly six years after Baltimore officials first proposed the West Pratt Street hotel.

WASHINGTON -- Nearly five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a year after Hurricane Katrina, a majority of American cities believe the federal government is failing to help them prepare for disasters, a new survey shows. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley joined five other mayors yesterday at the National Press Club here to discuss the findings of a survey of 183 cities conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. "[Department of Homeland Security] funding to states and cities has steadily decreased," O'Malley said.

As Mayor Martin O'Malley has experienced over the past year, attaining a national profile - especially on the critical topic of homeland security - can cut both ways for a local politician with sights set on higher office. The mayor's opinions on how cities can best protect themselves against terrorism has landed O'Malley national speaking and leadership roles on the issue. But his frequent criticism of President Bush on the topic also has resulted in public relations debacles after he twice related Bush policies to the Sept.

Baltimore's Martin O'Malley and about four dozen other U.S. mayors are urging the federal government to require railroads to inform local governments of any plans to transport hazardous materials through their communities. In a letter to outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge this week, the mayors pointed to this month's Norfolk Southern train derailment in South Carolina, which led to the rupture of a tank car carrying chlorine. Nine people were killed and about 250 injured by the release of the toxic chlorine cloud in the small town of Graniteville.

In Baltimore City Homicide ruled in death of woman found behind school A 25-year-old woman who was found unconscious, beaten and raped behind a city middle school in June died this week, and her death has been ruled a homicide, police said yesterday. Emma O'Hearn of the 600 block of S. Pulaski St. was partially clothed when she was found by two girls behind Calverton Middle School in West Baltimore on June 10, police said. O'Hearn was treated at Maryland Shock Trauma Center and transferred to University Specialty Hospital, where she died Tuesday, police said.

Mayor Martin O'Malley and eight fellow mayors are scheduled today to visit a Park Heights neighborhood that has seen crime drop and to warn that proposed cuts in federal law-enforcement grants could jeopardize such progress. The mayors -- including those of New Orleans, Akron, Ohio, and Elizabeth, N.J., -- are to hold a noon news conference at Garrison Boulevard and Palmer Avenue, where police and residents say drug dealing has been vanquished and violent crime is down sharply. The event is part of a lobbying campaign by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to stop the Bush administration from reducing the COPS police hiring program by nearly $600 million, or 80 percent, and another police grant program by $200 million.

MAYOR MARTIN O'Malley went to Washington on Wednesday to discuss terrorism with federal officials. Yesterday, he was scheduled to address other mayors in Boston on emergency preparedness. To his credit, he canceled the trip, deciding he was needed more in Baltimore. Since Sept. 11, the mayor's main focus has been on terrorism. He quickly -- and prudently -- summoned the chief executives of local hospitals, directing them to update emergency plans for handling smallpox and anthrax attacks.

GOVERNMENTS are notorious for their lethargy and lack of urgency. That's one reason Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley has glommed onto the current national crisis as a justification for stepping up the city's all-around emergency preparedness. He has called in all the chief executives of area hospitals to make sure they have disaster plans to cope with bioterrorism. Paramedics and emergency rooms now monitor patients for any symptoms of smallpox or anthrax, which are regarded as the most likely biological weapons.