Elected Officials

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. officials have agreed to stop cutting trees along Cromwell Bridge Road until an independent contractor assesses the project's environmental impact, according to a county councilman who met with representatives of the utility. The project, which involves removing all trees from a 66-foot-wide swath along a three-mile stretch of the road, was halted last week after residents and elected officials expressed concerns about erosion and damage to a nearby stream.

Believe it or not, Congress actually needs more people like Sen. Trent Lott, who announced his retirement Monday. The glib Mississippi Republican is a seersucker-loving Southerner whose conservative political views couldn't get him elected in Philadelphia to a seat on Traffic Court. But he brought a quality to Congress that more lawmakers need: He got things done. Few elected officials in the last 35 years have shown more flexibility than Mr. Lott to work with the opposing party. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Nancy S. Grasmick, one of Maryland's most tenacious political survivors, won't be evicted easily from the Nancy S. Grasmick Building. With a combination of sterling professional credentials and shrewd political maneuvering, the nation's longest- serving state schools superintendent has managed to hang on to her office under four governors. Yesterday, the State Board of Education gave her the glimmer of a chance she might serve under a fifth. It awarded Grasmick, 68, a new four-year contract that would keep her in her job until after the 2010 gubernatorial election - if she can hold on. The board acted in brash defiance of the state's three most powerful elected officials - Gov. Martin O'Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch.

Spurred by a viewing of Al Gore's documentary movie about global warming and a pep talk from County Executive Ken Ulman, Howard leaders are setting out to make the county a national model for progressive environmental practices. "It's really going to take us all working together to make a difference," Ulman told more than 100 leaders from his administration, county schools, Howard Community College, the Columbia Association and private groups - as well as other elected officials - at a screening of the movie An Inconvenient Truth that he arranged.

Ignoring evidence that pollution in Greater Baltimore is over federal limits, regional planners decided yesterday to press forward with road projects based on outdated 1990 traffic data.If approved by federal officials, the move would erase the threat of delays for several important road projects -- including those for the new Arundel Mills shopping mall off Route 100 and the General Motors Corp. plant under construction in White Marsh.But citizen groups denounced the planners' decision as unethical.

City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III proposed yesterday a 10 percent increase in the salaries of Baltimore's top elected officials in hopes of staving off a larger increase down the road for the next mayor.Bell, who has expressed a strong interest in becoming mayor, said the city's elected officials should receive pay increases no higher than those given to rank-and-file municipal employees -- about 10 percent over the past four years."The most important thing about leadership is leadership by example," Bell said.

With hundreds of homes, businesses and offices planned for southern Howard County in the next decade, county and state officials reassured residents and elected officials last night that area sewage treatment plants can handle the growth.County public works officials explained their options, which include a $32 million expansion of the Little Patuxent sewage treatment plant in Savage by 2002, at an hourlong meeting in Ellicott City's George Howard Building.About 25 people attended the meeting requested by two Democratic elected officials -- state Del. Shane Pendergrass and County Councilman Guy J. Guzzone.

NAACP: Praise for Owens, but not McMillanOn behalf of the Anne Arundel County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, I would like to thank County Executive Janet S. Owens for vetoing the police hiring bill.We would also like to thank her for her strong support of Carl O. Snowden, her intergovernmental relations specialist. Ms. Owens was correct in defending Mr. Snowden from partisan Republican attacks.The NAACP, along with the United Black Clergy, Operation Respect and literally every major African American organization in the county, has expressed our opposition to another bill that was introduced before the Annapolis City Council by Alderman Herbert McMillan.

Citizen groups are challenging a committee of top local elected officials who reportedly met in private last weekend to make a controversial decision endorsing new road projects.They alleged in a complaint filed yesterday with the state's Open Meetings Law Compliance Board that the gathering violated state law."It's hard for the public to have an influence on decisions that affect their quality of life when you have back-room deals," said Jamie Kendrick of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, which filed the complaint.

BETHESDA -- Stung by a recent defection and facing a Democratic fund-raising juggernaut, Maryland Republican Party officials turned their attention yesterday to next year's presidential election for possible rejuvenation.At a gathering of about 200 at the party's fall convention, leaders said a Republican victory in 2000 would create momentum for GOP candidates in state elections two years later."The hope is if we elect a Republican president next year, that will help our fund raising and allow us to get a strong message out in 2002," said Sen. Martin G. Madden, the GOP leader in the state Senate.

Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney was right to reject the attempt by Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's attorneys to throw out perjury charges against her through an overly expansive interpretation of the legal principle that protects her legislative acts from prosecution. The notion that votes and debate, specifically, would be exempt from prosecution speaks to our values about the separation of powers in government. But the idea that any act Ms. Dixon commits while an elected official - standing at a ribbon-cutting, for example - should be exempt would eliminate any possibility that she or any other politician could be held to a standard of ethics.

Having county-supplied instant-message cell phones has sped up constituent responses, but it has also made life tougher for Howard County Council members, several told a citizens committee considering salaries for elected officials. "If I don't look at this before noon," Ellicott City Democrat Courtney Watson told the Compensation Commission members as she showed her BlackBerry, "I'll have 30 e-mails on it. That's a hard part of this job. You're getting hit from all sides." Watson also works full time at an insurance agency and has three children.

When discussing the firing of Maryland Public Defender Nancy S. Forster, let's be clear about a few things. This is not one of those "personnel matters" that is off limits to inquiry. Indeed, when a dedicated public servant charged with protecting poor people's liberty is summarily dismissed, we must demand that our elected officials and community scrutinize carefully what happened. Nor is this a story, as has been portrayed, solely about the action taken by the two governor-appointed trustees, Wray McCurdy and Margaret Mead (the third appointee, Theresa Moore, dissented)

That politically ticklish subject of how much elected officials should be paid is surfacing again, as the Howard County Council prepares to approve a charter-required seven-member Compensation Review Commission to study the issue and make recommendations by Dec. 15. The County Council will then vote on salaries for the next county executive and council, starting in December 2010. Currently, County Executive Ken Ulman and all five council members are expected to run for re-election, so they will have to be careful, since the issue will be voted on just as the election year begins.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon received $400 worth of tennis clothes, City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake attended nearly a dozen balls and Councilman James B. Kraft has some new tools. This peek into the tastes and habits of the city's elected officials comes from the annual financial disclosure forms that they had to submit at the end of last month. Disclosure (or nondisclosure) of gifts is at the heart of the corruption cases brought this year by the state prosecutor's office against Dixon and Councilwoman Helen Holton.

Mary Crawford's husband fired a rifle at her chest. Janet Blackburn's sister, niece and two nephews were killed by an abuser. Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown's cousin was shot to death by her estranged boyfriend. The three of them - and a dozen police officers, elected officials and domestic violence specialists - testified yesterday in Annapolis about two initiatives that would take firearms out of the hands of suspected abusers. "These bills do in fact save lives," Brown said. He told lawmakers the story of his cousin, Catherine Brown, a first-grade teacher who was killed last summer at her home days before school was to begin.

The federal agency that regulates energy approved a proposal yesterday to build a natural gas terminal on the site of the former Sparrows Point shipyard in eastern Baltimore County, rejecting nearly three years' worth of opposition from area elected officials and the project's would-be neighbors. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission acted on the proposal - which also includes construction of an 88-mile pipeline to Pennsylvania - despite calls from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Maryland's congressional delegation to postpone the vote.

Unlike county elected officials who recently received automatic raises, state legislators have not had a pay increase since the 2006 election. Still, they're being asked to make a sacrifice just the same. State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch have asked General Assembly members to give up a slice of their annual pay as a gesture of solidarity with state workers, who face two to five days of unpaid furlough as a cost-cutting measure. Elected officials can't be furloughed, and also can't change their annual pay while in office.

In yesterday's warmish temperatures, the fur coat stayed home, or at least was not on mayoral display. So it conceivably could have looked even worse when Mayor Sheila Dixon set out to defend an increase in her own salary, even as she's ordering cutbacks in spending and services throughout the city. Appearances, as our famously well-attired mayor obviously knows, matter. But how on earth do you dress up a 2.5 pay increase for the mayor, the City Council and the comptroller at a time when throughout the city businesses are failing, people are losing their jobs and no one knows who or what is next to go?

Baltimore officials quietly granted pay raises to Mayor Sheila Dixon, Comptroller Joan M. Pratt, City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake and other council members last month, increasing politician salaries at a time when leaders are freezing pay for midlevel managers and slashing overtime for police officers and firefighters. The raises were approved without discussion at a Nov. 26 meeting of the city Board of Estimates. Dixon, Pratt and Rawlings-Blake sit on the five-person panel, and each abstained from voting on her own salary.