Elected Officials

New laws passed by the Maryland General Assembly late last week would put stricter penalties and an element of public shaming behind the state's open-meetings laws. State lawmakers said public officials have been able to flout the rules without significant consequences. "It has no enforcement whatsoever," said Del. Dan Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the bill to toughen open-meetings laws. "This is the first bill that actually creates some enforcement. " Maryland's public officials are barred from conducting public business behind closed doors, but the penalties for doing so in the past have been a rarely levied fine and a written notice that Morhaim said was often ignored.

WASHINGTON -- We tend to think of democracy as a static thing -- we call it a ''form of government'' in school, or we say with pride, ''I live in a democracy.''But democracy is not a mountain or a machine; it's a living idea, an attitude of mind, a spiritual testament. It grows, as it grew with the nation and stretched across the seas through the influence of our example.The question becomes: Is our democracy responding, honestly and creatively, to the fears and the aspirations of most families?

The recent dismissal of Taneytown town manager Joseph A. Mangini is symptomatic of the tension that has been building between the part-time elected officials and the full-time appointed managers in Carroll County's towns.Just look at Manchester, where relations between the town manager and town council have been rocky for months. Or over in New Windsor, where the clerk-treasurer, who had 45 years of service and acted as the town manager, was replaced due to differences with the newly elected mayor.

Taneytown City Council is scheduled to vote next month on an increase in salaries for the mayor and council elected next year.A vote on proposals to increase the mayor's compensation from $2,400 to $4,800 a year and council members' pay from $30 per meeting to $1,800 a year is scheduled April 13. The council will meet at 7: 30 p.m. in the city office, 17 E. Baltimore St.A staff study of elected officials' salaries in comparable municipalities showed that...

The Baltimore City Council passed a bill yesterday that would retroactively reduce the required marriage period to one year for surviving spouses to collect benefits from the Elected Officials Retirement System.Until now, widows and widowers had to be married to a Baltimore elected official for five years. Joanna Sorensen Myers, who was married to former City Councilman William J. Myers of South Baltimore for a little more than four years before he died while in office on Jan. 6, 1990, was ineligible.

Westminster City Council President William F. Haifley plans to propose tonight that the city reimburse council members who spend their own money on government business.Mr. Haifley also plans to ask his colleagues to consider writing rules to govern reimbursement both for elected officials and for city employees, who currently are repaid for expenses on government business, but without a formal policy.The council will meet at 7 p.m. at City Hall."At the present time, the city doesn't have any rules and regulations on what types of expenses can be reimbursed," Mr. Haifley said.

Federal prosecutors examining the Baltimore City Council's financial and political dealings have postponed grand jury testimony from the elected officials that was scheduled for this month and next, according to sources familiar with the probe. It is unclear whether all 19 council members have been subpoenaed to testify, or whether any of the elected officials have appeared before the grand jury. U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio subpoenaed the entire council last fall for five years of documents detailing their finances and relations with certain businesses, according to copies of the subpoenas obtained by The Sun. Since then, council members have been given no indication about what DiBiagio is pursuing.

Michael Dresser got it right in describing the trajectory of the Baltimore school facilities bill as going from "non-starter to law," but the story goes far beyond the elected and appointed officials who worked hard to make the deals and shepherd the legislation to passage ("City schools bill a political showpiece," May 17). The deeper story must include the herculean efforts of the Baltimore Education Coalition (BEC), the innovative policy advocacy work done by the ACLU of Maryland and the powerful community organizing of groups like BUILD and Child First.

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

The County Council has decided to fix the financially troubled pension fund for elected and appointed officials by switching, at the recommendation of the Pension Oversight Commission, to a plan that pays benefits based on employee contributions rather than years of service.The commission, a panel of citizens and representatives of county employee unions, had earlier recommended approval of a plan devised by County Executive Robert R. Neall that would have merged the plan for elected and appointed officials with the financially healthy fund for general county employees.