Elizabeth Bobo

In a first prompted by a slumping economy, the county firefighters union will endorse candidates in the Nov. 6 general election.The endorsement of incumbent Elizabeth Bobo for county executive marks the first time that the Howard County Professional Firefighters Association has taken a side in a political race."

Despite the clouds and drizzle, Del. Elizabeth Bobo's annual free picnic Sunday in Cedar Lane Park drew her usual big crowd of over 200, including U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin and U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, who both praised her years of service and urged Democrats to turn out in force this year. But Alan Klein, the insurgent Democrat Bobo is backing to replace county councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, got the biggest cheer when she merely introduced him and other elected officials and candidates in attendance.

175-108 INTERSECTION IS FAILURE IN PLANNINGFrom: Scott FoersterColumbiaHere's Bobo's latest boo-boo:Route 175 is one of the major entrances to Columbia and Howard County from Interstate 95. The first traffic light coming off I-95 toward Columbia is Route 108. You need to know that (County Executive M.) Elizabeth Bobo has decided that this intersection will fail. Fail means something worse than the Route 29 and Owen Brown intersection problems of the last decade.Fail means traffic backing up more than a couple of lights in all directions during morning rush hour.

Both Del. Elizabeth Bobo and Howard County Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty decisively won their West Columbia Democratic primaries, despite their sharply divergent views on the much debated renewal plan for central Columbia. Virtually complete, if unofficial returns showed Bobo won the Democratic nomination for her seat with 82 percent of the vote, and Sigaty got 62.5 percent of the vote in her Council District 4 race. The results showed that many voters picked both popular incumbents, and did not vote on the Columbia issue.

Here's a wrap-up of the top stories of 1990 and the issue of The Howard County Sun in which they appeared:January3 -- County Executive M. Elizabeth Bobo releases a no-surprises preliminary 20-year county General Plan.7 -- Redistricting of boundary lines could affect 1,000 elementary schools pupils who may have to attend different schools to balance enrollment. . . . Criticism of Bobo's General Plan comes from all sides. .. . The Morning Star Taxi Service, an upscale, "yuppie-style" county cab company, folds after three years.

County Executive Charles I. Ecker last week answered some humbling letters from school children. One began, "Dear Madam"; another started, "Dear Elizabeth Bobo."Ecker, who for years was deputy superintendent of schools here, could take consolation in the fact that the letters were from outside Howard County. The news that he had defeated former County Executive Elizabeth Bobo last November may not have traveled past the county's borders.It was Vanessa Plummer of Gaithersburg who wrote the "Dear Madam"letter.

County Executive-elect Charles I. Ecker said yesterday that campaign adviser Beverly Marsh Wilhide will stay on as his administrative assistant.Wilhide, a prominent Ellicott City businesswoman who served as president of both the county Chamber of Commerce and a business and civic coalition called the Economic Forum, has been working since the election as co-chairman of Ecker's 98-member transition team.Both of the administrative assistants of County Executive M. Elizabeth Bobo -- Althea "Tee" O'Connor and Grace Kubofcik -- have resigned their $59,934-a-year jobs as of Monday (Dec.

County Executive Charles I. Ecker spent $6 per vote in his successful re-election bid, compared with the 88 cents per vote spent by his Democratic opponent, the latest campaign records show.And those papers show that Mr. Ecker, who defeated Susan B. Gray by a 2-to-1 margin Nov. 8, raised twice as much in the two weeks before the election -- $43,246 -- as Ms. Gray raised during the entire campaign.That last-minute flurry of contributions -- many from out of state -- ended the most expensive electoral season in county history.

The long battle over First Baptist Church of Guilford's expansion plans has taken another turn, with the church withdrawing its court appeal of a county administrative decision rejecting the original expansion proposal.Church officials say they believe they can win county administrative approval of a scaled-back expansion plan, although some area residents remain opposed.Lawyers representing the church went to court in March after the Howard County Board of Appeals dismissed the church's plan for constructing a 2,000-seat sanctuary, a 636-space parking lot and a 34,000 square-foot-community center on 8.5 acres at Guilford and Oakland Mills roads.

Republican state Sen. Sandra B. Schrader held on to her seat by the narrowest of margins last night in a pivotal race for party control against veteran Councilman C. Vernon Gray. Schrader was 2 percentage points ahead with all 40 precincts reporting, a difference of 732 votes. The race pitted Howard County's first female state senator against a man who would have been the county's first African-American in that office. Schrader, who was appointed to her seat in January when Martin G. Madden resigned and had never run for office, faced a tough battle from Gray, a Columbia Democrat with 20 years' experience on the County Council who had never lost an election.

The political fight over plans to redevelop downtown Columbia bubbled up at an annual school board breakfast with county and state legislators, prompted by Del. Elizabeth Bobo, a critic of the project. With Alan Klein, her favored candidate for County Council in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary watching quietly, Bobo asked why the board is considering a school site in Elkridge as part of a rezoning while not reserving a site for a possible new school for the proposed 30-year Columbia redevelopment.

A passionate, cheering, standing-room-only crowd of more than 260 people gathered in Harper's Choice on Tuesday night at a primary candidates forum, putting the simmering differences among West Columbia Democrats into sharp relief. Partisans at the event at Kahler Hall seemed to compete to be the loudest as District 4 County Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty and Alan Klein debated, along with veteran Del. Elizabeth Bobo and John Bailey, her challenger in District 12b. The fault line, as usual, was the view of the 30-year downtown Columbia redevelopment plan.

Democrat Alan Klein received some significant support Tuesday as Del. Elizabeth Bobo formally endorsed his primary challenge to incumbent Mary Kay Sigaty for a seat on the Howard County Council. The Sept. 14 primary contest in West Columbia's District 4 race is the latest fallout from the County Council's February approval of new zoning to allow the three-decade redevelopment of downtown Columbia, which Bobo represents in the Maryland House of Delegates. The announcement, made to reporters over iced tea on the quiet deck of Bobo's Columbia home, formalized the support she acknowledged she'd been giving Klein all along.

Matt Farrragut of Harper's Choice likes his county councilwoman, Mary Kay Sigaty, and his state delegate, Elizabeth Bobo, both of whom are running for re-election in Howard County's only two Democratic primaries, in districts that overlap across much of West Columbia. But Sigaty and Bobo disagree on one of the biggest issues in the area: the 30-year downtown Columbia redevelopment plan. Farrragut, 29, declined to discuss it. "I don't want to get into the downtown," Farragut, a professional landscaper and son of former County Councilman Paul Farragut, said after a fond greeting and chat with Sigaty as she knocked on doors in Hickory Ridge on a recent Saturday.

S tate legislation this year to make referendum petition drives easier would likely get support from six General Assembly members from Howard County who appeared at a League of Women Voters luncheon, though only one legislator said she'd favor making any change retroactive. Del. Elizabeth Bobo said she'd favor retroactivity in answer to a question from Marc Norman, a Turf Valley development critic whose attempt to recall a County Council zoning change allowing a larger supermarket there was disqualified last year by the county election board.

Republican state Sen. Sandra B. Schrader held on to her seat by the narrowest of margins last night in a pivotal race for party control against veteran Councilman C. Vernon Gray. Schrader was 2 percentage points ahead with all 40 precincts reporting, a difference of 732 votes. The race pitted Howard County's first female state senator against a man who would have been the county's first African-American in that office. Schrader, who was appointed to her seat in January when Martin G. Madden resigned and had never run for office, faced a tough battle from Gray, a Columbia Democrat with 20 years' experience on the County Council who had never lost an election.

Both Del. Elizabeth Bobo and Howard County Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty appear to have won their West Columbia Democratic primaries, according to early returns. "I would have liked to have seen Alan win, and he didn't," Bobo said about Alan Klein, the man she had supported in his bid to unseat Sigaty over their dissatisfaction with the plan to redevelop central Columbia over the next three decades. "I thought he had a reasonable chance," Bobo said after arriving at Democratic headquarters in East Columbia shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday.