Lame Duck

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens has begun a statewide search for a new fire chief, but her lame-duck status might severely limit the applicants, industry experts said yesterday. As the search started, ousted chief Roger C. Simonds began his final two weeks and issued his first public statement since the county executive asked for his resignation Friday. "While I may have been portrayed as a renegade, I have seen my position as a strong leader representing the best interest of the men and women of the Anne Arundel County Fire Department and the citizens of Anne Arundel County," he said in a written statement.

The City Council wants Baltimore to know that it's still on the job. Honest. With three council members voted out of office in last week's primary, four others giving up their seats, and the general election to replace them more than a year away, there's a lot of talk about lame ducks. And City Council President Sheila Dixon wants it to stop. She called a news conference yesterday to trumpet something that, in a normal election cycle, is a given: The council is doing its job. "This is not a lame-duck council," Dixon said.

So much for the revolution. In the first election since a referendum passed in November forced a kicking-and-screaming City Council to shrink and reorganize, incumbents held off all underdog challengers. But it will hardly be business as usual at City Hall. The general election that follows Tuesday's primary won't occur for more than a year, leaving winners and losers alike in a long political limbo. It will be an interregnum with lame ducks and a shadow council. Two primary winners plan to set up district offices and handle constituent concerns, no matter that 15 months and a general election stand between them and swearing-in.

Martin O'Malley, the young mayor who urged Baltimore to believe in him and itself, easily defeated a high school principal in a Democratic primary yesterday that also gave a victory to City Council President Sheila Dixon and created some long- term lame ducks on a revamped council. In declaring victory, O'Malley invoked a football great and a famous abolitionist to urge Baltimoreans to have faith that the city can overcome its many problems. "We are still the hopeful people that Johnny Unitas and Frederick Douglass loved."

Martin O'Malley, the young mayor who urged Baltimore to believe in him and itself, easily defeated a high school principal in a Democratic primary yesterday that also gave a victory to City Council President Sheila Dixon and created some long- term lame ducks on a revamped council. In declaring victory, O'Malley invoked a football great and a famous abolitionist to urge Baltimoreans to have faith that the city can overcome its many problems. "We are still the hopeful people that Johnny Unitas and Frederick Douglass loved.

The Carroll commissioners decided yesterday not to reverse a series of zoning changes approved by their predecessors, saying they believed the decisions were ill-conceived but that overturning them would be unfair to property owners and possibly invite lawsuits. The vote ended a process that saw landowners wait two years to secure the zoning changes, which will open nine parcels around the county to commercial and industrial use, and then become enraged when the new board of commissioners called those changes back into question last month.

The lawsuit filed by Anne Arundel County Republicans late last week accusing Democratic legislators of wresting control of the House delegation is the latest flare-up of tensions between the two parties, even as the newly configured delegation prepares for the 2003 General Assembly that begins Wednesday. Acting on a promise made a month ago, the county GOP filed a lawsuit in Circuit Court on Friday accusing local Democrats of taking an illegal vote and setting new rules to dilute GOP leadership.

GOV. PARRIS N. Glendening certainly is intent on going out in style. Unfortunately, it's his own style. In his final weeks - as he leaves office with a projected budget deficit of $1.8 billion - Mr. Glendening is angling to increase that shortfall by $100 million by promising pay raises to about 36,000 state employees. It's hard not to see his motivations as mostly about politics, not good policy. From that standpoint, the proposed pay hikes are a lovely thing, at once further cementing Mr. Glendening's ties to organized labor and enabling him to stick it to Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who will be the state's first Republican governor in 36 years and who has now been put in the position of denying state workers more money.

The Anne Arundel County Republican Central Committee has voted unanimously to appoint a task force to investigate the legality of a recent vote by the county's House delegation to allow full voting rights to three nonresident representatives from Prince George's County - all of whom are Democrats. The delegation decided the matter in a split vote at a meeting Monday. The move infuriated Republicans who wanted to take back control of the delegation's chairman and vice chairman positions.

The next test is supposed to be everything its much-maligned predecessor was not. The new Maryland School Assessment will provide a score for each individual student. The old Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, or MSPAP, gave only schoolwide scores and gave little hint as to how pupils matched up against their peers elsewhere. Though still under development, the next generation of exams is expected to be administered in much less time than the MSPAP, scored more quickly and be easier to grade objectively.