Lobbyist

Your May 17 editorial, "What happened to city school reform?" seriously distorts facts as they relate to House Bill 608 and the withholding of current year state aid from Baltimore schools. In reality, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has consistently opposed this legislation. At no point did he ever agree to the bill or, as you asserted, recant such an agreement.I sat in on the meeting between the mayor, the governor, Sen. Barbara Hoffman, Del. Howard Rawlings and others and I know the city did not agree to House Bill 608 in any form.

ANNAPOLIS -- The last time Victor L. Crawford, a tall, patrician former state senator, testified before the General Assembly here, he was working for the tobacco industry and tried to kill a bill that would have hurt cigarette sales.Yesterday, gaunt and wearing a wig to hide the baldness caused by his cancer treatments, Mr. Crawford told a surprised panel of lawmakers: "I deserve to pay the piper."Mr. Crawford, who smoked heavily until he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in 1991, said he now regrets working as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, and he pleaded with legislators to quickly endorse a statewide ban on smoking in the workplace.

With the health care war intensifying at every level, Maryland's doctors have moved once again to bolster their lobbying corps in Annapolis.Always among the most powerful and well-financed of Maryland's interest groups, the 6,000-member state medical association -- known officially as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty -- announced yesterday that it has added Joseph A. "Jay" Schwartz III to its team.A Baltimore lawyer, Mr. Schwartz is a graduate of Notre Dame and the University of Virginia Law School.

For the Jack Abramoff biopic, "Casino Jack," how difficult was it for John David Whalen to get into the heart and head of K Street lobbyist Kevin Ring? The Baltimore-born actor explained Wednesday that it wasn't all that hard. In an ensemble filled with master manipulators and scam artists from Kevin Spacey's Abramoff on down, "Kevin Ring's the innocent, the ingenue, the guy who goes along — he is not headstrong, not greedy, not a mover or shaker. " Director George Hickenlooper included this junior member of Abramoff's team in his cast of tainted characters only after he and screenwriter Norman Snider interviewed Ring about the Abramoff fraud and corruption scandal.

I SEE BY the papers where Gerry Evans, formerly Gerry Millionaire, the well-paid Annapolis lobbyist who went to federal prison for fraud, is back - and he's representing the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, which very much supports the legalization of slot machines here. Isn't that nice? The horse people gave Gerry new life in straight time. Beautiful. A prominent Maryland lobbyist can concoct a scheme to force his clients to pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary fees to head off what he purports to be harmful legislation.

Annapolis lobbyist Bruce C. Bereano, who was convicted of mail fraud Wednesday, will not be allowed to continue teaching his popular legislative seminar at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore.Associate Dean Mark Sargent told Bereano's 20 to 25 students last night that the law school believed it was "severely inappropriate" for Bereano to continue teaching the seminar.Initially, Mr. Sargent said the law school and Bereano had agreed that "as long as he had not been convicted he would be given the presumption of innocence to which he is entitled."

U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson set a May 15 trial date yesterday for Del. Tony E. Fulton, a West Baltimore Democrat, and Annapolis lobbyist Gerard E. Evans on charges of defrauding clients of Evans' paint and asbestos company. The federal mail and wire fraud charges stem from an alleged scheme in which Fulton talked about proposing legislation that could have cost Evans' clients millions of dollars. By threatening to introduce the bills, Fulton helped Evans drive up his lobbying fees, prosecutors charge.

A Las Vegas-based casino company that is scouting sites in Baltimore has fired its Maryland lobbyist for suggesting the state might allow destination-resort casinos. The lobbyist, Michael Gisriel, told The Sun that he believed there was a chance full-scale casinos could emerge from the coming legislative session despite opposition from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and House and Senate leaders. Ameristar Executive Vice President Gordon R. Kanofsky said in a letter to those officials that "Mr. Gisriel was not authorized to make these statements to the media on behalf of Ameristar Casinos.

Angrily defending his integrity, the chairman of a state Senate health subcommittee interrupted a public hearing yesterday to accuse a lobbyist for the state medical society of spreading malicious information about him.Sen. Larry Young also strongly criticized The Sun, which published an editorial yesterday that said the Baltimore Democrat has conflicts of interest that raise questions about whether he will act in the public's behalf in Annapolis.In an interview later, Mr. Young accused the newspaper of racism.

ANNAPOLIS -- To land Maryland's lucrative lottery computer contract, the GTECH Corp. of Rhode Island seems to have decided, "You've got to pay to win."GTECH paid Annapolis lobbyist Bruce C. Bereano perhaps the largest fee any company ever paid a legislative lobbyist in Annapolis during a six-month reporting period: $93,000.And the investment paid off. The company won a $64 million contract from the Maryland State Lottery Agency, at the same time taking the business away from its computer industry rival, Control Data Corp.