New Mayor

WHAT a difference a new mayor can make. When Baltimore's new chief executive, Martin O'Malley visited Annapolis recently, he and Gov. Parris N. Glendening quickly reached consensus on the city's most pressing concerns.Need money to fight crime? No problem.Want funds to put computers and technology in city school classrooms? Happy to oblige.How about cash to unclog the city's courts, beef up the state's attorney's office and add drug treatment slots? Sure thing.These two are on the same wave length.

Race Street runs through the center of Cambridge, and for much of the town's history, it was a physical as well as a symbolic divide: Whites lived on one side, blacks kept to the other. That is why the election this week of Victoria Jackson-Stanley, a 54-year-old social worker, as Cambridge's first black mayor marks a historic turning point for the town that's just a few miles from Harriet Tubman's birthplace. In 1967, Cambridge's biggest employer was a canning factory and segregation was a fact of life despite Congress' passage of landmark civil rights legislation earlier in the decade.

In a surprising rout, challenger David R. Craig yesterday defeated incumbent Philip J. Barker in the mayoral election in Havre de Grace. In a crowded hallway at Havre de Grace High School, local election official Kenneth Lay announced to a large crowd last night: "Mayor Barker, 695 votes; Mr. Craig, 1,407." Members of the crowd gasped, many in delight, as Craig, a middle school assistant principal and a former mayor, more than doubled the incumbent's results. Barker appeared shocked.

Three months after taking office, Martin O'Malley has found his voice, and it is angry and exasperated, and thus echoes those who voted him into City Hall. He is saying, at long last: We should not have to live like war combatants in the city of Baltimore. For this, he is catching all manner of flak. He has declared himself "nauseated" by judges and prosecutors who have been sleepwalking through a descent into criminal justice hell but somehow pronounce themselves satisfied with modest progress.

Governor, legislators should better support community colleges I have been reading with great interest The Sun's articles concerning funding for improvements needed at Maryland's community colleges, and particularly at the Community Colleges of Baltimore County ("Colleges need costly repair, report says," Dec. 25 and "State funds sought for community colleges," Dec. 28). Their point that the community college's value as a resource to our county and the state's economy often go unrecognized is absolutely on the mark.

MAYBE she was doing some long-range campaigning for mayor, but give Joan Pratt, the city comptroller, a few points for sticking up for Baltimore taxpayers the other day. When the new mayor, Martin O'Malley, came rushing into his first Board of Estimates meeting, hot to seal a deal with the Cordish Co. for rejuvenation of the city-owned Brokerage complex, Pratt held up her hands. The late Hyman Pressman, the old City Hall watchdog, would have been proud.All Pratt wanted was time -- a week for city perusal of a complicated deal.

The Aberdeen board of commissioners has voted itself out of existence and will be replaced next year by a mayor and city council.The five-member board unanimously approved a charter amendment Monday that would transform the Town of Aberdeen into a city governed by an elected mayor and a four-member council in its centennial year.The commissioners will serve until the election in May, when voters will choose their first mayor and two council members.The other council seats would be filled in a 1993 election, allowing commissioners Macon Tucker and Ronald Kupferman to serve out their two-year terms.

As the city teeters under prodigious budget shortfalls, raising property taxes might appear to be a tempting option for the new mayor. But nothing could be more harmful to the city, said Baltimore-based economist Anirban Basu. "Any increase to the city's tax rate would accelerate the exodus of taxpayers from Baltimore City and damage the city's ability to sustain its tax base," said Basu, the chief executive of Sage Policy Group, an economic and consulting firm. Rather, Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake must make painful cuts to services - downsizing city government at all levels - and generate revenue by creating a land bank to expedite the sale of vacant properties, Basu said.

A s the daughter of a renowned state legislator and a member of the Baltimore City Council for nearly her entire adult life, Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake has seen the city transform in the hands of numerous leaders. On Feb. 4, when she is sworn in as the city's 49th mayor, she gets her own chance to shepherd the city into a new era. A falling homicide rate, rising public school enrollments and a flourishing arts scene bring hope for brighter times, but Rawlings-Blake inherits a city beset by a colossal budget crisis, vacancies at the top of key agencies and a murder rate still among the highest in the nation.