Reappointment

The Board of Education is studying whether to reappoint School Superintendent Ray R. Keech.Keech informed the board Dec. 20 that he wants to serve another four years after his current term expires July 1.The 55-year-old administrator is paid $92,794.Under the county charter, the board must complete a review of Keech's performance byFeb. 1."I see no reason why he wouldn't be reappointed," board president George Lisby said. "The things he's been doing are the things that we've asked him to do."

Three new members have been named to the Baltimore County school board, and another member has been reappointed, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Monday. Marisol A. Johnson, a State Farm insurance agent, will replace Cornelia Bright Gordon, who has served on the board since 2011. Edward J. Gilliss, a former county attorney and a partner with the Towson law firm Royston, Mueller, McLean & Reid, will replace Valerie Roddy, whose term ends this month. He is chairman of the county planning board.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said yesterday that he was appointing Gen. Colin L. Powell to a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dismissing speculation that he was unhappy with his top military adviser, who initially advocated a go-slow policy in the Persian Gulf.Mr. Bush's reappointment of General Powell, while not surprising, also underscored the president's intention to keep Vice President Dan Quayle on the ticket in 1992.The new term would begin Oct. 1 and is subject to Senate confirmation.

Baltimore County school board President Earnest A. Hines said Tuesday that he is contesting a decision by Gov. Martin O'Malley to remove him from the board June 30, a year before he believes his term is ending. O'Malley's staff informed two Baltimore County school board members, including Hines, that they will not be reappointed to the board in July. "That was what I was informed of [Monday]. It was the first I heard of it," Hines said. Hines had believed, however, that even if he wasn't given another five-year term that he would remain on the board for the next year, a crucial time because school Superintendent Joe A. Hairston's contract expires in a year.

THE ROAD TO HELL is paved with good intentions. That trite homily must be applied to the misguided attempt of City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III to stop the reappointment of Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III.There was good reason for the council not to confirm the reappointment of Mr. Henson. Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke ought to have provided the council a report on a multitude of problems within Mr. Henson's department, including several cases in which housing inspectors have been allowed to abuse their positions of authority.

DESPITE SOME COMPLAINTS, there did not seem to be sufficient reason to deny another 15-year term to two veterans of Baltimore City's Circuit Court, Judges Kenneth Lavon Johnson and John Carroll Byrnes. But whatever the discomfort for the two judges, reports that the city's judicial nominating commission was scrutinizing the performance of both men -- and that the possibility existed they could be denied a reappointment -- was a refreshing change from the days when citizens felt they had no way of holding judges accountable.

The Baltimore City Council will vote today on the reconfirmation of Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III -- just two weeks after Mr. Henson was involved in a contentious council hearing on his performance.Though the council is likely to reconfirm Mr. Henson as head of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and the Department of Housing and Community Development, Mr. Henson's critics have tried to make his reconfirmation difficult.The five-member Executive Appointments Committee, responsible for making a recommendation to the council on reconfirmation, is expected to vote 3-2 against Mr. Henson's reappointment, according to council members.

THE REAPPOINTMENT of Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III should not be confirmed until the mayor investigates incidents in which certain housing officials have ignored the very laws the public entrusts them to uphold.Conflicts of interest are bound to arise when city policy allows these officials to own slum dwellings that their own department is supposed to inspect. But when they also ignore or quash citations to repair these properties, this is an abuse of power that demands an outside investigation by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.

William A. Fogle, secretary of the Department of Licensing and Regulation, confirmed yesterday that John H. Mosner Jr. and Ordell Braase have been reappointed by Gov. William Donald Schaefer to three-year terms on the Maryland Racing Commission.Schaefer first appointed Mosner to the board in 1987. It is the second reappointment for Braase. He was originally named to the nine-man board by former Gov. Harry Hughes in 1984.Schaefer is expected to name a new chairman of the commission to replace its current head, Dr. Ernest Colvin.

William A. "Pete" Welch Jr., convicted last year of firing a handgun during a post-election dispute, has been reappointed to the Baltimore liquor board. Welch's reappointment was announced yesterday in the General Assembly as part of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's "green-bag" patronage appointments to various positions statewide. Sen. Clarence W. Blount, a powerful West Baltimore Democrat, sponsored Welch's reappointment. "He got into a little difficulty, but it didn't have anything to do with his job and the office he occupies," Blount said of Welch.

Kevin Millwood figured as much. His first 2 1/2 months in an Orioles uniform have been dominated by defensive gaffes, poor run support, some recent bad pitching and, of course, a lot of regrettable losses. So as he sat in the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park on Saturday night to watch the ninth inning and resisted the urge to join his teammates in the dugout, Millwood had one prevailing thought. "I definitely didn't think it was going to be easy, by any means," he said. Boy, was he right.

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to approve a new four-year contract for Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell, keeping the leader of the state's fifth largest school system in place four more years. Maxwell's new contact pays the superintendent $257,000 annually and calls for the board to contribute $20,000 each year to a retirement fund, an increase over his current $238,703 annual salary. The contact doesn't contain automatic salary increases, but gives the board the option of awarding a pay increase or bonus based upon performance.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake have announced the appointment of a new member to the city school board and the reappointments of two others, returning the panel to its full complement of nine members for the first time since June. Working from a list of applicants generated by the state board of education, O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake announced Thursday the addition of Lisa Akchin, the head of marketing and public relations at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the reappointments of members Jerrelle Francois and Maxine J. Wood, both of whose terms were set to expire.

The movement to alter or defeat a zoning bill intended to create a way to redevelop ailing Columbia village centers got an unexpected boost when the county Planning Board chairman revealed Monday night that he opposes the measure. The five-member board had split 2-2 on the issue March 23, passing the zoning bill on to the Howard County Council without a recommendation. David Grabowski, an Elkridge resident with a background in construction, had been out of town that night and Vice Chairman Gary Rosenbaum said he forgot to make a prearranged call to get the chairman's vote.

A former Baltimore school board member got his old position back in an appointment announced yesterday by Mayor Sheila Dixon and Gov. Martin O'Malley. David Stone, 45, served on the board from 2002 to 2004, when he resigned to work as the school system's director of new and charter schools. He left the system last year to become director of special-education operations for Kennedy Krieger Institute, working in the division that provides services and runs a school for children with disabilities.

Thanks to a new law, the Anne Arundel County Board of Education will grow this week. Gov. Martin O'Malley recently appointed Teresa Birge, a part-time accountant from Seven Oaks, to represent state legislative District 32, bumping up the size of the board from eight members to nine. Until this year, Districts 21 and 32 shared a seat on the board. He also reappointed board president Tricia Johnson of Davidsonville to serve a second five-year term in the at-large seat, while Collin Wojciechowski, a senior at Chesapeake High School, will serve one year as the student representative on the board.

The City Council reappointed two members of the city's parks and recreation board and appointed one new member.At its regular meetingMonday night, the council approved returning Jay Voight and James Young and also added new member Thomas Mitchell.Mitchell will take the spot vacated by Marie Bantner, who decidednot to seek reappointment to the parks board.Also on Monday, thecouncil granted a request to close a portion of Distillery Drive onMonday, March 25, when the Department of Social Services will conduct a food surplus giveaway.

After apologizing to Human Rights Commission Chairman Roger W. Joneson Monday night, the County Council voted, 5-0, to reappoint him to the commission.The council had tabled the Jones nomination April1 because members wanted to talk with him about his allegations thatgovernment officials were thwarting the aims of the commission by severely cutting its budget.Jones had been invited to a council work session but never got the message. The council routinely tables nominations when nominees don't appear before it.Jones learned while watching a live cablecastof the April 1 council meeting that his nomination had been put off.He took the action as a personal affront, telling his board April 4 that he thought the council was trying to censor him and that he "hadabout 90 percent decided to resign."

Maryland's state school board defied warnings by legislative leaders and voted in private yesterday afternoon to renew schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick's contract for another four years. The decision, made after a three-hour executive session in Baltimore, immediately drew angry threats from legislative leaders in Annapolis, setting up the possibility of a long battle between the state board and the General Assembly over who will direct education policy. House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had sent a letter to the board Monday urging it not to reappoint Grasmick.

A year ago, the Rev. Ann Gordon received her routine reappointment as minister of a Charles Village Methodist congregation. Yesterday - after undergoing a sex-change operation and taking on a new symbolic name - the Rev. Drew Phoenix received another one-year contract to head St. John's United Methodist Church. "This is about more than me," Phoenix said after the decision by the bishop of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. "This is about people who come after me, about young people in particular who are struggling with their gender identity.