Schmoke

As members of Mayor Martin O'Malley's new administration prepared to move into City Hall yesterday, about a dozen clerical workers in the mayor's office packed their bags and left after one day's notice that they had lost their jobs."

The fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old robbery suspect on Thanksgiving day -- the second such shooting in less than two months -- could deepen a sense of apprehension in city neighborhoods.Authorities must complete inquiries into both cases as quickly as possible, taking every possible step as they do so to reassure citizens that the results are honestly reported.The public must avoid pre-judgment. Authorities can help by demonstrating their determination to deliver the most professional policing possible.

As he gets ready to step down Tuesday after 12 years as Baltimore's mayor, Kurt L. Schmoke contends that his legacy may best be measured by driving along Pratt Street.Start on the west side, at the refurbished and rejuvenated B&O Railroad Museum, and drive east, past the burgeoning University of Maryland, Baltimore -- a job generator that has swelled into a city within a city.A stone's throw to the right, a new neighborhood is being built where Schmoke demolished the Lexington Terrace high-rise housing projects.

THE NUMBERS are appalling: An estimated 60,000 Baltimore residents -- one of eight adults -- are addicted to drugs, many simultaneously abusing heroin, cocaine and marijuana. The surrounding counties are believed to have 60,000 more addicts.Out of these numbers flows a river of misery: Last year, police say, drugs were involved in more than 75 percent of the 314 slayings that made Baltimore one of America's most murderous cities. Drug dependence spawns other criminal activity, from break-ins and holdups to prostitution and panhandling.

A Fells Point developer and campaign supporter of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke gained boat docking rights to a popular harbor pier yesterday despite objections from area residents concerned about what might end up at the site.The Baltimore Board of Estimates agreed to lease 119 of 149 feet of docking space along a bulkhead on the west side of South Ann Street for seven years to Sewell A. "Skip" Brown III. Brown, appointed by Schmoke to Baltimore Development Corp., a nonprofit city recruiting arm, owns several companies with services ranging from transportation to real estate.

It's not an exaggeration to say that this year's field of mayoral candidates for Baltimore is a mile wide and an inch deep. When 27 candidates filed for the office, Baltimoreans were left pondering why so many unknowns were competing for such a prestigious position, which traditionally had been sought by experienced, polished public officials.Where are the visionaries? The great orators? The policy wonks eager to attack the bureaucracy?In 1967, Kurt L. Schmoke graduated from the city's premier high school, City College, and went on to Yale, Harvard, Oxford and the mayor's office.

O'Malley will be the nation's most exciting new young mayor since Schmoke.Let's blame air crashes on terrorism, because that only happens to someone else. If the trouble is in the plane, more passengers are at risk.South Mountain will be preserved as a Civil War battlefield and scary witch place.China's Communist bosses cannot beat Falun Gong, so they might just as well join it.

Roland Park leaders have reached an accord with Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke for an expansion of the neighborhood's gray stone library and a redesign of the surrounding streetscape in the heart of the North Baltimore community."

As Baltimore's mayoral race begins to take shape, support for City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III's candidacy appears to be growing, with some of his most bitter political foes trying to win his favor.Bell, considered one of the leading candidates in this year's mayoral election, has met with city Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III, his longtime nemesis -- a move that seemed improbable a couple of months ago.In this rite of political courtship, unusual negotiations are under way and alliances are developing for a contest that has nearly a dozen people voicing interest in running for mayor.

Along with decisions about who will run Baltimore's government, voters on Nov. 2 will have a dozen ballot questions that include $41 million in loans for the city and a charter amendment that would give the next mayor a one-time five-year term.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is pushing the $41 million in loans with a pamphlet detailing the projects the money will fund. They include $13 million for neighborhood redevelopment and financing, $12 million for school improvements, $8 million for commercial development and several smaller loans.

Barack Obama gave the nation's governors a stimulus they couldn't resist: Earth Wind & Fire. The R&B act, entertaining the National Governors Association on Sunday after Obama's first formal White House dinner, had even the stodgiest state executives asserting: Yes, we can dance. "The day before ... we were wondering who the music was going to be," Maryland first lady Katie O'Malley said. "And when they said 'Earth Wind & Fire,' I said, 'Oh my God. We're not going to be able to sit at our tables.

In the middle of a soggy Washington spectacle, there stood Kurt Schmoke, steady legal hand and umbrella-holder. The former Baltimore mayor and current Howard University Law School dean is part of the legal team representing Roland Burris, the man who claims to be Illinois' junior senator but has so far failed to convince the secretary of the Senate, who rejected his credentials yesterday. Having not been seated, Burris opted to stand - in front of reporters, outside the Capitol, in the rain.

Now the caretaker takes charge. Though she's been Baltimore's mayor since Gov. Martin O'Malley left City Hall for Annapolis, Sheila Dixon was something of a placeholder. She spent the interregnum effectively, accomplishing a political makeover in full public view. Her earliest image had offered little more than sharp edges. It was replaced by a measured and decisive grasp of her role. She smiled warmly, spoke movingly and acted decisively in crises. This performance allowed her to arrive at Wednesday's Board of Estimates meeting as winner of the Democratic Party's mayoral endorsement.

This was a first birthday party with "proud parents" galore. The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum teemed with folks who had some part in its creation last year. That meant renovating and adding onto the oldest industrial building on Baltimore's waterfront to honor two of the city's most famous 19th-century African-Americans. "This took a tremendous team effort," said Living Classrooms Foundation's president and CEO James Piper Bond, whose organization is affiliated with the Douglass-Myers.

Murray A. Schmoke Sr., a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground chemist and the father of former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, died Monday of pulmonary fibrosis at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Madison Park resident was 79. Born in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Schmoke earned a bachelor's degree at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he sang in its glee club and remained active in its alumni association. He moved to Baltimore in 1949 to take a job as a chemical research scientist at Edgewood Arsenal. His son, who served as Baltimore's mayor from 1988 to 1999 and is now dean of the Howard University School of Law, said his father worked on shielding military vehicles from a nuclear attack.

It took me a few weeks, but I finally got to the bottom of the uniquely Baltimore story involving Kurt Schmoke, Kenny Dutton and 10 yards. You might have heard of this Schmoke guy. He's now the dean of Howard University School of Law, a job in which he seems much happier than the one he held for 12 years as mayor of Baltimore. Before becoming mayor, Schmoke was the city state's attorney. But in 1965, he was a 15-year-old quarterback when the football season at his alma mater, City College, began in September.

The political world of Maryland may still be buzzing about the appearance of two former Baltimore mayors in a black inner-city church endorsing some guy from Montgomery County for governor. Kurt L. Schmoke and William Donald Schaefer signed on last week with Douglas M. Duncan, Montgomery county executive. Mr. Schaefer and Mr. Schmoke, who might never have agreed on anything until then, stood by amid the usual hoopla. For someone with an alleged sizzle deficit, it was impressive hoopla.

Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday that he is supporting Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan for Maryland governor, an endorsement that could cut into hometown support for Mayor Martin O'Malley's gubernatorial campaign. Schmoke said in an interview that he is slated to appear with Duncan this afternoon at Union Baptist Church in West Baltimore, where Duncan has scheduled a stop on a daylong tour from Rockville to Annapolis to officially launch his campaign for next year's Democratic primary.

KURT L. Schmoke recalls his cross-examination by an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in a housing discrimination lawsuit as "one of the most uncomfortable sessions I ever had in court, trying to convince him that Baltimore of the 1990s was not Birmingham of the 1960s." Whether the testimony of Schmoke, the city's elected black mayor, convinced the ACLU of his position is unclear. What is obvious is that his testimony helped convince the judge overseeing the case that during the Schmoke administration from 1987 to 1999, the city neither engaged in intentional racial discrimination nor violated its duty to take steps to reverse the effects of past bias.

It's nothing new for television shows to borrow real-life plots and players from the cities where they are set. New Yorkers, for instance, have long become accustomed to having their crimes and characters ripped from the headlines by Law & Order. But Baltimore is a smaller, cozier place. So the appearance, mention or mere characterization of local luminaries on a show like the HBO drama The Wire has proven to be a far more intimate affair - for good and ill. The show ends its third season tonight, and it's not yet clear if a fourth season will be scheduled.