Schmoke

Mayor Martin O'Malley has hired as his new chief of staff a veteran of Capitol Hill who many predict will bring a wise, calming presence to the city's youthful and often impatient administration. Clarence T. Bishop, 53, who was chief of staff for former Rep. Parren J. Mitchell of Maryland and Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, will take the $140,000 job Monday held by Michael Enright, a childhood friend of the mayor. Enright, 39, will remain one of O'Malley's top administrators and closest advisers and is not taking a demotion, officials said.

It was early 1999, in the waning days of the Schmoke administration, when an accountant, still on probation for cheating his clients, formed a new corporation and went to the Baltimore Community Development Financing Corp., looking for money to underwrite a new enterprise. The application gave no hint of a fact that would take nearly three years to emerge. Leslie L. Pototsky, the accountant, was acting on behalf of the politically connected Blatterman family, and they would soon take over the company.

HOWARD UNIVERSITY and Kurt L. Schmoke should be a perfect match. Eager to win back its standing as a pre-eminent producer of African-American lawyers, the university chose a leader of stature and accomplishment who is likely to flourish as Howard's new law school dean. Mr. Schmoke arrives in time to help the District of Columbia school celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, the epochal U.S. Supreme Court decision desegregating the nation's public schools. That case was argued by Howard Law School graduate and Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black member of the nation's highest court.

Kurt L. Schmoke, a Harvard-trained lawyer who served three terms as mayor of Baltimore, was named dean of the Howard University School of Law yesterday - adding a high-profile academic position to his long record of achievements. Howard President H. Patrick Swygert announced the appointment of Schmoke, who was the first African-American elected mayor of Baltimore, at a news conference in Washington yesterday. Schmoke, 52, will step into his new role as head of the nation's best-known historically black law school Jan. 1 "It sounds like a wonderful opportunity," Schmoke said.

In Baltimore City Two men found fatally shot in car at apartment complex Homicide detectives are investigating the fatal shooting of two men late Saturday as they sat in a car on the parking lot of a West Baltimore apartment complex, city police said. Officers answering calls reporting a shooting about 11 p.m. found the men with multiple wounds inside a Ford Thunderbird on the parking lot of Mosher Court Apartments in the 2900 block of Mosher St., said Officer Nicole Monroe, a police spokeswoman.

FORMER MAYOR Kurt Schmoke wanted Baltimore to become the city that reads. In a place where poverty and crime and lack of hope conspire against learning, some found his goal beyond achieving. It won't be easy to reach, of course, but it has to be the goal. Mr. Schmoke's successor, Martin O'Malley, picked up the challenge. His decision to make Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Baltimore's Book of 2002 could not have been more appropriate. Major cities around the country choose a new book each year for all their citizens to read.

Patricia C. Jessamy, the first woman to become Baltimore state's attorney, faces her first stiff competition for the job in the 7 1/2 years she has held the office. Jessamy adamantly says she has helped to reduce crime, and dismisses criticism that her office has fumbled important cases and allowed criminals to go free. "They don't know where the office was when I became state's attorney," Jessamy said of her critics, who have included Mayor Martin O'Malley. "This office is 1,000 percent better than it was when I got here."

It's been 20 years since a Baltimore state's attorney has been challenged in an election, and now that three tough-talking candidates are vying for the job, the political rhetoric is back with a vengeance. Incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy and her opponents - longtime lawyer Anton J.S. Keating and City Councilwoman Lisa Joi Stancil - are facing off in what is shaping up to be a sharply contested race. The public got its first peek at the candidates at a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-sponsored forum last week that probably foreshadows what is to come.

MORE THAN A decade ago, an expensive and ugly visitors center was built for the frigate Constellation. Today it serves mainly as an ice cream and souvenir stand, where more trinkets and multiflavored cones are sold than tickets. Now the troubled Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association wants to build its visitors center just a few hundred yards away. Though it's not clear the group has the money to build the $4.5 million glass pavilion, it's in a great hurry to get this monument to its own importance started.

The Rev. Thomas R. Schwind, the Catholic priest turned Pentecostal pastor who is facing a 13-year-old allegation of rape, has hired former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to represent him. Schwind, 50, now pastor of the New Covenant Tabernacle in Jonestown, east of downtown, was accused Thursday by Rita Monahan, a former nun, of sexually assaulting her while she volunteered in 1989 at St. Ambrose Catholic Church, where Schwind was pastor. Monahan, 53, of Chicago also contended at a news conference here that Cardinal William H. Keeler and the Archdiocese of Baltimore covered up the incident, an allegation church officials denied.