O’Malley tweetup provides little new information

The Monday morning session with Gov. Martin O’Malley was billed as the “first tweetup by a Maryland governor” focused on his legislative agenda.

Gov. Martin O'Malley talks to reporters about his agenda.

Gov. Martin O'Malley talks to reporters about his agenda.

We learned little new from the tweetup — a meeting of several people who follow the governor’s 140-character Twitter updates from @GovernorOMalley. But what can you expect from a meeting where the Twitter work product from each person is 140 characters long?

A session with reporters in the ground floor hallway of the State House produced little more detail, even though the governor’s legislative package is due to be introduced today. One of the more controversial items is not coming today; O’Malley said any proposed gas tax hike will be presented later.

Here are two video clips of O’Malley talking to reporters, one on the administration’s push to legalize gay marriage and the other on cuts to the state budget.

On gay marriage, he consistently uses family values as an argument, saying gay people and their children deserve to be treated equally.

There was an interesting exchange with a librarian from Baltimore who was one of the tweeters, wondering how staff of public libraries would be affected by his proposal to shift part of the cost of the teacher pensions to the counties and Baltimore City. The librarians are part of the teacher pension system.

The governor admitted that the librarians were “falling between the cracks” in the pension shift proposal, and that would have to be worked out.

—Len Lazarick
Len@MarylandReporter.com

About The Author

Len Lazarick

len@marylandreporter.com

Len Lazarick was the founding editor and publisher of MarylandReporter.com and is currently the president of its nonprofit corporation and chairman of its board He was formerly the State House bureau chief of the daily Baltimore Examiner from its start in April 2006 to its demise in February 2009. He was a copy editor on the national desk of the Washington Post for eight years before that, and has spent decades covering Maryland politics and government.