When it comes to finding waste, fraud and abuse — or just plain old carelessness — within Maryland government, no agency does more than the Office of Legislative Audits – mainly because it’s their job.
Bruce Myers, 61, has headed the office for the last 15 years and was the deputy legislative auditor for 10 years before that. On Friday, he retired after 35 years of producing hundreds of audits that have generated familiar headlines over the years.
State Republican Party Chairman Alex Mooney is now working part time on the staff of U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett as community outreach director. “It’s part time because I’m staying on as party chairman,” said Mooney, who was elected to the unpaid party post last year. ||“Dump Dutch” or “Ditch Dutch” — Republican state Sen. Nancy Jacobs isn’t sure which is the better slogan for her campaign to unseat five-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger.
The torrent of comment on the Supreme Court decision to uphold most of the Affordable Care Act fell predictably along party and ideological lines: Democrats and progressives were exulting; Republicans and conservatives were disgusted, except for the ruling that the individual mandate was a tax. It will take several days to digest the full implications, but here are lightly edited versions of over two dozen Maryland reactions.
Republicans hoping to overturn Maryland’s gerrymandered congressional districts are sounding desperate to collect enough by the deadline at midnight Saturday.
They say they need to collect 7,000 signatures to be on the safe side to put the redistricting map on the ballot with a total of 55,736 valid signings.
Maryland senatorial candidate Dan Bongino Wednesday accused Prince George’s County and Baltimore City Democrats of ineffective policies and “neglect” of their constituents on policy issues including education and the economy.
Sen. Allan Kittleman announced Wednesday that he was organizing a run for Howard County executive, encouraged by a poll that shows he could beat the two leading Democrats mentioned for the job.
“My message of fiscal conservatism and individual freedom resonates with the voters of Howard County,” Kittleman told a breakfast meeting of supporters in Ellicott City.
Tropical Storm Agnes, the great and hurtful deluge that struck Chesapeake Bay 40 years ago in June, was the magnitude of storm that only strikes every two or three centuries on average—maybe even a 500-year storm.
But from the Bay’s standpoint it was arguably unique; nothing else like it in the thousands of years the estuary has existed. To this day, significant parts of the Chesapeake ecosystem have not regained their pre-Agnes health, writes longtime environmental reporter Tom Horton.
Although Maryland’s retail gas prices were lower than the national average in 2011, consumers are still getting hit at the pump — for paying with plastic rather than cash. A growing practice is to offer cash and credit card prices to combat increasing numbers of credit card users, rising gas prices and high “swipe fees,” transaction fees set by credit card networks for banks.
Maryland voters in November may face as many as three questions on the ballot to overturn laws passed by the General Assembly. Opponents of the third measure — a gerrymandered congressional district plan — are nearly halfway to reaching the signatures needed with a week left to go.
The chairman of the workgroup on expanding gambling said the vote was 8 to 3 on its final recommendations, but truly the vote was 1 to 1, a deadlocked tie.
The state Senate was in favor and the House of Delegates was opposed, and it had been that way all along. The governor’s five representatives on the workgroup were really brokers and observers.
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