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Partisan politics at its worst

Friday, April 14, 2006

Substantive results are usually quite rare any time the Maryland General Assembly convenes in an election year, but the session that concluded Monday night proved worse than most.

Legislators dragged themselves out of Annapolis with few significant accomplishments, and with several very important issues undecided.

Every fourth session, lawmakers try to give themselves something to brag about to voters as they campaign for re-election or for higher office.

This year, however, with what promises to be the toughest campaign for governor since the 1960s looming, lawmakers frequently seemed frozen in place, unsure of how they should or could move.

The overriding motive for the Democratic leaders of the assembly was to do nothing that would help the re-election of Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., and nothing that would hurt the chances of his Democratic challengers, Baltimore Mayor Martin J. O’Malley and Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan.

To that end, many bills that were passed ranged from the petty to the tragic, but they all will play a role in the election campaign.

To bedevil the governor, Democrats passed — and then passed again over Ehrlich’s veto — such bills as a ban on members of the State Board of Regents raising money for political campaigns, and a requirement that Cabinet secretaries in any second term be resubmitted for confirmation.

The first was aimed at GOP moneyman Dick Hug, trying to push him off the regents’ board. The second was aimed at Transportation Secretary Robert Flanagan, who has run afoul of Senate President Mike Miller.

To save O’Malley from embarrassment, Democrats passed — and passed again over Ehrlich’s veto — a bill prohibiting a state takeover of 11 of Baltimore’s worst schools.

The mayor said the takeover was politically motivated. Given that the schools have been on the state’s failing list for nine years without action, he is probably right.

But the fact that in one of these schools, 99 percent of the students fail the math test shows that the state takeover is not too soon, it is long overdue.

Shame on everyone. Ehrlich should have to explain why he allowed the schools to languish until the last year of his term.

And Democrats should have to explain why it is all right to let the worst city schools ruin the lives of poor children, just to protect O’Malley’s image. Blocking the takeover will doom another class of children to a year of failure and a lifetime of pain.

Being uncertain how to act, the legislature failed to act on issues that really matter to Marylanders, most significantly skyrocketing electric rates. Customers of Baltimore Gas & Electric are facing a 72 percent rate hike this summer and Pepco customers will see bills go up 39 percent as a post-deregulation rate freeze expires.

A deal among the governor, lawmakers and the companies that would have softened the blow to consumers failed at the last minute in the Senate.

On Monday night everyone was saying the legislature would have to come back to work on the electric rate crisis. But Tuesday, Ehrlich announced he will seek a solution that does not involve calling a special session.

If he and his advisers can craft an answer for which the governor can claim full credit, he could yet emerge as the consumers’ hero, and might get a huge boost toward re-election. It might make a suspicious mind wonder if the failure of the deal was actually engineered by the governor.

Such thinking reflects the poisonous atmosphere that has filled Annapolis this year, and really throughout most of Ehrlich’s term.

Everything — everything — is viewed through the prism of partisan politics. Democrats have shown a willingness to do anything that will deny Ehrlich re-election, and the governor has exhibited the same sort of determination to win at any cost.