The County Council’s regularly scheduled work session Tueday will be held at 12 p.m.
This is two-hours earlier than usual and a result of the impending snow storm that is expected to bring more snow to the area.
The last thing a county with a $144 million revenue shortfall needs is a blizzard.
Don Mohler, a county spokesman, said he and County Executive Jim Smith tried to ward off the impending storm with a little anti-snow dance.
“Last week I used all my bad dance moves,” said Mohler. “I even had the county executive doing a little butter-churn move.” Read the rest of this entry »
Maryland joined the Powerball drawings last night but that might not help Baltimore County, which just saw its projected budget deficit for the current year grow $6 million to $144 million.
Maryland Morning News Anchor Bill Vanko and I talk about it in this week’s chat about Baltimore County politics.
Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Kratovil maintains a nearly 2-1 advantage in cash on hand over his challenger, Republican State Sen. Andy Harris, according to campaign fund raising filings filed Sunday with the Federal Elections Commission.
Harris reported a slight advantage in fund raising over the period of Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 raising about $267,000 — or about $30,000 more than Kratovil. Read the rest of this entry »
Steve Bailey, co-chairman of the county chapter of Americans for Prosperity, said he thinks two Baltimore County councilmen who voted Jan. 19 on the council’s pension reform bills should have abstained — because they stood to benefit financially.
Bailey said Democratic Councilmen John Olszewski Sr. and Ken Oliver both benefited from voting to approve a bill that caps pensions at 60 percent for any freshman councilman sworn-in as of December 2010, while voting to table what has been considered a tougher bill that would have imposed limits on both their pensions almost immediately.
Both Oliver, a two-term incumbent, and Olszewski, a three-term incumbent, would have seen their pensions capped at 60 percent under a bill proposed by Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder. That bill was ultimately killed in favor of Councilman Kevin Kamenetz’s bill. Read the rest of this entry »
County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz hasn’t formally declared his intent to run for county executive in 2010, but some of his constituents declared their wishes in cake Monday night.
Kamenetz showed off the cake and offered pieces to some council staff (and then to me) after last night’s council meeting.
The box was placed up on a refrigerator. (Perhaps out of sight of other potential “next Baltimore County Executives?”) Read the rest of this entry »
The Baltimore County Council’s Spending Affordability Committee has a new chairman — John Olszewski Sr.
Olszewski took over last week after Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder quietly stepped down.
The committee is charged with setting limits on how much the county can increase its budget each year. It will meet later today to try and set the growth limit for County Executive Jim Smith’s last budget, which will be introduced in April.
Bartenfelder became chairman of the committee late last year — and that’s when grumbling began. Supporters of Olszewski, the current County Council chairman, and Councilman Kevin Kamenetz, who chaired the spending affordability committee in 2009, complained that the two were not included on this year’s panel because of politics. Read the rest of this entry »
The state is not the only one with budget woes.
Baltimore County is facing a $138 million budget shortfall due to income tax and property tax revenues being less than anticipated in the budget that was passed last spring.
The only question that remains is how the county will deal with the shortfall. Read the rest of this entry »
I sat down with the folks over at Marylandreporter.com for a journalist’s roundtable discussion about recent proposals to make state government more open and transparent and the issues that are still to be resolved.
Here’s the podcast of that discussion with Andy Rosen and Len Lazarick.
Everyone ready for the answers to the pop quiz on the County Council and county government that I posted on Tuesday?
If you haven’t had the opportunity to take it you can find it here. Remember, you’re on the honor system — no internet and no lifelines. Hey, I’m not Regis Philbin here.
Here are the answers to all 60 questions. Look for the special bragging rights questions I left in the answers. Feel free to leave the answers in the comments section — if you think you know them. Read the rest of this entry »