Video is county’s “concrete proof”
For weeks county officials have claimed “concrete proof” that employees of a firm collecting signatures for a union seeking binding arbitration with the county weren’t being up front with voters.
Now we know what the proof is — video of two signature collectors explaining the purpose of the petition on a video shot by a county employee.
The Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees hired Democracy Resources, an Oregon-based company, to collect enough signatures of registered county voters in an attempt to get binding arbitration for its members on the November ballot. It was a story first reported in newspapers published by Patuxent Publishing Co., which also operates this Web site. (You can read the two stories here and here.)
A woman who answered the phone at the union’s Towson office this morning said Jim Miller, president of the union local, was in a meeting and unavailable.
Don Mohler, a county spokesman, has repeatedly claimed that collectors were misleading voters by stating the petition would help county teachers even though the union does not represent those employees.
The 2-minute-10-second video was shot by a county employee who accompanied Mohler on a trip to the Towson farmers’ market July 31. The video was released today in response to a request filed under the state Public Information Act.
Mohler, whose county employee badge is clearly visible in the video, is seen talking to two men who identify themselves as collecting signatures for the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees, a union that represents many county employees, including 911 employees and sheriff’s deputies.
The two signature collectors tell Mohler nearly a half-dozen times that signing will help teachers. When Mohler questions the language of the petition and asks how it will help teachers he is told that it’s “all lawyer jargon.”
The collectors also say binding arbitration would help garbage collectors and “people who drive buses.” In truth, all of the county’s trash and recyclables are collected by nearly 50 private haulers whose employees are not county employees. The county has no municipal bus system. School bus drivers are hired employees of the Baltimore County Public Schools System.