Changes made to spending committee
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.
Bartenfelder and Kamenetz, both Democrats, are both expected to run for county executive this year.
Kamenetz and Olszewski downplayed the issue, but both admitted they wanted to be on the committee and were surprised when they weren’t.
“I didn’t know until they met (in December),” Kamenetz told me.
For his part, Bartenfelder said he didn’t know either wanted to participate. He added it’s frequently difficult to find councilmen who are interested in being on the committee. He said last month that politics was not a factor in setting the membership of the committee which currently includes Democratic Councilmen Sam Moxley and Ken Oliver.
But a few days before the committee met last week, Bartenfelder told me he would no longer chair the nor serve on the committee. Instead, Olszewski would assume his role.
He told me my questions regarding setting the membership and complaints of politics may have played a role.
“There’s so much other important stuff going on, I just didn’t need that,” Bartenfelder said.