This post is a follow-up to my earlier post titled “Racial harmony vs. racial politics.”  The proposed resolution of the Anne Arundel Council that was the subject of that post was introduced and passed on Monday night.  All members of the County Council joined as co-sponsors of the resolution.

Annapolis civil rights activist Carl Snowden nevertheless stated that Resolution No. 22-17 passed by the Anne Arundel County Council denouncing racism and white supremacy was “disappointing.” In my opinion, his disappointment was less about the resolution than it was about the fact that his attempt to turn the resolution into a political sideshow, with him in the spotlight, had failed.  Mr. Snowden, not the resolution, is disappointing.

As I noted in last week’s post Mr. Snowden probably thought that he had Mr. Peroutka backed into a corner.  If Mr. Peroutka refused to introduce the resolution Mr. Snowden could tout the refusal as proof of his racism.  If Mr. Peroutka yielded to the demand Mr. Snowden could claim credit for his capitulation. Fortunately, Councilman Peter Smith stepped up and announced that he would introduce the resolution and invited other members of the Council to join him as co-sponsors.

The leadership demonstrated by Mr. Smith defused the situation and allowed the focus to shift from a petty political feud to trying to do something to stem the rising tide of racial animosity in the county.  It also, however, snatched an opportunity away from Mr. Snowden to even the score a bit with a political enemy and Mr. Snowden seemed very unhappy with that development.

I initially planned to submit an op ed to the The Capital expressing my disgust with Mr. Snowden’s behavior in this matter.  As I thought about it, however, I saw little good to be served.  Most of the residents of Anne Arundel County have long since formed their opinions about Mr. Snowden.  Those who view him as a race-baiting opportunist do not need any further persuasion.  Any criticism that I directed at Mr. Snowden would be written off by those who view him as a civil rights hero as the typical response of the white establishment.  Sometimes it is best to let folks judge for themselves.

June 8, 2017

I was heartsick when I read about the stabbing death of Lt. Richard Collins III, the Bowie University student about to graduate and embark on a career in the United States Army.  I didn’t feel any better when I read that veteran Annapolis civil rights activist Carl Snowden and others appear to be using this profound tragedy as an opportunity to refight the battle against Anne Arundel County Councilman Michael Peroutka that Mr. Snowden lost in 2014.

Sean Urbanski is charged with murdering Lt. Collins.  Urbanski was a member of a Facebook group known as “Alt Reich: Nation” that shared anti-Semitic and racist material.  Police are investigating the killing as a possible hate crime.

Mr. Snowden and his allies applied pressure on Mr. Peroutka to introduce a County Council resolution “condemning racism and white nationalism” as a response to the death of Lt. Collins.  The effort was more about racial politics than about racial harmony and had revenge written all over it.  Fortunately, Councilman Peter Smith stepped in and announced that he will introduce the resolution, a move that is likely to defuse the situation and shift the debate to a more constructive subject:  An uptick in racially-tinged incidents in Anne Arundel County and what to do about it.

Mr. Snowden, convener of the Caucus of African American Leaders, stated that Mr. Peroutka “has a moral obligation” to introduce the resolution.  Yasemin Jamison, founder of Anne Arundel County Indivisible, said that the activists reached out to other council members but that they focused on Mr. Peroutka not only because Urbanski is from his district but also because of Mr. Peroutka’s past membership in the League of the South, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labelled a hate group.  The apparent goal was to force Mr. Peroutka to prove that he is not a racist by introducing the resolution.

In 2014 Mr. Snowden made a concerted attempt to prevent Mr. Peroutka from being elected to the County Council.  Things got ugly on both sides.  Mr. Snowden labeled Mr. Peroutka an “extremist.”  Mr. Peroutka at one point alluded to “the personal demons that have plagued” Mr. Snowden, an apparent reference to past problems with alcohol and marijuana that landed Mr. Snowden in jail for ten days in 2013.

At first blush this ploy looked like a no-lose proposition for Mr. Snowden.  If Mr. Peroutka refused the demand Mr. Snowden could tout the refusal as proof of his racism.  If he yielded to the demand Mr. Snowden could claim credit for getting him to capitulate.  One important consideration appeared to be missing, however:  Mr. Peroutka was not responsible for the death of Lt. Collins.  Mr. Petrouka has no “moral obligation” to perform an act of contrition for something that he did not do.

I am not defending Mr. Peroutka’s past membership in the League of the South or his theocratic ideology, both of which I find very troubling.  I didn’t vote for him when I lived in his district but plenty of my neighbors did; he defeated the Republican incumbent in the primary and a Democratic opponent in the general election in 2014.

Mr. Peroutka renounced racism before his election and since taking office he has earned a reputation on the County Council for his civility and has done nothing to justify having his character placed on trial in the media.  In my opinion this is not about anything that Mr. Peroutka has done; this is about Mr. Snowden trying to even the score with Mr. Peroutka, whether Mr. Snowden can admit that to himself or not.

The attempt to embarrass Mr. Peroutka will make him a martyr in the minds of many white residents in his district and elsewhere in the county.  It will be perceived as race-baiting, with some justification.  Mr. Snowden and Ms. Jamison appear to be concerned that Mr. Peroutka is part of the alt-right faction that has hijacked this country.  The sad irony is that what they did provided recruiting material for the alt-right, which is absolutely the last thing that we need.

This was not the occasion for Mr. Snowden to refight the battle that he lost in 2014.  Doing so dishonored the memory of Lt. Collins and did nothing to promote the cause of racial harmony.  To the contrary, it threatened to turn what should be robust conversation about race relations into a political sideshow.

Credit to Mr. Smith.  He may have saved Mr. Snowden from embarrassing himself any further and prevented him from doing any more harm to race relations in Anne Arundel County.  His announced intention to sponsor the resolution shifts the spotlight away from the personal feud between Mr. Snowden and Mr. Peroutka and back to the subject of how to prevent future tragedies like the death of Lt. Collins.

June 2, 2017

I wrote an op ed published by The Baltimore Sun on May 17^th that criticized long-time Baltimore County Administrator Fred Homan for issuing a “policy” purportedly entitling high-ranking appointed officials in County government, including himself, to “severance pay” upon termination of County government.  If the 7% pay raise proposed for Mr. Homan in the FY2018 budget is adopted that means when he retires he will be entitled to a lump sum severance payment of $ 80,000 in addition to estimated monthly pension payments of $18,750.  That’s right, $18,750 per month.

I followed that up with a letter that I sent yesterday to members of the Baltimore County Council and County Executive Kamenetz detailing my concerns and stating what I believe needs to be done to resolve them, including halting the payment of severance pay until such time as it is approved by ordinance of the County Council.  Ltr to Balt County Council & Exec 5 22 17  Only the County Council has the legal authority to authorize severance pay for appointed officials, including Mr. Homan, and that would have to be done by law.  There is no law authorizing severance pay.

Then of course there are the questions raised by a County Administrative Officer issuing a policy from which he stands to benefit.  Will anyone in Baltimore County do anything about the problems?  I doubt it, and I will tell you why I am so pessimistic.

What drew me to this matter in the first place was my anger at reading that the attempts by Alison Knezevich of The Sun to obtain the source of the decision to award former Police Chief Jim Johnson a “severance package” valued at $117,000 were rebuffed by County officials on the basis that it was a “personnel matter.”  I knew that was not true and decided to make my own inquiries.

One of my inquiries was to Council President Tom Quirk, who is my representative on the Council.  I was both stunned and angered by his response, and decided that this was something that I needed to pursue.  The link to the entire email appears below, but this is the heart of his response:

“Severance pay is an executive prerogative.  This is part of separation of powers.  I know that the executive department policy is to permit severance pay for all department heads . . . I support the County Executive’s decision here and I also believe that this decision is the County Executive’s to make and his alone.  I think it would be inappropriate for the legislative branch to meddle in executive branch responsibility and duty.”

At first I was a bit insulted at being sent such drivel.  The more I thought about it the angrier I got.  Assuming that Chairman Quirk was not aware that I had some knowledge of Maryland local government law where does he get off blowing that kind of smoke up a citizen’s arse?  Did he think that I would just accept that nonsense and his thanks for my “passion and concern” for the County and go away?  It is not “meddling” for the County Council to decide upon the propriety and limits of the compensation of department heads, it is their duty and responsibility.

What is the chance that any remedial action will be taken when this is the attitude of the Council Chairman?  As usual the wagons are circling in Towson.

After the op ed appeared in the newspaper I received an inquiry from a member of the Baltimore County Charter Review Commission asking if I thought it would be useful to amend the County Charter to state that no compensation shall be paid to any County official other than that expressly authorized by the County Council by ordinance.  My reaction was a negative one based on my general opposition to passing new laws when the problem lies in the enforcement of existing ones:  The Charter already states that establishing the compensation to which a County official or employee is entitled because of his or her service to the County is a legislative function assigned to the County Council.  Adding language explaining that means that it is not an “executive prerogative” (Chairman Quirk’s term) is redundant and unnecessary.

No, I’m afraid the problem lies in the people elected to govern Baltimore County and the high-ranking officials that they appoint.  Where was the County Attorney during all of this?  Did he ever have a discussion with his immediate supervisor, the County Administrator Officer, about the legality of the County Administrative Officer issuing a policy entitling appointed officials including both the County Administrative Officer and the County Attorney to severance pay upon leaving County employment?

What about the County Auditor?  The County Auditor is the fiscal watchdog of the County.  Did she ever express any concern about the legality of the Executive Benefit Policy and the Legislative Branch Benefits Policy?  Again, complicating the issue is the fact that she is one of the appointed officials covered by the Legislative Branch Benefits Policy.  Didn’t she ever wonder how members of the Council could approve that policy just by signing it, rather than approving it by ordinance?

Baltimore County has a long history of doing things behind closed doors and of making government as opaque as possible for its citizens.  There also is a fair amount of voter apathy that allows such practices to continue.  I’m not optimistic that anything is going to change anytime soon.  A taxpayer’s suit undoubtedly would bring a halt to payments of the severance pay but is unlikely to effect any longer-term change.

Links to:     Executive Benefit Policy                                                                                                                       Legislative Branch Benefits Policy                                                                                                     Council Chairman T. Quirk email

May 23, 2017

Had he not been assassinated in 1965 Malcolm X would have turned 92 today.  As it happens today is also the day that I read the final version of  the Children and Youth Fund Grantmaking Criteria” that the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund Task Force, under the leadership of City Council President Jack Young, intends to propose to the Baltimore City Council in the near future.  First my thoughts on the progress of the Task Force and then a word about Malcolm X.

I caught grief on twitter and elsewhere for my op ed published in the Baltimore Sun  expressing my concerns about the Task Force, which was formed to help implement what the Baltimore City Council website refers to as “Council President Young’s historic Baltimore’s Children and Youth Fund.  And make no mistake about it this is Council President’s Jack Young’s baby.  Is it a problem having a major city program so closely identified with a single politician, particularly one as proprietary in such matters as Mr. Young?  Of course it is, and that remains part of my concern.

The first thing that the city needs is a comprehensive strategy and plan for dealing with the social and economic problems that underlie the city’s violence.  The last thing that it needs are ego-driven politicians pulling in different directions.  Stay tuned for what happens when the recommendations of the Children and Youth Fund Task Force are presented to the City Council.

Most of the grief that I received came from Adam Jackson, CEO of Leaders for a Beautiful Struggle and co-chairman of the Task Force.  Fair enough; when you refer as I did to something someone says as being “stupid” you have to expect a counterattack.  His commentary on twitter resulted in a series of tweets by his supporters questioning both my knowledge and relevant experience – the terms “old man” and “white privilege” came up in the discussion.  The description “old man” is certainly accurate, although I can’t say I’m particularly proud or happy about it.

In any event, Mr. Jackson may never admit it but he and I agree on the core objective of dramatically improving the odds that the black children in Baltimore’s many disadvantaged neighborhoods will escape lives of poverty, drug abuse, imprisonment, and in violent death.  And I am not even going to disagree with him that institutional racism has played a role in creating the social and economic conditions that produce dysfunctional families and troubled children.  My point is that he, and others on the Task Force, are trying to take the Children and Youth Fund in the wrong direction.

Mr. Jackson wants to use the fund for the economic empowerment of the black community by investing in “black-led organizations.”  I think that is a great goal but it is not the purpose of the fund and does not address the most immediate needs of the city.  I have said in many contexts that I believe that the city and state have to focus like a laser on delivering services directly to at-risk children and their families and on making evidence-based decisions on what services and programs will be most effective in addressing the public-health crisis at hand:  The murder epidemic.

My own point of view undoubtedly is shaped in part by the fact that my first professional career was as a social worker trained at the University of Pittsburgh.  One of my internships was with the Pennsylvania Department of Probation and Parole, assigned to help parolees successfully reintegrate into society.  I was a social worker, not an agent.  It was eye-opening and in some cases rewarding work.

The internship was during the height of a heroin epidemic and many of the problems today are depressingly similar to those that I saw back then, with the exception of the proliferation of handguns.  Most of my clients lived in the Hill District or in Homewood, two poor and predominantly black neighborhoods.  I walked through those neighborhoods alone and unarmed.  I wonder if today the University of Maryland School of Social Work sends social work students alone into Sandtown-Winchester or Ellwood Park.  I tend to doubt it.  The widespread availability of handguns has made bad situations a lot worse.

Later my social work career would include the duty to identify and try to prevent recurrences of child abuse and neglect.  After I became a lawyer and a prosecutor a stint screening and prosecuting cases in juvenile court gave me another opportunity to see the consequences of bad or indifferent parenting.  Combine poverty with bad parenting and the chances of a person emerging unscathed from childhood in urban America are not great.

Problems like joblessness and substandard housing and schools may lie at the root of what is ailing Baltimore but there is no doubt that the immediate cause of the city’s almost inexhaustible supply of young men and even boys willing to embark on lives of crime is ineffective or nonexistent parenting.  Yes of course children everywhere take wrong turns despite the best efforts of their parents – there are exceptions to all rules – but the problem of inadequate parenting is killing Baltimore, and the people doing social work and law enforcement down at street level know that to be true.

I believe that the Children and Youth Fund should be for direct services, and Mr. Jackson should look elsewhere for funds for longer-term problems like economic inequity and job creation.  There are programs with records of success going unfunded or underfunded including after-school programs and Safe Streets Baltimore.  Don’t skimp on them for the sake of pursuing a different agenda.

Lester Davis, chief of staff for Council President Young, also spoke with me after my op ed appeared in The Sun.  He was concerned that I did not have all of the relevant information, and I said that if proved wrong about the performance of the fund I would be glad to admit in writing that my criticism was misplaced.

I’ve been following the activities of the Task Force as best I can. I have not attended the meetings; I’ve attended thousands of meetings in my career and am more interested in outcomes than lengthy discussions.  I know that the members of the Task Force are well-intended; that is not the issue, and I don’t question their integrity.  This is about policy.

The Task Force recently published the final version of the proposed “Children and Youth Fund Grantmaking Criteria.”  I was not encouraged after reading the criteria.  In my opinion, the criteria are fuzzy and reflect the fact the Task Force was trying to satisfy a broad range of stakeholders interested in competing for the grant money.  The criteria make very clear that the Task Force wants a large share of the grant money to go to small, local organizations.  I found the last criteria to be fairly revealing about the Task Force’s approach.  The criteria are presented in a question-and-answer format.

“Question:  Does the organization need to show that there is a specific need for the program and services they are aiming to deliver. Should this be substantiated by research?

Answer:  While showing a specific need relating to young people in a specific community could be an important part of the organization’s plan, it should not be a requirement of obtaining Youth Fund dollars. Community members cited that qualitative data is as important as quantitative data in both showing need and potential impacts to be reached for young people in neighborhoods and communities, especially in Baltimore’s disenfranchised neighborhoods and communities.”

A specific need “could” be an important consideration?  Qualitative (in other words, subjective) data is as important as quantitative data?  In other words, there is a whole lot of room to maneuver in terms of deciding who would get the grants under these criteria, and not a great deal of emphasis during the decision-making process would be placed on whether a proposal offered evidence-based solutions to specific needs.

Now to Malcolm X.  Included in the feedback (polite term) that I got from Mr. Jackson and his supporters was a fair amount of Black Nationalist rhetoric accompanied by suggestions that I couldn’t possibly understand what that meant. Mr. Jackson identifies himself on his twitter page as a Black Nationalist.  Because I am, as alleged, a bit of dinosaur the Black Nationalist with whom I am most familiar is Malcolm X, whose 92^nd birthday would have been today had he not died in 1965.

As part of the means of escaping oppression by white Americans Malcolm X implored his followers to restore the high standards of morality among black people that he believed had been destroyed by racism.  He broke away from the Nation of Islam in 1964, publicly castigating its leader, Elijah Muhammad, for his sexual indiscretions including fathering children out of wedlock.  Malcolm X converted to Sunni Islam and changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.  By 1965 he was dead, assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam.

It probably is some sort of sacrilege for a white man to invoke the name of Malcolm X but one can’t help but wondering what Malcolm X would think about Baltimore today.  Yes, he would see the lingering effects of racism but he couldn’t help also seeing the impact of single-parent families and fatherless children on the black community.

It is difficult enough to raise a child in many of Baltimore’s troubled neighborhoods but it is exponentially harder to do so as a single parent; if anyone tells you that the absence of fathers in the lives of too many black children in Baltimore isn’t a problem please stop listening to them because they have no idea what they are talking about.  Even if the broken families are symptoms of wider social and economic problems we have to treat the symptoms first because doing so is the only to bring down the rate of violence in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time.

Joe Jones founded the Center for Urban Families (CFUF) in Baltimore in 1999.  In a 2013 interview with CNN he stated that most men come in the door looking for help getting jobs.  But Jones believes that jobs are just the first step, and that the key to creating real change in Baltimore’s troubled communities is ending what he calls “the cycle of father absence.” CFUF runs a program called Responsible Fatherhood.   According to Jones, “If we don’t crack the code of men having babies for whom they’re not responsible for, all of our efforts to build a better Baltimore will be limited.”  It is a concept with which Malcolm X would have agreed.

I have no great ideas on how to stop the “cycle of father absence.”  I don’t know that Malcolm X would either, but I believe that he would try and he wouldn’t wait until all other vestiges of institutional racism were eliminated to do so.

May 19, 2017

Anyone making a study of the deficiencies in the manner in which public school systems are governed in Maryland and in much of the United States might do well to schedule a visit to the Baltimore metropolitan area.  Right now we have in this area a smorgasbord of the problems that come with a style of governance that tends to produce local boards of education that either try to micromanage school superintendents or hire peripatetic superintendents with a top-down management styles who parachute into school systems and introduce “innovative” programs advertised as quick fixes to long-standing problems, or both.

The unique way in which American public elementary and secondary schools are run served us fairly well for about the first 100 years after Massachusetts established the first compulsory school laws in 1852.  In the past 50 years or so, however, there has been a rather steady decline in the performance of our schools, particularly in comparison to schools in developed countries in Europe and Asia.  According to one well known study of developed and developing countries in 2015, 15-year-olds in the United States ranked 38^th out of 71 countries studied in math proficiency and 24th in science.

Whatever we are doing now isn’t working all that well.  Even our “best” schools are fairly mediocre by international standards.  It seems to me that it is tough to argue that it isn’t time to try a different approach.

The United States used to be known for its adaptability and willingness to move past ways of doing things that no longer were working as well as they had in the past.  Now, however, we seem hide-bound by the influence of special interests and politics.  What is it about the governance of public schools that needs to be changed, and why?

A local board of education stands in a relationship with the local superintendent of schools that is different in kind from the relationship that exists, for example, between the typical board of trustees of a public university and the president of that university.  The role of the board of trustees of a university generally is limited to approving the mission and broader goals and objectives of the university and to evaluating the performance of the president.  The president usually is delegated complete authority for the day-to-day management of the university and for the establishment of policies and procedures that govern the educational programs and other operations.

In contrast, local boards of education are charged by law with taking a much more direct role in the governance of a school system, obligated to review various decisions made by the superintendent in administering the schools.  Maryland law specifies that a local board shall “determine, with the advice of the county superintendent, the educational policies of the county school system.”  With boards so deeply involved in issues affecting day-to-day governance there can be a fine line between board members carrying out their legal duties and micromanaging local superintendents.

In my opinion, elected boards are less likely to manage that balance judiciously; politics being what it is there is more pressure on elected board members to second-guess a superintendent.  The patience necessary to sit back and allow a superintendent to do his or her job is not a common attribute of contemporary politicians.  Let’s not pretend that elected school board members are not politicians of one sort or the other.

Micromanagement of a superintendent seldom ends well.  If you are looking for an example of what happens when a local board of education loses sight of the difference between its role and the role of the superintendent in a heated rush to try to changes to a school system you need to look no farther than Howard County.

In Howard County three newcomers defeated the incumbents in the three seats on the seven-member Howard County Board of Education that were up for election in November.  The new board majority immediately went to war with Superintendent Renee Foose over control of the school system with Superintendent Foose filing a suit alleging that board members are overstepping their bounds and interfering with her ability to run the school system.

The latest casualty in the war is a scholarship program initiated by Superintendent Foose in cooperation with McDaniel College.  In what only can be described as a fit of pettiness and pique the new board ended the program so precipitously that McDaniel is considering its own legal action.  At present the governance of Howard County schools is hopelessly polarized – like a lot of other institutions run by elected officials.

Local boards of education, even appointed ones, tend to feel the pressure to try to solve problems  in the short term even when longer term fixes are required.  Quick fixes are sought in the form of charismatic superintendent candidates who come with credentials as “change agents.”  If you are looking for an example of that phenomenon you need look no farther than Baltimore County.

An article in The Baltimore Sun titled “Dance resignation leaves his school initiatives in question” suggested that the resignation of Dallas Dance as Baltimore County school superintendent imperiled programs that he had introduced since he was hired in 2012.  The article noted that “Dance’s tenure has been marked by ambitious changes that were enacted quickly — in some cases with uneven results.”  That observation could be applied to the tenure of school superintendents in hundreds of public school systems around the country and in Maryland.

Not all Baltimore County teachers were displeased to learn of Dr. Dance’s departure.  I can’t help but wondering if some of the lack of confidence in him among teachers had to do with his lack of classroom experience.  Dr. Dance was 30 years old when he was hired as superintendent and had spent precious little of his brief educational career actually teaching students.

Can you imagine a 30 year old with very little experience doing surgery being hired as Surgeon-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital who then proceeds to tell other surgeons how to do their jobs?  I don’t know why it would be any different in a public school system.

The top-down management style – rolling out a series of new ideas and then expecting dubious principals and teachers to implement them – is hardly unique to Dr. Dance in the world of elementary and secondary education.  If you are looking for an example of how badly that style can miss the mark you need look no farther than the City of Baltimore.

The Henderson-Hopkins School, a public “contract” school opened in 2014 and operated for the Board of Baltimore City School Commissioners by John Hopkins University with further expertise provided by Morgan State University, was an attempt to build a showcase K-8 school in East Baltimore.  It was designed, built and run by the best and the brightest that Baltimore has to offer.  That is why I was stunned when I read the excellent series of articles by Liz Bowie of the Baltimore Sun about the school and its struggles and learned that the design included open-space classrooms.

Open space classrooms were a fad of the 1960’s and 1970’s that proved to be a wretched and costly failure in Anne Arundel County where I lived and worked for 43 years.  It has taken many years and millions of dollars to undo the folly there, and Prince George’s, Carroll and Calvert Counties had similar experiences.  In 2013 David Lever, long-time executive director of the Maryland Public School Construction Program noted that there was general agreement across the state that open-space classrooms are not “optimal learning environments.”

The problems with the open space classrooms at Henderson-Hopkins were the impetus for an informative article on the dismal history of open space classrooms published by The Atlantic in its “CityLab” feature captioned “Who Thought ‘Open Classrooms’ Were a Good Idea?”  In that article the head of one of the nation’s leading architectural firms specializing in the design of education facilities and a major proponent of bringing back open space classrooms responded defensively to criticism of the open space concept by effectively blaming the principals and teachers who are the end-users of the design:  “The biggest obstruction to these spaces is that any change is terrifying for people.”  Don’t you just love it when an “expert” blames you for the flaws in a product?

I had to smile a bit when I read another article, this one published in 2015 by bizjournals.com and titled “Architecture review: Henderson-Hopkins School is succeeding, thanks in part to good design.”  The author, a Baltimore architect, obviously was not privy to the information gathered by Liz Bowie of The Sun and concluded his article as follows:  “Children are happy in their bright spaces. The award-winning design works.”  Children may have been happy but they were not learning at the expected pace.

The author quoted former Henderson-Hopkins principal Katrina Foster as praising the “spatial flexibility” of the design as allowing children to be moved “to different spaces based on their own progress and achievement.”  No teacher was quoted in the bizjournal article and no mention was made of the report by Ms. Bowie that teachers at Henderson-Hopkins “have found the school’s open spaces difficult to teach in.”

In the summer of 2016 Johns Hopkins moved to turn around the lackluster academic performance of Henderson-Hopkins by replacing three of the four key administrators, including Ms. Foster.  Johns Hopkins hired Deborah Ptak to replace Ms. Foster as principal.  Ms. Ptak, a veteran administrator with experience both in the city and Madison, Wisconsin, made a number of changes, including purchasing six-foot high partitions to divide classrooms.  This summer those partitions will be replaced by permanent walls.

Here is my hunch:  Had you asked any group of principals and teachers with experience teaching in the city whether it was good idea to build Henderson-Hopkins with open space classrooms the overwhelming majority would have said “Absolutely not.”  In a top-down environment ideas for change tend to originate at the top of the management hierarchy rather than evolve from the knowledge and experience of those working in the trenches.

The reason that style misfires so often in elementary and secondary school administration is because the most valuable source of information on how to teach lies in the system’s core of experienced principals and teachers that have a proven record of success – that is where the most important talent is, not at school headquarters.  Whether it is school design or changes to curriculum or grading policy principals and teachers too often are the last persons consulted.

Compounding the problem of the top-down style in education is the frequent absence of evidence-based decision-making.  Where was the evidence supporting the conclusion that open space classrooms provide a superior or even adequate learning environment?  Where is the research that supports the introduction of the dizzying array of programs under various lofty-sounding names that have come and gone in elementary and secondary schools over the past 30 years?  It is not always there or, if it is there, does not always meet established standards for trustworthiness and validity.

That does not mean that there is not a lot of research out there on teaching methods; there is a ton of it, some good and some not so good.  Organizations like the National Education Association (NEA) try to help educators sort the wheat from the chaff.

Indeed, with so many new ideas and so much research out there it is crucial that the perfect not be made the enemy of the good.  One thing that the evidence does not establish is that there is only one effective way to teach children.  More harm than good can be done by too-frequent changes that leave teachers confused and demoralized.  Even if a new superintendent believes that he or she knows a “better” way of doing things the best course of action may be to avoid forcing change too quickly.

At the end of the day there is one truth in public elementary and secondary education that everyone seems to acknowledge:  The key to success for a school is to have strong and competent teachers under the leadership of a strong and competent principal.  That is not surprising given that the formula for success in almost every organization is to appoint a competent leader, give that leader the tools necessary to do the job, and then hold the leader accountable for the results.

And, as a friend of mine pointed out, put a bunch of successful schools together and sooner or later you have a successful school system.  In other words, schools and school systems are built from the bottom up, brick by brick.  There is no quick fix or magic elixir for mediocre or failing schools, and boards of education have to keep that in mind.  Giving a superintendent or principal the tools to run a school or a school system sometimes means staying out of the way as much as possible – at least don’t make their jobs any harder than they already are.  It is my belief that, in too many cases, the style of governance employed by local boards of education actually detracts from the likelihood that principals and teachers will successfully educate the children under their charge.

In my opinion, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the governance of public schools to a model more similar to the one commonly used in institutions such as hospitals and colleges and universities.  The role of a local board should be to establish broad goals and objectives and then make sure that the system is working toward achieving them, staying away from setting detailed policies and procedures and staying out of the day-to-day control of the system.  The focus of the board must always be on getting the best professionals on the ground where the teaching is done, and then making sure that these professionals have the tools to do their jobs.

Board members should be appointed based on their proven ability to build successful organizations, not on the basis of specific educational philosophies and practices that they would like to see implemented or any other personal agendas.  Above all, board members should not be politicians looking to build their resumes and visibility for their next or, in the case of appointed members, their first runs for office.

I do not hold principals and teachers blameless for the state of American education.  Administrators and teachers unions make identifying and retaining only reasonably competent administrators and teachers much harder than it should be.  Also, there obviously are a multitude of social and economic factors that affect educational outcomes.  At the end of the day, however, I do not believe that public education (or any other governmental endeavor) is going to be any better than the manner in which it is governed.

Am I optimistic that a change to the governance structure will be made?  No.  In searching for ways to improve test scores and overall school performance we are going farther into the wilderness while cutting off the way back out.  The statewide movement to elected school boards means that we have created an entirely new class of politicians who will do whatever it takes to hang onto their turf and power.

April 30, 2017

The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is in serious trouble, but you would not know that from the attitude of state and city officials.  The General Assembly seemingly has taken a hands-off approach to the crisis and city officials understate the gravity of the situation.

The calm and methodical approach of Mayor Catherine Pugh and the “I’ve got this” demeanor of Police Commissioner Kevin Davis are understandable – neither gloom and doom nor panic are useful responses – but I fear that they are not conveying to the public the urgent need for more fundamental changes to the governance and operation of the BPD.  That may be about to change, at least on the part of the mayor.

This week Mayor Pugh tacitly acknowledged that the BPD is in over its head, requesting help from the FBI, an agency not routinely involved in street-level crime.  Commissioner Davis on the other hand responded angrily to the statement by FOP President Gene Ryan that BPD’s staffing shortages have reached “crisis” level, replying that both he and his commanders found Lt. Ryan’s statement “offensive.”  Davis’s testy response tells me that he realizes that Ryan is right but that he is loath to admit, as the mayor has, that his department may not be up to the tasks at hand.

If you had to describe the tasks at hand for the BPD in a nutshell, you might say that the BPD needs to prevent and solve crime and control the conduct of its officers and do so while keeping the costs of running the department within reasonable limits.  If you don’t believe that the BPD is struggling with those tasks let’s take a look at the facts, beginning with the evidence of the failure of the department to control the conduct of its officers.

In 2014 The Sun reported that Baltimore paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that BPD officers used excessive force or otherwise abused the rights of citizens.  If the BPD had a problem with the use of excessive force, however, it was not reflected in the outcomes of its disciplinary system.

An analysis of data from January 2013 through March 2016 by The Sun’s Catherine Rentz disclosed that eight out of every ten excessive-force complaints submitted to the internal affairs division of the BPD were found to be “not sustained,” a rate more than twice as high as that found in a national study by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).  According to a separate report by WBAL’s Jayne Miller internal affairs cases languished an average of 183 days before investigations even were completed.

After a year-long investigation the DOJ issued a 163-page report in August 2016 detailing how Baltimore police routinely violated the constitutional rights of residents by conducting unlawful stops and using excessive force.  Among the many damning findings by the DOJ was its conclusion that many front-line supervisors within the BPD – sergeants and lieutenants – didn’t bother supervising.  The DOJ reported that its review did not identify a single stop, search, or arrest that a front line supervisor found to violate constitutional standards “even though numerous incident reports for these activities describe facially unlawful police action.”

In February of this year a federal grand jury indicted seven members of the BPD’s “elite” Gun Trace Task Force on charges that are especially troubling even by BPD standards, with the United States Attorney referring to the officers as nothing more than armed robbers with police badges – one more violent gang in a city saturated with violent gangs.  Much has been written, some by me, on the need to change the culture that exists among rank-and-file officers and their immediate supervisors within the BPD.  If you want an idea of how much work remains to be done to change that culture read the snippets of the conversations among the officers quoted in the indictment.

The indicted officers also were accused of conspiring to commit overtime fraud against the city by falsifying time and attendance reports; the supervisor of the task force, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, allegedly submitted claims for overtime for five days in July 2016 during which he was on vacation with his family in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  Jenkins was paid a total of $83,345 in overtime in fiscal year 2016 in addition to his salary of $85,406.  The indictment does not indicate how much of that overtime was based on the alleged fraud, but we do know that the overtime budget is completely out of control, with rampant abuse undoubtedly one of the reasons.

This year the BPD is on pace to double what it spent on overtime in 2013 and to exceed the $17 million budgeted for overtime in fiscal year 2017 by nearly $30 million; in other words, the BPD is now spending approximately $1 million per week on overtime.  It is not as if the BPD was not costly enough already; Baltimore has the 8^th largest municipal police department in the country even though it is only the 26^th largest city by population.

Funding of the BPD has increased about 37% since 2011 to about $480 million this year and on a per capita basis is now one of the most expensive police departments in the country, if not the most expensive.  Even key city officials are now complaining that the costs of running the department are unreasonable and must be dramatically reduced because other priorities, especially education, are being compromised.

The increase in spending on the BPD has not been accompanied by a decrease in crime – to the contrary.  There were 197 murders in all of 2011 and less than four months into 2017 there already are 101.  Homicides are up more than 34% compared to the same time last year, non-fatal shootings are up 27%, and carjackings have increased by 61%.  Other crimes are on the uptick as well.

The BPD is not to blame for the epidemic of violent crime in the city now into its third year but neither is there any reason to believe that the BPD is up to the task of coping with it.  The BPD improved its dismal case closure rate of 38% in 2016 to a mediocre 49% so far this year but, as explained by Justin George of The Sun, the increase may not be as significant as it first appears.  In any event, there is no metric by which the efforts of the BPD to prevent and solve crime can be deemed to be a “success.”

Crime in general has rendered some of the poorer neighborhoods in the city almost uninhabitable but juvenile crime in particular has ruined the quality of life in more affluent communities such as Federal Hill.  Marauding bands of teenagers have caused trouble downtown and in the Inner Harbor off and on for years, capturing national attention in 2012 when State Senator Patrick McDonough stated that the Inner Harbor should be declared a “no travel zone” like certain areas in the Middle East.

The problem of groups of teenagers assaulting and harassing visitors to the Inner Harbor hit the headlines again in February of this year.  Tourism in the Inner Harbor depends on the perception that, although Baltimore has some very dangerous neighborhoods, the Inner Harbor is specially protected and therefore “safe.”  An incident that reprises the negative attention that the city got in 2012 could shatter that perception and put a dagger into the heart of the tourism industry in the city, something that the city can ill afford; tourism generates about $283 million per year in taxes and fees for the city and $396 for the state with direct spending by visitors in excess of $5 billion.

Can the BPD keep the Inner Harbor and other downtown tourist attractions safe for visitors?  Doing so requires saturating the area with police officers, and patrolling the Inner Harbor is now competing against other pressing needs throughout the city for the shrinking personnel resources of the BPD.  One instance of a teenage thug knocking a tourist to the ground caught on cell phone video and we again are going to hear calls for the National Guard to patrol the Inner Harbor with M-16’s because the BPD can’t protect visitors.

Without more officers the BPD is unable to staff the personnel deployment plan introduced in 2015 without relying heavily on overtime.  The plan, which replaced five eight-hour shifts per week with four ten-hour shifts, requires 1,250 officers to staff; the city currently has about 900.  In 2014 the department cut 200 positions and the following year froze 225 more.  The staffing “crisis” to which FOP head Ryan referred is compounded by the fact that the BPD no longer is able to recruit new officers fast enough to replace departing ones.

Mandatory overtime can be hard on morale and fatigue from extended shifts can reduce effectiveness and endanger both officers and citizens.  The use of ten-hour shifts currently is hardwired into the department because it is written into the police union contract.  There is no quick fix even if the union contract is renegotiated and it appears that the department will be struggling to meet the demands of its workload for years to come.

As if all of the above was not enough, the relationship between the BPD and the equally-troubled State’s Attorney’s Office is increasingly fraught; the SAO is having as much difficulty securing convictions as the BPD is having closing cases.  The stress on the BPD is coming from almost every direction, and it is reeling.

To some extent the investigation by the DOJ and the now-approved consent decree have caused state and city leaders to step back and wait, as if the solutions to the BPD’s problems lie in someone else’s hands.  That is a dangerous misperception; the consent decree between the city and the DOJ is not a panacea and in fact is likely to increase the strain on the BPD in the short term.  The consent decree is an imperfect remedy at best and implementing it will be extremely expensive and draw resources away from the fight against crime.  It also demands a less-aggressive style of policing at a time when some experts are saying that the BPD needs to embrace a more aggressive approach.

One thing that you never hear mentioned by those who praise the consent decree is that the city is in uncharted territory – no police department has had to spend time and money on compliance with a consent decree while also trying to combat an historic increase in crime comparable to Baltimore’s.  In an interview with WBAL-TV’s Adam May outgoing United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod Rosenstein cautioned that the focus of the consent decree is on policing the police, not on fighting crime.  He stated that the city needs to return to the aggressive, proactive policing that drove down violent crime from 2007 to 2014 because the mission of keeping the streets safe is not being accomplished.  “We need to be more aggressive, more pro-active with law enforcement, because our responsibility is to protect the law abiding citizens.”

The problem is that under the consent decree policing is likely to be less aggressive and pro-active, partly by design.  For example, the consent decree prohibits BPD officers from stopping and frisking a person in a high crime neighborhood based only on the person’s sudden and unprovoked flight from the officers, even though the practice is constitutionally sound and results in taking handguns and other contraband off of the streets.  In asking the FBI for help Mayor Pugh complained that “There are too many guns on the streets.”  Assuming she is correct it was not the ideal time to agree to end a practice that actually took some of those guns off of the streets.

Under pressure from members of the city council to downsize and under compulsion by the consent decree to adopt a less-aggressive style of policing the BPD is being asked to make two major transitions – downsize and change its style of policing – at a time when it can barely do its job.  I do not doubt that over time the city will be better served by a smaller and higher-quality department or that the consent decree ultimately will result in the improvement of the quality of the department; I just wonder how well these transitions can be managed while the department is struggling to accomplish its basic mission of keeping the streets safe.

_______

How did things get this bad for the BPD?  In my opinion, the BPD has become ungovernable.  By “ungovernable” I mean that the department’s leadership is precluded by the structural limitations on its authority from making the changes and asserting the influence necessary to control the conduct of police officers, rein in costs, and shape the department into a police force capable of coping with a crime rate of historic proportions.

Don’t expect sustained improvement in the performance of the BPD until there is a change in its governance.  Specifically, the state and the city must restore to the Police Commissioner the authority to run the department that was gradually ceded to the police union and collective bargaining.  The recipe for the success of any governmental agency is to appoint a competent leader, give that leader the tools necessary to do the job, and then hold the leader accountable for the agency’s performance.  Conversely, take the tools necessary to do the job away from the leader and watch the performance of the agency gradually deteriorate – which is exactly what has happened to the BPD.

I described in a post last week how the authority of the Police Commissioner to control the conduct of officers has been eroded over time by the state and city.  The problem also extends to control over the allocation of personnel and other resources; the commissioner should not have to go hat in hand to the union to be able to change shift and staffing patterns to respond to changing circumstances.

In January of last year the Daily Record published an editorial in which it observed that the BPD would never be reformed unless someone managed to “dismantle the police union’s grip on city government.”  That observation can be extended to the FOP’s grip on state government and it is as true now as it was true then.  It will continue to be true until state and city officials muster the political will to do something about it.

I have made other suggestions in the past about things that needed to be done to restore a sensible “balance of power” between labor and management in the BPD.  None of my proposals were particularly earth-shattering, but at least they reflected the reality that nibbling around the edges of the problems with the BPD is not going to be sufficient.  State and city officials have yet to grasp that reality.  The commissioner has initiated some reforms but they don’t come close to solving the problems.  More than rearranging the deck chairs will be required.

And yes, I do see the BPD as a giant ocean liner headed toward an iceberg.  At some point it becomes too late to change course to avoid a collision.  I hope I am wrong, but I believe that the BPD may be past the point where anything can be done to avoid some very rough times in the next few years.  If violent crime continues unabated as the costs of complying with the consent decree climb we are going to see extraordinary levels of political turmoil in Baltimore and Annapolis.

Crime rates generally are cyclical and maybe the best that can be done now is pray for a fortuitous downturn in the violence gripping Baltimore.  At the same time we might also pray for forgiveness for the state and city officials who have done almost nothing to fix the BPD and protect the city.

April 27, 2017

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh described the day that United States District Court Judge James Bredar signed the order approving the consent decree between the city and the Department of Justice (DOJ) that requires changes to the policies and practices of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) as “a great day for Baltimore.”  She said that the approval was as “a great victory for the citizens of Baltimore as well as for our Police Department.”

It is too soon to declare victory.  The easy part is now behind the city; the hard work lies ahead.  The consent decree is no panacea.  Political courage will be required to assure its success and that tends to be in short supply.

Many factors contributed to the troubled record of the BPD but at heart of the problem was the failure of state and city officials to adhere to one simple rule:  The path to success for almost any governmental organization is placing a competent person in charge, giving that person the tools necessary to run the organization, and holding him or her accountable for the results.  The rule applies to schools and principals and it applies to police departments and police chiefs.

State and city officials defied this principle by a series of decisions that eroded the power of the police commissioner to control the conduct of officers and to ensure that only good officers were retained and promoted, taking away important tools from the commissioner.  If those decisions are not reversed there will be no sustainable reform of the BPD.

The failure was a collective effort.  The General Assembly did its part by enacting a Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) that takes disciplinary decisions out of the hands of police chiefs, renders it extraordinarily difficult to discipline officers for misconduct, and is entirely unsuited to the demands of a large, urban police department.

The city allowed sergeants and lieutenants and the officers they supervise, all of whom are protected by the LEOBR, to be represented by the same union.  As if to emphasize the stranglehold that the union has over them city officials negotiated union contracts further diluting the commissioner’s authority over discipline by stripping the commissioner of the right to appoint the members of the hearing boards convened to determine if police officers should be disciplined.

In other words, the sole authority to administer discipline once exercised by the commissioner was transferred by the state to panels of the commissioner’s subordinates selected by the commissioner.  Next, the sole authority of the commissioner to select the members of the panels was taken away by the city.  The consequences were predictable.

The attenuation of management’s ability to shape the attitudes and behavior of officers created the opportunity for an insular, anti-management culture to flourish among the rank-and-file and their immediate supervisors.  Far too often this resulted in out-of-control officers supervised by sergeants and lieutenants who were indifferent, or worse. The culture will not change unless the authority of the commissioner is restored and the power of the police union diminished.  And, if the culture is not changed all of the additional training and other changes required by the consent decree will amount to castles built on sand.

Am I confident that state and city officials have the political courage to take on the police union and give back to the commissioner the tools necessary to run the BPD?  An old saw explains why I am not.

A stranger came across a man digging for buried treasure.  The man enlisted the stranger’s help and after an hour of fruitless digging the stranger asked the man if he was sure they were digging in the right spot.  The man admitted that they weren’t digging in the right spot, explaining “The treasure is buried over there, but the ground is softer over here.”  If history is any judge state and city elected officials will do enough to make it appear that they are trying to solve the problem without doing the tough work required to actually solve it.  Neither the General Assembly nor the City Council has shown much of an appetite for engaging in a battle with the police union.

Far be it from me to throw cold water on the mayor’s celebratory mood. Personally, however, I will wait to celebrate until I see evidence that state and city officials intend to dig in the right spot and make the changes to state and city law necessary to achieve sustainable reform of the BPD.

April 21, 2017

Credit where credit’s due is my motto, so I have to commend the editorial in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun on reform of Maryland’s liquor laws.  The silver lining in the brouhaha in the General Assembly over legislation that will allow industry giant Diageo to open a Guinness-themed taproom at an old spirits plant in Relay is that it, once again, called attention to Maryland’s archaic liquor laws.

I tweeted a number of weeks ago that the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is a first-class tourist attraction, richly deserving of its status as the most popular in Ireland.  Even my wife, not a beer drinker, enjoyed it.  If the facility planned for Baltimore for Baltimore is anything like the Dublin operation officials in Maryland and Baltimore County would have to be brain-dead not to do what is necessary to allow it to open. Fortunately, the General Assembly enacted the requisite law expanding the amount of beer Guinness and craft brewers alike can sell in their taprooms, although not without considerable wrangling.

No matter what you may believe, Kellyanne Conway did not invent the concept of “alternative facts.”  Legislators in Maryland long have embraced the concept as applied to the Alcoholic Beverages Article of the State Code, claiming that the primary goal of the byzantine set of laws is to protect the public.

The primary goal of the law is of course to protect the interests of existing business owners, particularly wholesalers and distributors, and it does so in remarkably ham-handed and anti-competitive ways.  The public is left on the outside looking in.

The alcoholic beverage industry and their lobbyists pay handsomely for this special treatment through campaign donations, and in effect have a fair number of legislators in their pocket.  The control exercised by the alcoholic beverage industry over the General Assembly is the worst-kept secret in Annapolis and the source of considerable disgust among those of us who have seen it in action.  The outright corruption of state and local of state and local officials that is detected and prosecuted is the tip of the iceberg.

I agree with the Sun editorial board that existing laws need to be scrapped, and that Maryland needs to start from scratch to craft a sensible regulatory scheme.  I also am leery of Comptroller Peter Franchot, or any other politician, leading the effort.

Maryland politicians simply are too addicted to the flow of campaign contributions from the alcoholic beverage industry to act objectively.  For example, Franchot’s campaign for re-election in 2014 received $62,000 in contributions later determined to be illegal from a company run by David Trone, the Potomac wine magnate who along with his brother owns Total Wine & More.  Some sort of independent commission, with members drawn from outside of politics and the alcoholic beverage industry, is the best hope.

April 15, 2017

The article by Alison Knezevich of The Baltimore Sun on the “severance package” being paid to former Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson is a reminder of the vital role played by traditional daily newspapers in keeping an eye on state and local governments.  The administration of President Donald Trump has drawn a lot of attention to the watchdog role played at the federal level by national newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The part played by local newspapers and regional newspapers like the Sun in holding state and local governments to account, however, should not be overlooked.  It is state and local government that has the most direct effect on our daily lives.  A whole lot of mischief can go on in the halls of state and local government, and one thing that I can tell with certainty after nearly 40 years of experience in government is that you would never know about that mischief if most elected officials had their way.

Which brings me to the severance package approved by Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz for former Police Chief Jim Johnson, who Mr. Kamenetz asked to retire at the end of January.  According to the information that Ms. Knezevich was able to obtain Mr. Johnson will receive $45,954 because he is being kept on the payroll until the end of this month, even though he left his position at the end of January.  There is no indication that any work is expected of Mr. Johnson in return for the county paying him at the same rate he was being before he retired as police chief, about $254,000 per year ($21,167 per month); to the contrary, a spokesman for Mr. Kamenetz explained that the money being paid to Mr. Johnson is for services already rendered: “As a show of gratitude for, and in honor of, his decades of service as a leader in the Baltimore County Police Department.”

When the paychecks stop Mr. Johnson will be paid an additional $117,000, equivalent to another 120 days of pay.  At least some of that $117,000 is payment for unused annual leave; how much is unknown because the county refused to give Ms. Knezevich a copy of the severance agreement signed by Mr. Johnson and the County Executive, describing it as a “personnel matter” protected from disclosure under the Maryland Public Information Act.  Pay-outs for unused annual (“vacation”) leave for classified employees of the county are governed by county law, and the amount of unused leave for which a retiring classified employee may be paid is limited by Personnel Rule 21.07.  Hopefully Mr. Kamenetz will explain to the county council and members of the public to what rule he referred when deciding upon the pay-out to Mr. Johnson for unused vacation time.

Something else will happen when the paychecks stop:  Mr. Johnson’s county pension begins.  More on that later, because it puts the severance package in the proper perspective.

Ms. Knezevich had the right to get a copy of the severance agreement.  One of the liberating things about not being a professional journalist, and not writing this post for publication in one of the traditional newspapers to which I referred, is that I can use the term that I believe best describes the position taken by Baltimore County regarding release of the severance agreement – bullshit.  The refusal of the county to release the agreement is bullshit, pure and simple.  A severance agreement is in the nature of an employment agreement setting forth the terms and conditions governing an employment relationship and the receipt of compensation arising from that employment, even if limited in scope to the terms and conditions governing compensation paid at the end of that relationship.

In University System of Maryland v. The Baltimore Sun Co., 381 Md. 79 (2004), the Maryland Court of Appeals held that the employment contracts of coaches employed by the University of Maryland involved the transaction of state business and governed the payment of public funds, and that “any document evidencing the employment arrangement and how the state-funded salary is earned” must be made available for public scrutiny.  The court held that disclosure of the salary paid to a coach alone was insufficient to place the compensation in a useful context, especially in light of the other emoluments to which the coach may be entitled under the contract such as a car allowance, country club memberships, use of state-owned resources for clinics and camps, etc.  I believe that it is virtually certain that a court would apply the same reasoning to require release of an agreement that sets forth the quid pro quo under which “severance” payments are made with public money.

A reasonable assumption to be made when a document like the severance agreement with Mr. Johnson is withheld for dubious reasons is that it contains something controversial or embarrassing to the withholding party.  In this case my guess, and I emphasize that it is a guess, would be a non-disparagement clause; in other words, a provision that prohibits Mr. Johnson from criticizing Mr. Kamenetz.  Such provisions are highly controversial when they involve public officials, not only because of their implications under the First Amendment but also because they involve the use of tax money to purchase silence.  Until Mr. Kamenetz releases the document that he should already have released it is reasonable to assume that it contains something that Mr. Kamenetz would prefer to hide from the public.

Refusing to release a copy of the severance agreement is not the only thing that is of dubious legality in this situation.  There is well-established body of Maryland case law supporting the proposition that the compensation paid to a public official is limited to that set forth in law – and set forth in law means written down for everyone to see.  Do you have any question about the beneficent public purpose that lies behind that case law?  If you do, you haven’t lived in Maryland long enough.

The ignorance expressed by the members of the Baltimore County Council interviewed for the story about the existence of a severance package tells you all you need to know about the existence of any county law authorizing the payment of a severance allowance.   In a statement the Kamenetz administration said that a severance package “is standard practice for members of the County’s Executive Pay Plan with 30 or more years of service.”  I’ve seen many “standard practices” uncovered in government that had nothing to do with the law.  That explanation is not good enough.

Even the idea that Baltimore County has had two police chiefs on the payroll for the past two months is of questionable legality.  Where is the authority for that?

Council Chairman Tom Quirk told Ms. Knezevich that a severance agreement for a police chief is “ultimately the county executive’s decision.” Mr. Quirk added that “it’s not uncommon for different executives” to receive a severance package and “I would defer to the county executive on that.”

I am going to have to disagree with Mr. Quirk on two counts.  First of all, the matter of severance compensation should be governed by legislation enacted by the county council or at least by personnel rule approved by the county council, not left entirely to the discretion of the county executive.  Secondly, his statement that it is not uncommon for “different executives” to receive a severance package may generally be true, but is not true in the context of this situation.

The following fact places both of my objections to what Mr. Quirk said in context:  Upon retirement Mr. Johnson immediately becomes eligible for a pension from Baltimore County that I estimate to be approximately $240,000 per year – that’s right, $240,000 per year.  The amount of a pension paid to a public official in Maryland is confidential under Maryland law but the formula for calculating Mr. Johnson’s pension is set forth in Section 5-1-206 of the Baltimore County Code.  Using information reported by the Sun that described Mr. Johnson’s 38 years of service with the police department and his final salary of $254,000 it is possible to estimate his pension with reasonable accuracy.

Stated another way, if Mr. Johnson had retired in January he would have received a regular pay check for that month in the amount of $21,167 and a pension check for the following month in the amount of $20,000.  The pension and and any leave pay-out to which Mr. Johnson is entitled as a matter of law is Mr. Johnson’s remuneration for service faithfully and honorably rendered and nothing else is necessary or justified.

Mr. Quirk, you know the people of Arbutus and Catonsville far better than I do but do you believe that if this matter had been the subject of legislation your constituents would have shown up at the public hearing to support the idea of giving Mr. Johnson even more money than the $20,000 per month pension benefit in the form of a “severance package”?  With an income of $240,000 per year from his pension alone that means that Mr. Johnson’s household income will be greater than about 98% of the households in your district, including those with two members of the household still working.  The point here is not whether Mr. Johnson deserves that level of compensation for past service; it is whether he deserves even more.

I add that Mr. Johnson is not eligible for social security because neither he nor the county paid into social security during his service, something the law allowed for police officers covered by another government pension plan.  Nevertheless, the benefits to which Mr. Johnson is entitled as a retired Baltimore County police officer are extraordinarily generous, far more generous than the retirement benefits available to military retirees or even to members of Congress, for example.

Of course, at only 58 years of age Mr. Johnson can find other work, continue to receive his full county pension, and earn some social security benefits, if he wishes to do so.  Also, if HB 100 passes the General Assembly and is enacted into law, as appears likely, Mr. Johnson will be able to reduce the income upon which he pays state income tax by $15,000, which should help offset the absence of income from social security.

I also want to add that I am not criticizing Mr. Johnson.  In my opinion he was one of the finest police chiefs in the State of Maryland, if not the finest, and I am by no means alone in that belief.  My sole point in all of this is one of process:  When you are talking about the compensation of public employees at these stratospheric levels the process by which such compensation is determined has to be open and transparent, and based on explicit provisions of law.  Anything else erodes the trust of citizens in their government, to the extent that such trust still exists.

As I was putting the finishing touches on this post I read an excellent letter published in today’s Sun from a Mr. Bruce Knauff of Towson about the severance package being paid to Mr. Johnson.  Mr. Knauff called for the county council to censure Mr. Kamenetz if any severance payment to Mr. Johnson not required by law cannot be rescinded.  The letter was captioned, probably by an editor, as “Cronyism lives in Baltimore County.”

I have to say that among all metropolitan counties Baltimore County government has a bit of a reputation as being dominated by a good old boys’ network, and what appears at least on the surface to be a backroom deal does nothing to mitigate that reputation.  Even if the severance agreement is indeed a “personnel matter” as alleged by the Kamenetz administration then the subject of that matter, Mr. Johnson, is free to approve a release of the agreement.  I would urge Mr. Johnson to do so to help protect his own well-known reputation for openness and integrity.

When I retired as County Attorney for Anne Arundel County in 2014 I began to write on the subject of openness and transparency in government because I know first-hand just how important it is.  The one issue that drew me back into a legal and political controversy involving the county for which I had worked for 31 years, something that I swore I would avoid doing once I retired, was an attempt last year by the administration of County Executive Steve Schuh to amend the county charter in a way that would have foreclosed public access to certain types of information.

Five of the seven members of the Anne Arundel County Council asked me to provide a legal opinion on the proposed amendment, which I did without asking for a fee.  The attempt to change the charter ultimately proved unsuccessful and I earned the enmity of Mr. Schuh for my role in helping to derail it; his spokesperson threatened to file a grievance against me with the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission.  I never could figure out what would have been the basis for such a grievance – maybe it was because I did the legal work free of charge?  Among some of my cohorts that is considered a sin, although I don’t believe that it is a violation of the formal rules of professional responsibility.

In any case the point of that story is that when you get involved in issues like these you can’t expect elected officials to like you for it; controlling the flow of information and protecting their public images is so important to elected officials because it is so closely connected to a matter that generally matters the most to them – getting re-elected or elected to a higher office.  As a citizen you have to be willing to take some heat if you believe that the issue is important enough, and few issues are as important as openness and transparency at all levels of government.

Having said that, I recently moved to Baltimore County and I guess I should be willing to step up and antagonize elected officials here as well, if necessary.  I am going to prepare my own Public Information Act request seeking a copy of the severance agreement.  I will take it one step at a time, but I still pay the fees necessary to retain my license to practice law.  Another thing I told myself when I retired was that my avocation in retirement was not going to include going to court; I wanted to try something different after nearly four decades.  I enjoy writing, but on occasion sitting at a desk is not quite enough.  Maybe it’s the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd; whatever it is, sometimes I miss it. I can find my way to the courthouse in Towson if I have to.

◊           ◊           ◊

I am going to finish where I started, and that is with the role played by The Baltimore Sun.  The existence of the severance package paid to Mr. Johnson by the county never would have come to light except for the skilled reporting of Ms. Knezevich; even the members of the county council were kept in the dark.  We will rue the day that the Sun and newspapers like it no longer have the resources to send reporters to cover stories like this.

When I began as an Assistant State’s Attorney in Anne Arundel County in 1978 the independent daily newspaper in Annapolis then known as the The Evening Capital had separate reporters assigned to the courthouse, the crime beat, the education beat, and the city and county government beats, in addition to reporters assigned to specific geographic areas throughout Anne Arundel County.  The reporters tended to be young, underpaid and inexperienced and the editor, Ed Casey, had his foibles, but the important issues got covered.

Sometimes the coverage was a bit rough around the edges, but the job got done and it was a whole lot better than no coverage at all in keeping government officials on their toes.  The paper, now known as The Capital and part of the Baltimore Sun Media Group, is a shadow of its former self, and I mean that with no disrespect to the current editor and reporters who do the best they possibly can with what they have.  My concern is more than nostalgia for the past; it is knowledge that there is as of yet no adequate substitute for newspaper reporters who are there on the ground and asking the right questions.

There was something else in today’s Sun that caught my eye:  An op ed reminding readers (including me) that this week is “Sunshine Week” as declared by the American Society of News Editors.  I agree that open access to the proceedings and records of state and local government is critical, but it is not enough:  There have to professionally-trained and supervised news reporters with the time to look and with the expertise necessary to know what to look for and, once they find it, to know what they are looking at and how to bring the relevant facts to the attention of the public.

Consequently, here’s my advice:  Buy a subscription to The Baltimore Sun in addition to a subscription to either the New York Times or the Washington Post.  Yes, the Sun has published a number of my op eds over the past two years, but that is another activity for which I don’t get paid and I therefore have no financial interest in the Sun’s circulation; if the Sun chooses to publish one of my op eds I get paid precisely the same amount regardless of the number of papers sold – nothing.

Look at the subscriptions as your investment in good government.  These newspapers are your eyes and ears, and now more than ever you need to keep your eyes and ears in good health, and open.

March 18, 2017

Dan Rodricks posed a question in a column that appeared Monday in the Baltimore Sun.  Referring to the alleged conduct of the seven members of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) Gun Trace Task Force indicted on federal racketeering charges Rodricks asked how come no one in the department noticed what was going on.  The United States Attorney made a point of stating that the information that led to the investigation came was learned by DEA agents during the investigation into a drug ring, not from the BPD.

The answer to Rodricks’ question that the culture of the BPD has not fundamentally changed from the culture described in the report of the Department of Justice on the BPD.  The supervision of rank-and-file officers by sergeants and lieutenants is lackadaisical and the blue wall of silence has not come down.  The code requires officers to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil of fellow officers, even if they are your subordinates.

The problem with supervision is especially acute at the rank of sergeant, if only because there are so many more sergeants than lieutenants and the sergeants are most familiar with what is happening on the street.  The situation with Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, one of the indicted examples, serves as a perfect example.  Assuming that he did not personally participate in any of the alleged wrongdoing it is impossible for me to believe that he did not have a good idea what the other six officers in his unit were doing.  Jenkins earned $168,700 last year of which $83,300 was overtime.  It isn’t as if he wasn’t around the unit enough to see what was going on.

The reason that the culture has not changed is that the Police Commissioner cannot get rid of problem officers fast enough to get ahead of the curve.  That handicap is most damaging as it applies to the sergeants and lieutenants who are the front line supervisors of the department.  The front line supervisors serve as the guardians of the culture of the department and pass that culture along to the next generation of officers entering the department.

Lousy attitudes and bad habits by supervisors beget lousy attitudes and bad habits by the officers they supervise.  The good intentions of the Commissioner are not making it down to the street.  It is a cycle that must be broken, and I certainly am not the first person to say so.

In 2014 The Sun published its eye-opening report titled “Undue Force” describing how Baltimore had paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that its police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects.  Former Police Commissioner Anthony Batts responded to the report with a remark describing the basic problem that he was having in his attempts to change the culture of the department: He bemoaned the fact that his hands were tied by the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) and he simply could not act fast enough to discipline officers.

Under the LEOBR a police chief lacks the power to unilaterally impose discipline; before discipline may be imposed an officer has to found guilty of a disciplinary infraction by an independent hearing board, an uncertain process that can take many months to complete.  Batts initially stated that he would seek changes to the LEOBR by the Maryland General Assembly but ultimately backed down under pressure from the FOP.

By June of 2015 Batts was under fire for his handling of the riots that followed the death of Freddy Gray in April and for a spike in the city’s murder rate, and he probably knew that his days as commissioner were numbered; in July he was gone.  In June 2015 he wrote an op ed  published by The Sun that sounded a lot like a parting shot, getting some unfinished business off of his chest.

In his op ed Batts stated that when he arrived at the BPD in 2012 he found a “cycle of scandal, corruption and malfeasance” that “seemed to be continuing without abatement.”  He admitted that the problem had not been solved and predicted:

“Our reform efforts will very likely see more police officers arrested. We will have more officers who are forced out because their outdated, outmoded views of policing do not match the standards the community expects and demands.”

Batts was accused of melodrama and disloyalty to his officers because of his 2015 op ed. One thing he can’t be accused of was being wrong.

Ironically, in recounting the history of scandal and corruption in the BPD over the past decade in his op ed Batts referred to the cases of former BPD detectives William King and Antonio Murray who in 2006 were sentenced to hundreds of years in federal prison for robbing drug suspects.  The scope of the activity for which King and Murray were convicted pales in insignificance to the scope of the crimes alleged in the indictments handed down last week.

(If you are interested in the history of scandal and corruption in the BPD to which Batts referred there was a recap of it done by Edward Erikson, Jr. in the City Paper in 2015.)

I have been writing about the deficiencies in the front line supervision in the BPD for two years, as I reviewed in my blog post on Sunday.  One of my proposals was that the Baltimore city delegation get together with the city council and the Legislative Black Caucus to persuade the General Assembly to pass a public local law that would have the effect of removing BPD sergeants and lieutenants from the LEOBR and therefore allow the Commissioner to move more quickly in replacing inadequate supervisors with adequate ones.  A bill like that affecting only the city might have a chance of getting passed.  Instead, city and state officials have gone off in various futile directions.

If you are cynical enough you can even see the little political dance that goes on.  Councilman Brandon Scott and other members of the city council persuaded Del. Curt Anderson to introduce a bill this year that would have made the BPD a city rather than a state agency, which would have solved absolutely nothing.  The bill has been withdrawn, but Scott gets to tell the voters when he runs for higher office that “I tried.”

Mayor Pugh went to Annapolis this year to ask the General Assembly to pass a bill obviating the need for the city council to confront the FOP over the FOP’s reluctance to agree to placing civilians on police disciplinary hearing boards. Knowledgeable observers know that she is asking the General Assembly to do something that the city should do for itself; when the bill fails, however, Mayor Pugh will get to tell the citizens who strongly support civilian participation in the police disciplinary process that “I tried.”

These officials have “tried” alright – they’ve tried to persuade citizens that they are actually interested in solving the problems with the BPD when the reality is that they don’t really want to do the tough work and take on the FOP and its allies.  It’s all political bullshit.

In the meantime Commissioner Kevin Davis is coping as best he can.  He demoted the commander of the division of which the Gun Trace Task Force was a part, reducing him in rank from Chief to Lieutenant.  The commissioner can demote a chief without going through the LEOBR but because of the Baltimore civil service system he can only reduce him to the rank of lieutenant – which is of course a supervisory position.  Problem solved?

The commissioner also decided to eliminate another semi-autonomous unit, the plainclothes enforcement unit.  Although the commissioner may have doubts about the utility of the unit the move also clearly reflects his recognition of the major problem that he has with command and control – he simply does not have enough reliable supervisors to deal with any more moving parts within the department than absolutely necessary.  Davis is trying to reduce the department’s exposure to bad supervision by reducing the number of separate units that have to be supervised.  I don’t think that is going to be enough.

If I have one criticism of the commissioner it is that he is not pressing the case strongly enough on the need to give him more authority to get rid of bad officers, particularly in the supervisory ranks of sergeant and lieutenant.  Governor Larry Hogan has expressed his admiration for Davis; maybe it is time for Davis to sit down with the governor and ask for his support in making the necessary changes to state law.

The indictment of the seven officers should serve as a wake-up call that the “cycle of scandal, corruption and malfeasance” identified by Batts has not been broken.  Indeed, if the allegations in the indictment are true it is the worst scandal in the BPD in recent decades.

Although the Majestic Auto Body kickback scheme involved far more officers the crimes committed in that scandal were child’s play compared to what allegedly went on in the Gun Trace Task Force. The task force allegedly engaged in the type of violent criminal enterprise usually found only in third world countries.  Making things even more unsettling is the fact that some of the activity described in the indictment occurred after the BPD had come under heightened scrutiny following the death of Freddy Gray, underscoring the brazenness of the alleged conduct.

It appears to me that Davis is trying to deal with the BPD’s problems without ruffling too many feathers.  I don’t believe that strategy will work.

March 8, 2017