Women's Legislative Briefing Today

Today (Jan. 31) there was a very successful Women's Legislative Briefing. At least 500 were in attendance, probably 95% female; I was one of a very few men in the audience.

We heard from U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, Congressmen Chris Van Hollen, John Sarbanes, John Cardin, and Donna Edwards. Then there were workshops on topics such as women's health and safety. It was very educational and enjoyable.
 

Forum for All Candidates Who Have Filed, All Parties, for Congress in Maryland District 8

Last night there was a very good candidates forum in the Aspen Hill Library, sponsored by the Friends of the Library and put together by Elliot Chabot and Carol Petzold.

All candidates who have filed with the Md Board of Elections were present, including Democrats and Republicans. The only ones missing were Aryeh Shudofsky and Gus Alzona, Republicans, and David Trone, Democrat who just filed to run yesterday.

This forum was substantive, concentrating on issues. It was a very good job by those who put it together, and Elliot Chabot as moderator.
 

Hearing on County Bill to Revise the CCOC

There was a very interesting hearing at the County Council Thursday evening (Jan. 21). The subject was a bill to revise the CCOC, which sounds boring, but the hearing was as heated as could be with some predicting disaster if the bill is passed with its provisions to (a) switch the CCOC from the Office of Consumer Protection to the Office of Housing and Community Affairs, (b) exclude lawyers from serving on CCOC hearing panels because of their conflicts of interest (being neutral on hearing panels at the same time they are seeking clients who can include those seeking their votes at hearings), and (c) change the composition of the CCOC to include "average" citizens.

My proposal was for extensive and detailed training and education of CCOC members before or as soon as they join the CCOC, so they will have a thorough knowledge of the laws they apply and so they will have the skills to participate fully in hearing panels, including being chair and writing opinions, since that's what their duties are supposed to include. All the other provisions of the proposed law are relatively unimportant. All that really matters is proper and thorough education and training of CCOC members.

Flint, Michigan, Water Crisis 

 

What has happened in Flint, Michigan, should make all Americans angry. In short, Republican Governor Rick Snyder removed democracy from Flint by eliminating all power of their elected leaders and putting that power in the hands of people he personally appointed. Those people decided to cut costs regardless of what effect that might have on citizens. One of those cuts was to change where Flint's water came from, even though they knew there was danger in doing that.

The danger was that water would now come to homes in lead pipes that were corroded, meaning lead would be in the water and that has been proven to irreversible destroy the brains of people, especially children. That is just what happened and was proven, yet Governor Snyder and his appointees for many months told the people to keep drinking the poisoned water and that is was safe, even when they knew that it would only cost about $100 a day to make the water safe. The only place where the danger was made clear was on the Rachel Maddow Show.

Now, many months after the harm has been done Governor Snyder and his people finally acted, but in very flimsy ways. Some of the people responsible for poisoning people resigned. Then the Governor said he would get the National Guard to distribute bottled water, but only 20 of the Guard actually did that. And Gov. Snyder continued to fail to request help from the federal government until Hillary Clinton made this a national news story again.

What will happen now? Thousands of young children in Flint are harmed for life beyond repair. They will need care for their whole lives. Even adults are at risk, and the bad water has caused an outbreak of Legionnaires Disease too, which has already killed people. This is a disaster, and one caused by one man, Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan.

Some have called for him to resign, some for him to be impeached, some for him to be arrested and jailed. Just under the surface in all of this is that the population of Flint is mostly poor and black, so people are wondering if the Governor would have acted differently if they were white and had money. That is a good question.

This proves that the United States still has awful people in key governmental positions, people who will harm citizens to save a small amount of money and not care. Something should be done to leaders who act that way.

 

MoCo and the DLC's Monopoly on the Sale of Liquor

There's a lot of controversy about the way in which the sale of liquor is regulated in Montgomery County. Usually discussion of this topic gets emotional and heated very quickly. I'll try to make it calm and logical:

Current situation:

Since the end of the national Prohibition on the sale of liquor in the U.S. in 1933, Montgomery County, Maryland, has required that all liquor sold in our county be sold through the Department of Liquor Control (DLC). Some people think this is wrong, for several reasons:

1. Our county is the only one of more than 3,000 in the U.S. that handles liquor sales this way.
2. As a matter of logic, should a county government be in the business of having a monopoly on the sale of liquor. Is that a proper government function?
3. Almost everyone agrees that DLC does a poor job, but some say they are trying to improve now. 
4. DLC said they didn't deliver the liquor bought from them by county restaurants during the recent holiday season, the most important time for restaurants to have the liquor they needed to sell to their customer.
5. A local tv crew followed DLC delivery trucks a few months ago and videotaped their drivers drinking while driving their DLC liquor delivery trucks. As far as I know, no one has said what happened, if anything, to these drivers or what is being done now to prevent this from happening again.
6. It is alleged that a very large number of liquor cases go "missing" almost every day, possibly 100 cases a day.
7. I have personally found DLC retail store employees to be extremely rude, and DLC websites and store signs about their hours to be inaccurate without any effort to correct them.


On the other hand, our County Executive and 8 of the 9 Council members say our county relies on the revenues brought in by liquor sales from the county's DLC monopoly. The number usually given is $30 million but different people use different numbers from time to time. In addition, these same people say that county bonds of over $100 million are backed by promises of future county monopoly sales of liquor and if the liquor monopoly were ended the county would have to back these bonds in another way. The claim is that if the county didn't get this $30 million in DLC profits, county property taxes would have to increase by about $100 per house, or county services would have to decrease. Some also say that the county liquor monopoly helps to lessen drunkenness and prevents liquor stores "on every corner,) at the same time DLC is opening more stores to try to make more money by selling more liquor. And of course this ignores the ability of zoning laws to regulate where and how many liquor stores there can be.

The union of DLC employees supports the current county liquor policy, saying if liquor sales were opened to competition DLC might not be able to compete and at least some of its employees might lose their jobs.

The County Council passed a bill they call a compromise, to allow restaurants in our county to buy "specialty" beer and liquor outside the DLC county monopoly on liquor sales. This bill says that DLC can set a price to be paid by restaurants to DLC for any loss of revenue DLC would incur from this, the amount to be set by DLC itself even though DLC would be receiving this money for doing nothing, in fact receiving money for having failed to do a good job at this part of the marker.

There is a bill being introduced in the Maryland General Assembly (since the state controls all liquor policies, even those of counties) to have a referendum in MoCo to let the voters decide if private companies should be allowed to sell liquor in the county in competition with DLC. Proponents say this would allow the citizens to decide this important issue, and if DLC can do a good job in competition with others it would continue to make money for the county. Opponents say the issue is too complicated for a vote by the citizens and that liquor companies would spend a lot on advertising to sway the voters.

That's the current situation, as objectively and as emotion-free as I can describe it.