REMARKS OF GEORGE W. LIEBMANN, PRESIDENT OF THE LIBRARY COMPANY OF THE BALTIMORE BAR, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CELEBRATION OF ITS 175TH ANNIVERSARY, JUNE 24, 2015. This is a delayed celebration. By your presence here, you affirm that lawyers and judges also have rights of peaceable assembly. I would hope that never again will […]
Baltimore’s Problems–And the Nation’s by George W. Liebmann According to the President and the media, the disturbances here are the product of gratuitous police brutality, the elimination of which is “the great civil rights cause of our generation.” This agenda is one with which the civil rights establishment is comfortable. But, as Arthur Schlesinger pointed […]
The Feds, the States and the Controlled Substances Act How exactly is Colorado undermining federal law? Nothing requires a state to make marijuana illegal. Wall Street Journal January 12, 2015 To the Editor: Maryland, under Gov. Albert Ritchie, steadfastly refused to prohibit alcohol sales throughout Prohibition, and Al Smith’s New York repealed its prohibition […]
Time for ‘Bottom-Up’ Education Reform by George W. Liebmann The renewed clamor for postponement of ‘common core’ testing provides further evidence of the failure of ‘top-down’ reform in Maryland public schools. Who can forget MSPAP, the State Board’s high stakes tests for graduation, and the procrastination in fulfilling the ‘Race to the Top’ promise that […]
A Worthy Report on Property Tax Incentives for Business The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has issued an exceptionally valuable report on state and local misuse of property tax incentives for economic development. Its authors are Daphne A. Kenyon, Adam H. Langley, and Bethany P. Paquin. Ms Kenyon is well known as the principal author […]
More Pension Follies With great fanfare, Governor O’Malley announced his 2014-15 budget. Three thick budget volumes were released. Nowhere in these volumes (with one minor exception) are any of the pertinent data concerning Maryland’s pension and employee health obligations disclosed. The re-design of Maryland’s budget documents carried out by the present budget secretary, Eloise Foster, […]
www.baltimoresun.com/ Maryland’s pension system has performed poorly for decades under two separate treasurers By George W. Liebmann 2:09 PM EST, February 19, 2014 Advertisement The state pension system is Maryland’s financial Achilles heel and has been for decades. All bond rating services have noted that rising pension debt endangers the state’s AAA bond […]
The O’Malley administration’s response to the real estate crash in 2008 was a characteristic one: kicking the can down the road. Lenders were blamed; foreclosure attorneys were blamed; everything was done to obscure the fact that many if not most of inner-city loans should not have been made in the first place, were frequently made […]
Maryland has, just, preserved its AAA bond rating, though with a negative outlook from Moody’s. Moody’s has issued a publication reporting that Maryland is one of the ten worst states in terms of the burden of pension debt, Maryland’s pension obligations being almost exactly equal to one year’s gross revenues, 99.5% of […]
Mismanaged Maryland Despite talk of reforms and budget cuts, Annapolis dabbles in excessive borrowing, noncompetitive projects and risky investments By George Liebmann6:00 a.m. EDT, March 11, 2013 There is a sharp disconnect between the image and reality of the O’Malley administration’s fiscal policies. The image features pension reforms, reduced structural deficits, […]