Let’s hear from the state’s attorney candidates on peremptory challenges, drug offenses In a little more than two weeks, Baltimore City voters will participate in a seriously contested election for state’s attorney. There are various suggestions for rendering the criminal justice system more efficient. “Smoking out” the candidates would be useful to city voters next […]
Your editorial of August 5 on the Massinga foster care decision fails to make clear the reasons why Attorney General Douglas Gansler and Judge J. Frederick Motz properly felt that a further hearing was required (“A breach of trust,” Aug. 6). The recent decision of the Supreme Court disrupts cozy arrangements between advocacy groups and […]
Few states can have used the benefits accruing to them in the Obama administration’s stimulus bill as irresponsibly as Maryland. We may pass in review the bill’s effect on Maryland public policy: Pension and Retirement Systems The Calvert Institute and the Maryland Public Policy Foundation recently published a study of Maryland’s public pension and retiree […]
baltimoresun.com Not just for mother-in-law Accessory apartments benefit society and the economy, and it’s time for tax credits to promote them By Patrick H. Hare and George W. Liebmann January 29, 2009 Twenty years ago, we separately produced publications urging that governments should provide incentives for the creation of accessory apartments (sometimes called “mother-in-law apartments”) […]
SUMMARY Maryland’s state and local pension and retirement benefits plans are in for some hard times ahead. Facing budget shortfalls, governments are underfunding their retirement plans, while at the same time expanding the benefit promises to public employees. This unsustainable financing places both taxpayers and public employees at risk. Today, the Maryland State Retirement and […]
The recent, ringing defeat of a referendum on school vouchers in Utah – generally thought of as America’s most conservative state – should be a wake-up call to critics of our public school system. The proposal failed for several reasons apart from the might of the teachers unions. Chief among these is that it was […]
A rash of recent newspaper stories have proclaimed, a year in advance of the Presidential election, Sen. Hillary Clinton to be the next Democratic nominee, and the next President. The fixation of these stories is on campaign contributions and poll results, a sort of ‘inside baseball’ that our great newspapers now seem to regard as […]
The new administration has now been in office for nine months, an acceptable period of gestation, and it is now not too early for a preliminary assessment. Let us first accentuate some positive developments: 1. The administration appears to have placed the Departments of Public Safety and of Juvenile Services in the hands of fully […]
A year into the new administration, and a few months or weeks before the next legislative session, special or general, there is no sign that any study inspiring public confidence has been undertaken of the state’s revenue and tax structure. Instead there is vague talk of conversations between the Governor and Senate President Miller, inspiring […]
The Baltimore Schools Readers of the Baltimore newspapers have been regaled by a series of advertisements placed by the Baltimore Teachers’ Union, which has reached an impasse in contract negotiations with the school board. The school board proposes to slightly reduce the allowed weekly amount of what is quaintly called ‘preparation time’, in order to […]