Democrats outside the Council appear to be claiming victory
because all three of the worst nominations:
Ivan Betancourt for Human Rights Commission
Susan Garber for Planning Board
Kimberly Hartman for the Local Children’s Board (One more
time, I wrote about this one here)
Were tabled or left on the table. I, on the other hand, think this was a bit of
a lost opportunity. The Council focused on two primary over arching issues. The first is that some of these nominations
are replacing currently serving appointees who have at least another term to
serve if they were reappointed. The
second is that they requested the Administration provide additional information
on its nominations and were refused.
In response County Executive Kittleman and the lone
Republican on the Council, Greg Fox, said that this was playing politics with .
. . political appointments. Kittleman’s
direct quote from the article is "It
seems that the council is starting to use Washington-style politics here in
Howard County," First of all, this is classic “Kittleman style
politics.” Which is to say this a sound bite
without depth or context but even I will agree that hey, I don’t want no
Washington style politics so I must be against that move.
Secondly,
the Councilmembers appear to be struggling to find ways in which to . . . work
together. There are two steps to
individuals getting appointed onto County boards and commissions. The first is nomination by the Executive and
the second is confirmation by the Council.
Kittleman mentions that no other Council has required such scrutiny over
nominations previously and asks why he is being treated differently. This is called bipartisanship; if I’m not
mistaken it is what you ran on being good at Mr. Executive. It’s more work for everyone involved but to
assume that you are given deference in the process is disingenuous at best. Besides any deference he may have earned, he
lost by nominating a vocal opponent to the Dream Act to the Human Rights
Commission[1]
and the Executive Director of the local Crisis Pregnancy Center to anything at
all but in this case the Local Children’s Board.
I was
thinking about his statement about “Washington style politics” and I was trying
to come up with a time when I remember legitimate bipartisanship instead of
attempts to out sound bite each other.
Then I remembered this. President Clinton reached out to Senator
Orrin Hatch, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee[2]
and asked him for suggestions for his Supreme Court Justice nominee. Senator Hatch gave him Ruth Bader Ginsburg;
she was nominated and confirmed 96-3.
That is what bipartisanship looks like.
Now back to the lost opportunity. This was a moment that the Council could have
made the above point. We are from
different parties trying to run government and so as the Executive, you MUST
include us more in the process before nomination if you expect deference during
confirmation. Until you are willing to
entertain that notion, the whole process will wait. It will be on hold for everyone, whether a
good or bad nominee. They still have
time to make that point though, and should at least consider holding up ALL
nominees until such time as the Executive is willing to make the process truly bipartisan.
One final unrelated note. The Council tabled the disposal of two of the
properties I talk about in this post but approved the disposal of the Bickley property. I will be keeping a close eye on who that
property gets sold to, as I believe strongly that it is inappropriate for the
government to take money from someone for the purposes of living on this
dangerous property.
[1] An
opponent of the Dream Act. To the Human
Rights Commission. Let that bounce
around in your head a little bit. Here is a letter to the editor from Mr. Betancourt on the subject.
[2]
The Republicans were in the minority of the Senate at the time and the President
still reached out.
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