This blog critiqued the democratic practices of the Greater Severna Park Council located in Severna Park, Maryland. It was discontinued in early 2004, after many of its recommendations were implemented.
March 1st, 2004
Are Washington DC and Anne Arundel County politics as different as many would have us believe?
February 21st, 2006A senior former Bush Administration official made this comment:
The power of the incumbency has grown. People are not concerned with what’s right or what’s in the nations interest, they are purely interested in killing their opponents.The power of the incumbency has grown. People are not concerned with what’s right or what’s in the nation’s interest, they are purely interested in killing their opponents.
My guess is that this comment about DC politics accurately describes Anne Arundel County politics far more than our elected officials and the Capital would have us believe.
Letter-to-the-editor, sent to the Capital, Washington Post, and Sun, regarding Human Resources Audit
September 11th, 2005
Human Resources Audit
During the last month the AACPS School Board has used the Human Resources Audit to explain its behavior castigating Superintendent Eric Smith. It’s time that the Board make this report public and conduct a full and fair oversight hearing concerning its contents. One thing is certain: neither the Board nor press has accurately reported the scope and financial significance of the report’s contents. The public now needs to determine for itself whether the report’s contents is a reasonable explanation or merely a pretext for the Board’s behavior. Specifically, I recommend the following action plan: 1) the Board should post the report on its website, 2) the CAC(s) should e-mail a link to the report to its members and form an independent committee, including CPAs, to publicly evaluate the report’s omissions and implications, and 3) the Board should conduct an oversight hearing to assess the financial costs of the parts of the Audit that have yet to receive public attention, and determine when the practices described in it began (e.g., if they began before the current superintendent’s tenure) and who is responsible for the apparently endemic pattern of school building level financial negligence. Finally, the Board needs to reevaluate how it allocates its time. In recent years, I have heard its members say they don’t believe in “micromanaging” the school system. Fair enough. But in practice, this seems to mean no serious oversight; for example, conducting the type of public oversight hearings that are routine in Congress after a high profile government failure such as 9/11 or Katrina. The time has come for the Board to demonstrate publicly it is capable of such oversight–and it is the responsibility of the CAC(s) and press to ensure that, given the high political stakes now involved, such oversight is done honestly and fairly.
Jim Snider, Severna Park
Baltimore Sun article on an elected school board
December 15th, 2004The Baltimore Sun
ARUNDEL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 509 words
HEADLINE: Support seen for electing board;
Many at meeting oppose appointing school panel;
Lawmakers considering a change;
Governor is not required to pick local favorites;
Anne Arundel
BYLINE: Liz F. Kay, SUN STAFF
BODY:
Though they disagreed on the details, most of those who turned out last night to debate how Anne Arundel County selects its school board members agreed on one thing: The process needs to be changed.
"There’s a consensus against the status quo," said Del. Tony McConkey after the meeting, held as Anne Arundel’s state lawmakers weigh whether to overhaul the system of appointed board members. McConkey has said in the past that about half of Maryland’s school boards are elected.
During the last legislative session, the Severna Park Republican sponsored – and later withdrew – a bill that would have put a referendum before the voters to allow the election of school board members.
Currently, the governor appoints seven members of the school board for five-year terms. Although a nominating convention composed of representatives from different community organizations selects several candidates, the governor is not required to choose one of them.
In addition, student government representatives elect a high school senior each year to serve as student member, who has full voting rights.
Last night, those who spoke in favor of electing candidates outnumbered those who spoke against it in the crowd of about 40 that included elected officials and former and current school board members.
"There needs to be a way to police those with so much power," said Severna Park parent Leslie Cowing, who favors having elected board members.
Annapolis parent and former school board candidate Pamela Bukowski described how school board members ignored the recommendations of hundreds of parents when considering redistricting 10 years ago.
"I was frustrated then by the lack of knowledge of the far-reaching effects" of such decisions, she said.
But Arnold resident and charter school advocate Andy Smarick recommended that the county executive appoint members subject to confirmation by County Council members.
"There’s no study showing an elected school board leading to student achievement," he said.
Some of those at the meeting suggested modifying, rather than scrapping, elements of the current process. Severna Park resident Jim Snider, who was selected by the nominating commission in 2002 but passed over by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening, described the nominating convention as "a gem in the rough."
He said the convention’s delegates from community and religious groups could vet contenders. Then, if selected, those candidates could receive an endorsement on the election ballot.
However, former school board president Carlesa R. Finney expressed concern. She said an elected board would favor the interests of organized factions rather than the needs of the entire system. Also, she said, the current nominating process promotes diversity of race, gender and background.
McConkey said after the meeting that he plans to meet with all the Arundel delegates to craft a bill they can all agree upon. Last year, other delegates suggested amendments that would have allowed voters to consider appointment by the county executive, with confirmation by the County Council.
LOAD-DATE: December 15, 2004
Poll watching experience from the November 3, 2004 election.
November 3rd, 2004I was again a book watcher at Jones Elementary School for the November 2 election.
This time we stayed at the poll from 8:00pm to 9:58pm trying to account for 18 missing voter registration cards (the poll books and voting units both said there were 1290 votes, but the collected voter registration cards said there were 1272 votes). During the primary, the delay was about an hour. This is a built-in flaw of the election system, since it is so easy for voters to either walk away with the cards or put them in the wrong packet as they switch from one voting unit to another. Why are there three voter registration systems: the book judge’s list, the card in the bag by the voting unit, and the voting unit’s? The book judge’s and the voting unit’s provide a useful check and balance. But the registration card in the bag by the voting unit seems to serve mostly the psychological function of appearing to provide a third check and balance. This PR/confidence building function comes at the cost of the poll workers and their confidence in the system.
Another delay comes from the proliferation of voting units. Previously, there was one machine that needed to be tallied (remember, all the ballots were entered into a single machine). This time there were eight, and each had to be tallied manually. Weren’t computers supposed to save time? I’m told that there was a machine that was supposed to aggregate the results from the separate voting unit machines. But in both the primary and general elections we had to tally the results manually.
I don’t recall the reason last time for the manual tally (I believe that given the controversy over computer voting, the chief judges said that the machines shouldn’t be linked and everything should be done manually). But this time we were told the tally machine simply didn’t work.
None of this affects the final outcome. But for the poll workers who slave away working from 6:00am to 8:00pm for $100–and then have to needlessly stay several additional hours to compensate for a poorly designed, insecure, and increasingly manual tabulation process–there is something that needs to be improved. Note that I’m not saying that earlier generations of poll workers didn’t also have to stay late for many different reasons. I’m simply saying that we can and should do better.
P.S. I told the editor of the Capital of the delays stemming from the new system, and he expressed no interest in the story, probably because it only affected poll workers, not the general public.
Capital article on County’s new public access facility
September 5th, 2004New studio to expand county’s TV channels
By DAVID ABRAMS, Staff Writer
As the county puts the finishing touches on its $1.3 million cable television studio, some viewers – and non-viewers – are calling for changes in the lineup.
The new studio in Glen Burnie means the county will be able to offer more programming on its sparse government channel, now dominated by live County Council meetings, public service announcements and interviews with department heads.
The converted movie theater has everything from cameras and editing software to DVD burners, making it possible for amateur producers to go from shooting to viewing.
The goal is education, said Matt Diehl, a spokesman for County Executive Janet S. Owens.
Plans are in the works to add a live political forum in October featuring candidates in the November elections.
Civic groups are free to produce taped programs with overviews or recaps of their meetings.
“The direction we have from the county executive as far as programming is to provide information and details to our citizens of the services provided by county government,” Mr. Diehl said. “It’s certainly not a public
relations tool.”
But Jim Snider of Severna Park, a senior research fellow and cable programming expert at the Washington, D.C.-based New America Foundation, said the county should make its cable operation independent.
“The real killer problem in my opinion is you don’t want the government having a monopoly on civic education,” said Mr. Snider, who in 2002 was the School Board Nominating Convention’s top vote-getter but wasn’t appointed to the seat at Ms. Owens’s request. “And the way you have this set up is a clear conflict of interest with a county official controlling the information.”
The county should have equipped 15 libraries with robotic cameras to facilitate broadcasts of meetings by civic and nonprofit organizations instead of spending more than $1 million on a “fancy schmancy Ritz Carlton facility in Glen Burnie,” he said. The cost includes $831,000 for construction and $518,000 for equipment.
Some jurisdictions have features the county is not considering – at least not yet.
For example, Montgomery County has a small news operation that covers county-specific topics, albeit for a cable channel that is run independently. County officials said setting up a news crew would be too expensive even if the operation were run independently.
Although County Council meetings are shown live, the school system doesn’t air school board meetings on its channel.
School board President Ned Carey of Brooklyn Park said that could change, but any debate wouldn’t take place until the budget process begins next year.
“It comes back to using all the mediums to get information out and to get information back,” he said.
Council meetings are repeated during the week, but there is no way to watch them on the Internet as there is elsewhere.
Readers of The Capital support the idea of televising school board meetings and making management independent, even if they complained that current programming was dull. Some didn’t know how to find out what’s on.
“I must confess that county programs are much like Australia: Everyone knows where it is, but nobody goes there,” Joe Wolff of Crownsville wrote in a recent e-mail. “Perhaps if they had their own facility and did a bit of promotion, I’d watch. As it is, I rarely hear of or notice subjects being discussed, so I never think of tuning in.”
The county’s two cable companies, Comcast and Millennium, provide four channels for free to county government, schools and the public as part of their franchise agreements.
Some shows have attracted a following, like the cooking show “The Feasty Boys,” once featured on ESPN.
The county plans to post schedules on the Internet when the channels switch over to digital in a few weeks.
Although he admits he doesn’t watch county cable very much, reader Bob Bradshaw of Davidsonville is fine with the county managing the programming.
“The county has taken the time and money to invest in the studio,” he wrote. “Let them have the say on how it should be used.”
Mike Hannon, studio director, said there are pros and cons to having the government operate the cable channels itself. While a nonprofit is independent, it can also be limited by resources.
It’s an advantage to have access to the resources of government, which can handle purchasing, legal assistance and marketing, he said.
When finished in about three months, Mr. Hannon said the studio will look a lot different than it does today.
On a tour of the facility last week, he pointed to a blank cinder-block wall in the lobby where he hopes to mount a flat-screen monitor that will play county programming as it would appear on televisions at home.
Inside the empty room that will house the 2,000-square-foot taping area, Mr. Hannon’s voice echoed, the sound bouncing off the walls with no cameras or furniture to slow it down.
“When the curtains come in, you won’t hear any sound at all,” he said.
For amateur filmmakers, the studio provides training and equipment. Smaller rooms inside are equipped with dual Dell computer monitors and software to make high-tech edits.
The whole operation also is moving from video to digital, which means operators can dump seemingly endless hours of programming into a computer server instead of relying on tapes.
“People can do now with this – which in the scale of things is pretty cheap – what a couple of years ago you would have to hire a professional studio to do,” Mr. Hannon said.
—
dabrams@capitalgazette.com
Published September 05, 2004, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Don’t kill the messenger; heed the message
April 18th, 2004Mark Fontaine asks for my response to his letter to the Capital. My response follows his letter. (For a copy of the letter to the Capital to which Mark refers, see the April 10, 2004 posting below).
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
April 18, 2004 Sunday — Letters
Nominating convention
A recent letter (Readers’ views, April 10) raised some questions concerning the School Board Nominating Convention.
The results of last year’s convention were announced at the convention, as per custom and the bylaws. The names of this year’s candidates were published in the newspapers at their discretion.
There were no unannounced changes to the published rules. All the rules for the convention and the delegates were published in the annual call for candidates and delegates.
Indeed, there is only one rule change for this year. We no longer accept cash when delegates register at the door. And we offered a discount to organizations that register their delegates before the hearings. We did this to speed up the registration process at the hearings and to eliminate having to handle fairly large sums of cash during registration.
There is also a proposed change to the convention bylaws to be voted upon this year. It requires a person running in those years in which there is both a district and an at-large seat to declare for which seat he is running. Then, during the convention, he will not be allowed to cross over from the district to the at-large seat.
All the candidates filed by the deadline. There was no scramble to recruit candidates. In fact, one candidate dropped out after filing.
During my five-year involvement with the School Board Nominating Convention, I know of no instance of the convention changing its rules on the fly without public notice or explanation. If the letter writer has specific evidence, I would appreciate hearing it and will respond.
MARK FONTAINE
Chairman
Anne Arundel County School Board Nominating
Convention Committee
Annapolis
Dear Mr. Fontaine:
I am responding to your letter to the editor in the Capital. Please recognize that I have great respect for you and other Nominating Convention participants who volunteer their time and talents on behalf of the greater community. The community owes you a debt of gratitude. Nevertheless, no institution is above criticism, and most democratic institutions are strong to the extent they are structured to invite and benefit from constructive criticism.
The Nominating Convention has a number of different types of rules. These include bylaws, publicized rules on its website, written rules given to candidates and community associations, and informal rules spoken by Nominating Convention officials to candidates. All such rules are important, not just those in its bylaws. Arguing that only bylaws count is like arguing that only Constitutional law counts, not statutory, regulatory, case, and common law, including the rule of precedent. In my letter to the editor, I was referring to all those types of rules.
Another set of rules are those that the Nominating Convention doesn’t have but should have if it wants to claim the mantle of democratic legitimacy. I did not address those in my letter.
Here are some specific questions that come to my mind as a participant in and observer of the Nominating Convention. In my judgment, they all relate to sound democratic practice. The information for this year’s Nominating Convention was provided by 1) a member of this year’s Nominating Convention Board, and 2) A CAC leader who got the information from a current school board member. The information for prior years is from my own direct experience and conversations with other participants. Despite the sources, some of the information is more akin to rumor than hard fact. I did not have the time to verify the various assertions that I heard; nor, if I did, do I believe all could be verified. What I have tried to do is provide a good faith effort to lay my questions on the table in response to your query.
General
Why does the Nominating Convention Leadership feel it has the right to change its publicly stated rules, unannouced and without explanation?
What steps does the leadership of the Nominating Convention take to ensure that its decision making is transparent and accountable to the general public?
This Year’s Candidate Deadline
Which candidates had applied with complete applications by the March 1 deadline?Did the three member credentials committee verify the postmark on candidate applications received after March 1?
Why was the deadline for complete applications extended a week? (Note: I understand extensions are allowed by the bylaws; I’m simply asking for a public explanation.)
Why was there no public announcement and explanation of this apparent departure from published rules?
What role, if any, did the Nominating Convention leadership play in recruiting the candidates this year? (The bylaws allow recruitment; I’m simply asking whether that privilege was exercised.)
Community Representative Application Deadline
Why has the Nominating Convention posted a deadline for community representatives to return their forms, and then routinely extended it? (The Convention website says: “Please mail credential and delegate registration by March 15;” there are no additional qualifiers saying the deadline may be extended.)Debate Rules and Published Candidate Information
Why has the Nominating Convention changed important debate rules at the spur of the moment and without notice to candidates?Why has it changed the formatting requirements of candidate applications AFTER candidates have submitted applications? After changing its rules midstream, why has it refused to change its own material retyping and formatting mistakes in putting together the convention booklet?
Convention Committee Membership
Why was the Convention Committee (the executive board for the Convention) unable to recruit and retain the 12 members required in the bylaws? (The bylaws state: “The Convention Committee shall consist of twelve (12) members. “)If the Convention Committee is only able to attract 7 members who regularly attend meetings, should that be deemed adequate or at least publicly disclosed?
Is it acceptable if one family controls up to 30% of Convention Committee members?
Should the Convention Committee membership be disclosed on the Nominating Convention Website? Should contact information for those individuals also be provided?
What steps, if any, are taken to ensure that the Convention Committee reflects the diversity of community interests?
Some Other Thoughts
Why doesn’t the Nominating Convention publicly acknowledge and condemn attempts by third parties, including government officials, to stack the Convention and thus undermine its deliberative function?Why doesn’t it post the attendance, minutes, and votes of the Convention Committee for public scrutiny? (Note that the Convention bylaws state: “Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised shall govern the Convention Committee in all cases in which its regulations are applicable and in which they are not inconsistent with these bylaws.”)
Why doesn’t it develop a clear ethics policy concerning allowable political behavior and conflicts of interest by Convention officers?
I do not expect you or any other member of the Nominating Convention to reply to this laundry list of questions. But I do hope Nominating Convention participants will keep them in mind as they try to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the Nominating Convention.
Sincerely,
–Jim Snider
School Board Nomination Convention Could Benefit from Better Due Process
April 10th, 2004The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
April 10, 2004 Saturday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A10
Nominating body
Why did the School Board Nominating Convention announce its results one week late? Was there any unannounced change to the published rules?
Rumors are swirling about what happened. These rumors include allegations that no candidate had properly filled out paperwork by the deadline and that, post-deadline, the convention officers scrambled to recruit candidates. It’s time for the Nominating Convention officers to set the record straight.
The School Board Nominating Convention has a long track record of changing its rules on the fly without public notice or explanation. That’s not unusual for volunteer, nongovernment organizations. But it’s bad democratic procedure.
I don’t know the particulars of this case. But I do know that if the Nominating Convention wants to be seen as a serious democratic institution – and I believe it does – then it must act like one.
J.H. SNIDER
Severna Park
my experience as a book judge
March 3rd, 2004I was a “book judge” for yesterday’s (March 3) election in my precinct in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Here are a few reflections:
I had been under the impression that computers automated the basic arithmetic of elections. I was only partially correct. For security reasons, each of the 8 Diebold machines in my precinct was wholly unconnected. That meant that not only wasn’t there a modem connected to an outside database but also no machine could speak with each other. Traditionally, there was only one electronic vote tabulation machine, and all paper ballots went into that machine. The result was that at the end of the day there would be only one vote count that the machine would generate. This year there were eight counts, so the poll watchers had EIGHT times the work they had in the past.
This year the voter identification cards were placed in a pouch underneath the Diebold machines. When 25 cards were in the pouches, they would be collected and put in a pile. As it turned out, 8 were missing at the end of day. It seems that some people simply walked away with them, although I never found out exactly what the problem was. In any case, we spent an extra half hour after poll closing trying to account for the missing cards.
All in all, it was a very uneventful day. Despite all the new technology, I felt somebody from the 19th century could have felt quite comfortable with the mindless pen-pushing work of a book judge.
Electing Anne Arundel’s School Board
March 1st, 2004The Baltimore Sun
March 1, 2004 Monday HOWARD Edition
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 5B
LENGTH: 521 words
HEADLINE: Arundel bill would put school board issue to vote;
Panel could be elected instead of appointed;
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
BYLINE: Laura Loh
SOURCE: SUN STAFF
BODY:
A bill before the House of Delegates has revived a long-standing debate about how Anne Arundel County school board members should be chosen.
If approved, the proposal would put the controversial issue to a voter referendum in the November general election. Voters would be asked to decide if they want to abandon the system of a governor-appointed school board and replace it with an elected board.
Similar efforts over the years have failed.
Del. Anthony McConkey, a Severna Park Republican who introduced the bill, said he has support from the county’s six other Republican delegates. He needs support from at least eight of the 15 Anne Arundel delegates for the bill to stand a chance in the House, which usually defers to a majority of the delegation.
McConkey supports a system under which school board members would be elected by voters in each of the county’s seven Council districts, be paid $12,000 a year and have to reside in the district that elected them. An eighth member with nearly full voting rights would be a high school senior chosen by a student council association, as is now the case.
It is unclear whether McConkey will succeed. He is working on a version of the bill that would appeal to more of his colleagues, who have expressed a range of views on the issue.
At a delegation meeting on Friday, Del. John R. Leopold proposed amending the bill to give voters a second choice: a school board appointed by the county executive and confirmed by the County Council. But Del. Terry R. Gilleland Jr., a co-sponsor of the bill, said he would oppose the amendment.
Del. Virginia P. Clagett, a Democrat, asked why the bill does not clarify the option of preserving the current system. “It’s certainly something that has been on the books for a long time,” she said.
McConkey said he would be willing to add both options to the referendum. His main concern, he said, was to give voters the opportunity to weigh in on a matter that has been debated for years.
Fearing that the proposal had become muddled, delegation Chairwoman Mary Ann Love said she will ask the delegation’s education subcommittee to study it and make a recommendation.
The school board’s seven adult members currently are appointed to five-year terms by the governor, after he receives candidate recommendations from a convention of representatives of parent, community and business groups.
Tensions have risen over the years when the governor has ignored the advice of the nominating convention. In 2002, some residents were infuriated when then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening passed over the convention’s top nominee, Severna Park resident Jim Snider, and appointed South County contractor Konrad M. Wayson at the urging of County Executive Janet S. Owens.
Critics of the current system say it is ineffective because there is low participation. Fewer than 200 people participated in last year’s convention to fill one of three at-large seats on the board. The four other seats are based on Council districts.
McConkey and Gilleland, believe a school board elected by voters would be the most responsive to the public.
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2004
Critique of County’s PEG Access
February 15th, 2004The Baltimore Sun
February 15, 2004 Sunday ARUNDEL Edition
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 6B Letters To the Editor
LENGTH: 444 words
HEADLINE: Letters To the Editor
BODY: PEG Access in Anne Arundel County
On Dec. 15, 2003, the County set aside a cable TV channel for public access TV. On Feb. 22, 2004, the County’s $1 million Glen Burnie public access facility was due to be complete (delays have pushed this date back several weeks).
The new public access system has three problems: First, the possibilities for public access have changed a lot over the years, but the County’s state-of-the-art facility actually embodies an archaic design. This is partly due to the fact that the County built this public facility with no serious effort to solicit public input. The facility is a gadget-lover’s heaven. But there is a remarkable paucity of the most basic gadgets necessary to enhance civic discourse.
Second, a public access facility is supposed to be a place for convenient public production of shows. But the County evidently didn’t make that a top priority. When a County official wants to do a show, he can call on County employees to operate all the facility’s Ritz Carlton-quality equipment. But when an average, civically minded citizen wants to do a show, he shouldn’t have to bring a team of well-trained people to operate a 200-button device when all he wants to do is hit the play button.
Third, a public access station should not be run by elected officials because they have an obvious conflict of interest in managing the station. The County should establish an independent, non-partisan, non-profit entity to manage the station, just as the County’s public access ordinance originally envisioned.
Jim Snider
Severna Park
LOAD-DATE: February 16, 2004
AACPS violates spirit and perhaps letter of the State’s Open Meeting Law
January 28th, 2004Few issues are more central to a school board’s mission than setting employee compensation. But these decisions are also among the most controversial, and there is a history of keeping this information as secret as possible. Some years back the Maryland chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists made undercover requests for superintendent contracts across Maryland counties. In most cases, they came up empty handed. It’s thus no surprise that the school board and administration wouldn’t rush to make these decisions in public. That’s, after all, why we have the state open meeting law.
Arundel schools weigh salary policy change
Criticism spurs plan for public votes on raises
——————————————————————————–
By Laura Loh
Sun Staff
Originally published January 28, 2004
Anne Arundel County’s school board — stung by criticism that it privately approved raises for 30 high-level administrators, including Superintendent Eric J. Smith — is considering a policy change that would require it to take a public vote before adjusting salaries for any group of employees.
The board’s decision to grant 1 percent, midyear raises to Smith and his senior staff has been questioned in recent weeks by County Council members, who are reviewing a board request to appropriate nearly $1.9 million in school funds for cost-of-living raises for about 8,000 employees.
The board voted unanimously, with one member absent, in a closed session Dec. 3 to approve raises for the senior staff members and about 235 other central administration employees not represented by unions, board President Paul Rudolph and others said.
The state’s Open Meetings Act says that decision-making bodies must openly deliberate matters of public policy, except in a few circumstances. The law allows such groups to discuss personnel matters in closed meetings, but not matters involving classes of employees.
Rudolph acknowledged yesterday that the vote, taken during a meeting that was closed to the public, might have been a misstep.
“We didn’t do it upfront, and we will have to see that in the future we’re more public with that,” Rudolph said, adding that he plans to introduce a motion to create the new policy at a meeting next week.
The Anne Arundel school board’s private vote follows several other closed-meeting controversies involving Baltimore-area school boards.
School boards in Baltimore and Howard counties have come under fire in the past two years for trying to skirt open-meetings laws to discuss matters ranging from the budget to superintendents’ contracts.
James Browning, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause/Maryland, said that fiscal pressures might be prompting school boards to try to make more decisions out of the public’s view.
“It suggests that the school boards are willing to violate the spirit of the law when the really tough decisions are being made,” Browning said.
Rudolph and school officials say the board was not trying to hide the raises for Smith and others.
“We absolutely believe in the law,” said board member Michael J. McNelly, who was not present when the vote was taken. “The Board of Education wants to be as open as possible.”
School board members said they took up the pay raises in closed session because they had to exclude four employees with new assignments from getting them, and they wanted to protect their privacy.
After the closed morning meeting, the board directed Smith in open session to seek legislation from the county to allow the school system to appropriate money for the raises for “all employees of the school system.” But it never explicitly stated that it had made a decision to include Smith and other nonunion employees based at the central office.
The board previously had voted in public meetings to grant raises to four employee unions that represent teachers, secretaries, principals and support staff.
According to Assistant Attorney General William R. Varga, a board can close a meeting to the public to discuss individual employees, but not a class of employees. “It’s certainly a close call,” Varga said after hearing an account of the Anne Arundel board’s action.
Varga said he could not predict how the state Open Meetings Compliance Board, which he advises, would rule if asked to review the matter.
“It would have been better practice if they had limited the discussion concerning the specific, identifiable employees to the closed session, and then [handled] the general matter of compensation of senior staff in a public session,” Varga said.
P. Tyson Bennett, the school board’s legal counsel, said yesterday that he believed the board did not violate the open-meetings laws because its vote was to exclude four high-level administrators from receiving the raise. The board did not formally act on the salaries of the rest of the nonunion employees, he said his notes showed.
There was an assumption that the 1 percent raise “would be given across the board to everyone,” Bennett said. “The discussion that day had to do with, ‘Is it going to apply to everybody, or less than everybody?’”
But at least three people at the meeting — Rudolph, Smith and Assistant Superintendent Synthia Shilling — said they recalled that the board’s vote applied to the whole group of employees. Rudolph said that he hopes his proposal will prevent such confusion in the future.
The board president said he stands by his vote to grant raises to Smith and senior staff members, who he said were responsible for making about $6 million in budget cuts last school year. Those savings are making it possible for the board to give raises to all school employees. “To not also reward them, I feel, would be wrong,” he said.
However, some County Council members are skeptical.
Although the senior staff raises amount to about $17,000 — less than 1 percent of the total cost of the raises — some council members are upset because they say they were led to believe the raises were for teachers. It will cost an additional $80,000 to give raises to the 235 other central office employees.
“The pitch [Smith] gave to the public was, ‘We have to pay our teachers in order to keep qualified people in the classrooms,’” said Councilwoman Cathleen M. Vitale, a Severna Park Republican. “His senior staff, last I looked, doesn’t teach in the classroom.”
Vitale said she is exploring the possibility of allowing funds to be transferred for everyone except Smith and senior staff members.
Council Chairman C. Edward Middlebrooks, a Severn Republican, also has said he will examine whether the high-level raises are necessary. Smith, who makes $197,000 a year, stands to receive about $2,000 more annually.
County Executive Janet S. Owens has said she opposes the school board’s plan to use one-time savings to pay for the raises, because she says they would snowball into a $4.3 million burden next fiscal year.
Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun
Steve Clift on e-mail notification
January 20th, 2004Given all the lip service about public participation, why don’t we take this simple step to increase it?
E-Government and Democracy Article – Post 8/14 – E-mail Notice
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By Steven Clift – http://publicus.net/e-government
Posted to DoWire, join: http://e-democracy.org/do
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E-Government and Democracy
Representation and Citizen Engagement in the Information Age
By Steven L. Clift
Copyright 2004 – This e-mail may be forwarded freely to anyone.
Case 4 – E-mail Notification and Personalization
Convenience and participatory democracy are concepts that are not
usually connected with one another. The new media offers a refreshing
change.
E-mail notification, based on a citizen’s personal preferences, of
new documents, meeting announcements, legislation, etc., in my
estimation, is the number one technology enhancement available to
those seeking to enhance participatory democracy. This technological
feature would dramatically support all of the democratic outcomes
featured in this paper.
Why? Providing timely access to information, while citizens have an
opportunity to politically act on that information, is very
democratizing.
Providing “search yourself” access was step one. In today’s flood of
information on government web sites, allowing citizens to opt-in to
receive notice of special meetings or amendments as they are proposed
is step two. Notification is a technical choice because it does not
change the legal status of information – private stays private, what
is public is simply used by more people when the content matters. As
personalization technologies become widely available, the choice to
not implement e-mail notification options should be evaluated as a
political decision to limit functional access.
Local governments have told me about their interest in finding cost-
effective ways to expand the number of people who might be notified
about a proposed zoning change beyond what is required by law via
postal mail. An opt-in notification system that would connect e-mail
addresses to homes in their city is that kind of system.
This type of personalized service goes well beyond the edited e-mail
newsletters that will be described in Case 6. E-mail notification
options are often an extension of a personalized web view enabled by
more sophisticated content management systems. Noting the overflow in
many people’s e-mail boxes, users need to be able to carefully
control the kind of information that is sent into their e-mail box.
Some leading examples:
City of St. Paul, Minnesota, USA – Using the GovDocs system, they
allow you to subscribe to a series of documents, like new summary
meeting minutes, or to specific documents that are updated on a
periodic basis. Notices on over 160 documents are available through e-
mail: http://www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/govdelivery.php
European Commission Press Room – This service allows users to be
notified about new press releases and speeches that meet various
search criteria. See:
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh
Info4Local.Gov.UK – An innovative service designed to inform local
government officials about relevant activities and resources from
their national government. Users may select from topics, agencies,
and document types to personalize the kinds of information they
receive. See: http://www.info4local.gov.uk/emailalert.asp
Development Gateway – Editors monitor over 30 topics related to human
and economic development. The best resources are indexed on their
website from multiple sources. Users can subscribe to receive e-mail
notices of new additions. This type of site serves as a model to any
organization wishing to provide the public with a value-added
interface to diverse sources of information compiled in the public
interest. See: http://www.developmentgateway.org
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Letter to GSPC Members
January 13th, 2004Comment: To access previous posts on the GSPC, including the documents mentioned in this letter, click Greater Severna Park Council in the “Categories” list in the upper right hand corner of this blog.
January 13, 2004
Dear GSPC Members:
During the past year, the GSPC board has instituted a number of policies to make the GSPC a more democratic organization. Among its achievements:
1) Membership has increased from 41 to 58 communities (out of approximately 220), more than three-quarters its historic high.
2) The bylaws were revised to conform to long-standing GSPC practice (e.g., the position of the ex officio member was clarified).
3) Progress was made in bringing GSPC practice in line with Robert’s Rules of Order (e.g., an audit of the books was established).
4) The website and stationary logos were updated to reflect current GSPC membership realities.
5) An e-mail system for agendas and minutes was established, thus paving the way for more cost-effective broad-based participation in the GSPC in coming years.
These were all reforms I worked for as a GSPC director, and I am honored that the GSPC board and membership have made them come to pass. However, as many of you know, I believe there are still improvements that could be made, so I am attaching my letter to Dan Nataf responding to his request for comments on the proposed bylaw changes. Both Dan Nataf and President John Strange replied to me that they would not be able to consider the recommendations at the December GSPC meeting because I did not give them adequate notice. Still, they thought this was an important issue to be brought before the members at a future date. Thus, I am distributing them here, plus notes from my January 2003 GSPC presentation, and a column of mine from the October 2001 issue of the Severna Park Voice.
Sincerely,
Jim Snider
(former GSPC director)
BOE Adopts BoardDocs
December 23rd, 2003AACPS has adopted BoardDocs, which is indeed a major improvement over the existing system. To the extent it is implemented as announced, it will put AACPS in the upper tier of school systems in terms of creating accessible public documents. The most controversial feature of BoardDocs, its exclusive disclosure of public written comments to board members followed by the destruction of those comments, has been eliminated from both the AACPS implementation and the BoardDocs program (based on a quick perusal of the BoardDocs site).
Despite the great strengths of BoardDocs as announced, there are still major concerns.
1) The BOE can edit documents at any time without public notice of a change. This changes the meaning of a “public record.”
2) There is nothing that prevents the BOE from selectively non-disclosing controversial public documents that were used in the decision making process.
3) There is no provision for public comments on the online record. The public is barred from submitting their written testimony for easy access by others. (Most federal agencies now routinely allow online public comments on proposed rulemakings.)
4) There is no clear policy for how long documents will be maintained on the website. (Given the low cost of memory, they should be retained in perpetuity.)
The next step should be updating the AACPS policy manual so that the promise of BoardDocs is codified in BOE procedure. There also needs to be a clear statement on the AACPS website of all the exceptions to the implied promise of giving the public access to the same public documents available to the BOE prior to a BOE meeting.
–Jim
——————–
School board adopts Web posting system
——————–
By A Sun Staff Writer
December 23, 2003
The Anne Arundel County Board of Education has voted to become one of the first school boards in Maryland to post copious meeting documents on the Internet.
The 7-1 decision last week means that the board will adopt BoardDocs, a program it has been testing since the summer.
Board President Paul G. Rudolph voted against continuing the service, which he has said is inconvenient and might turn out to be too costly. It costs $650 a month to subscribe, and the school system paid about $22,000 in startup costs.
Other board members said it saves paper and allows more people to participate in school board business.
About a week before each of the board’s bimonthly meetings, anyone can view staff reports, school system contracts, board resolutions and other documents that pertain to the agenda online.
They are accessible through the school system’s Web site, www.aacps.org.
Comcast hands over two additional cable channels to County for PEG access
December 15th, 2003On December 15, Comcast was officially required to hand over to the County two additional cable channels for PEG access.
Suggested Greater Severna Park Council bylaw and procedural changes
November 29th, 2003Comment: This is a letter/e-mail I sent to select delegates representing the citizens and communities of the Greater Severna Park area. For those who don’t want to get bogged down in the details of my proposed bylaw changes, jump to the bottom of this post and read my January 14, 2003 GSPC presentation, which provides the context for this letter.
Postscript. At the December 9 meeting, which I was unable to attend, the GSPC leadership chose not to distribute a copy of these recommended bylaw changes. Most current delegates had not seen them. A discussion ensued of a proposal that was not contained in these recommended bylaw changes: whether the GSPC should publicly release its membership information. The leadership then suggested postponing consideration of additional bylaw changes to an unspecified future date, and the members went along with the suggestion.
Dear Fellow Current or Former GSPC Member:
During the past year, great efforts have been made to improve democratic governance at the GSPC. This includes increasing the paid membership rolls from 41 to 58 members, drafting new bylaws to ensure that they conform to GSPC practice, and following Robert’s Rules of Order in selecting the nominating committee. These efforts are to be greatly applauded.
I am writing to you because the GSPC Executive Board has requested comment on the proposed bylaws. The amended bylaws will be presented to the GSPC membership for a debate and vote on Tuesday, December 9, the next meeting of the GSPC. Having now reviewed the proposed bylaw changes, I offer the recommendations below. As background, I’m attaching my Severna Park Voice editorial and GSPC presentation, which led to the current initiative to either revise the bylaws or ensure that GSPC operating procedures conform to those bylaws.
The Greater Severna Park area has come of age since the GSPC bylaws were written decades ago. Updating the bylaws to reflect this new reality will enhance the stature and effectiveness of the GSPC within our community.
Executive Board Election System
A good democratic electoral system should embody the principles of checks & balances, clarity, secret ballots, and deliberation. Accordingly, I make the following suggestions for revising the bylaws.
1) The GSPC president should not be allowed to serve on the nominating committee for the GSPC executive board. Robert’s Rules of Order is very clear that having a board president serve on a nominating committee is poor democratic procedure, yet it has been common practice at the GSPC.
2) No member of the nominating committee should be in a position to nominate him or herself. In the recent past, most nominating committee members have subsequently served on the executive board. Few would argue that self-nomination is good democratic practice. But the reality of small citizen groups such as the GSPC is that good democratic practice often has to be sacrificed. Nevertheless, eliminating self-nomination is a reform worthy of consideration.
3) No member of the nominating committee should serve for more than three consecutive years. Many governments limit executives (e.g., the Anne Arundel county executive, Maryland’s governor, and the U.S. president) to two terms in office. Similarly, it is common practice in civic associations to have rotating leadership. The reason is that once incumbent office holders get control of the levers of power, it can become exceedingly difficult to dislodge them regardless of the democratic weal.
4) Elections should be conducted following standard democratic procedures of notice, transparency, and competition. Accordingly, I suggest the following sequence of events and procedures. These are not as rigorous as a party caucus system (which involves party delegates choosing nominees) but far more rigorous than required by the current GSPC bylaws. This year, some of these practices were instituted as a matter of practice (I am specifically referring to the excellent notices concerning nomination). So in those cases, I’m merely suggesting that the good practices be incorporated into the bylaws.
a) At the September meeting and in the September minutes it should be formally noted that at the October meeting the President of the GSPC will nominate the three member nominating committee.
b) At the October GSPC meeting, the President should formally announce his selection for the nominating committee, including a designated chair for the nominating committee. At this time and in the October minutes, he should also distribute a brief biography (a paragraph should be fine) stating the nominees’ qualifications for serving on the nominating committee. Since the President’s selection of a nominating committee is irrevocable, the nominating committee should begin its search immediately after this meeting.
c) At the November GSPC meeting, GSPC members should vote on the nominating committee. The election should be an approval vote via secret ballot. The options on an approval vote are “approve” and “disapprove.” The result of the approval vote should be publicly announced and printed in the November minutes e-mailed to GSPC members. An approval vote merely indicates the popularity of the President’s choices for the nominating committee; it does not give the membership authority to change the nominating committee selection. No community should be given more than one vote (previous practice has allowed a single community with a president and delegate present to have up to two votes).
d) The nominating committee should select its nominees by the beginning of the fourth week of November and alert the GSPC secretary to the picks so the secretary can include them in the November minutes. The selection of executive board nominees should be sent at least one week before the December GSPC meeting.
e) At the December GSPC meeting, the nominating committee should announce its selections for all who may have missed the announcement sent with the November minutes. Nominees for the Executive Board should be expected to distribute a brief statement explaining their qualifications for serving on the Executive Board and what they hope to accomplish. Consistent with the ethical guidelines below, the statement should include any county employment, the location of significant property holdings in the Greater Severna Park area, and any official lobbying or partisan positions held. These statements should be e-mailed in the December minutes. The December GSPC meeting announcement of the nominating committee’s recommendations is already in the bylaws, but it has been ignored when inconvenient. Additional nominations for the GSPC executive board should be taken at this meeting, not the January meeting. Consistent with current practice, nominations should be taken from the floor and accepted for the ballot with the support of a second. These nominees’ statements explaining their qualifications should be e-mailed in the December minutes along with the nominees recommended by the nominating committee. In the past, challenges to the nominating committee’s recommendations have been taken at the January meeting. I am thus suggesting moving the challenge date from the January to December meeting. It is always good democratic practice not to spring candidates at the last second. GSPC members need time to reflect and deliberate on their options.
f) At the January GSPC meeting, the election should be held. But in the case of a contested election, ballots should be secret and executive committee offices elected individually, with the three directors on a single ballot and the president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary also on a single ballot. It should be specifically noted that the voting term of the President is two years (the first year as president; the second year as past president). In the case that no two candidates get 50% of the vote, there should be a runoff among the top two vote getters. In the case that the top three vote getters for director do not get 50%, the runoff election should only be for the directors who did not get 50% or more in the first round of balloting.
g) From time to time GSPC members have chosen to wave the bylaws when they proved inconvenient. That option would not change under these revised bylaws. But a higher standard of accountability would be set as the benchmark.
Membership List
If GSPC members only allow the executive board (or one or two members of the executive board) to see the membership list, I would encourage GSPC members to place restrictions on how those individuals can use the membership list for internal lobbying purposes. Most small civic organizations release membership lists to members in part to avoid the concentration of power that invariably results when membership lists are tightly controlled by one or a few individuals. Indeed, I have never belonged to a civic association of this nature that made a policy of hiding members’ names from each other. But if releasing a membership list is deemed undesirable, then other steps should be taken to prevent abuse. This is why, for example, it is illegal for the County executive to use the reports filed by civic association presidents (e.g., the new emergency alert system) to solicit supporters.
Specifically, I suggest that anyone with access to the membership list be required to disclose any private lobbying activity directed at GSPC members. The “private lobbying” clause includes the following two exemptions: 1) arguments presented at a formal GSPC meeting or GSPC executive board meeting, or 2) any other public disclosure to all GSPC members (e.g., an e-mailing to all GSPC members). Similar lobbying disclosure (called an ex parte filing) is standard in administrative rulemakings. To prevent the appearance of abuse, the keeper or keepers of the secret GSPC membership list should also abide by it.
Executive Board Democratic Procedure
The Executive Board should take formal minutes, including motions of the board, and make these available to the GSPC membership. Robert’s Rules strongly suggests that such minutes be both kept and made available. Otherwise, board members cannot be held accountable for their actions. Executive Board member attendance should also be taken. Some board members often miss meetings or may attend no meetings at all. The lack of formal procedure and records, especially when combined with poor executive board meeting attendance, means that the GSPC president can, in practice, overturn or delay the implementation of GSPC Executive Board meeting decisions. Thus, the Executive Board may function merely as an advisory committee to the President, not the official executive board envisaged by the bylaws and Robert’s Rules.
GSPC Officer Ethics Guidelines
The current bylaws have no ethics provisions for GSPC officers or the GSPC president. GSPC officers, especially the president and vice president, have substantial powers over the GSPC’s agenda and should be required to disclose potentially material conflicts of interest prior to making a procedural decision (this applies only to the chair of a meeting), taking an executive board vote, or making recommendations before the GSPC membership in their official capacity. These conflicts of interest should include the following three categories:
1) County employment and any conflicts that might result from that employment.
2) Land holdings that might be disproportionately affected by a particular land use policy.
3) Partisan offices or roles held.
The first two types of conflict of interest disclosure are routine for government ethics rules. The third type is rarely thought necessary because it is universally presumed that elected officials are elected on a partisan basis and are active partisan proponents. Therefore, there is nothing to disclose. However, the norm at the GSPC is that the GSPC board should be strictly non-partisan. Therefore, unless it wants to become a partisan organization, it should expect its officers to disclose significant partisan activities that are not widely known in the Greater Severna Park community.
Conclusion
History has shown that democratic due process is necessary to restrict abuse of power and ill-considered decision-making. Democratic due process is fundamental to any organization that publicly claims democratic legitimacy. An organization that claims democratic legitimacy should strive in its bylaws to embody those claims. However, since democracy is inconvenient and inefficient, a reasonable balance must be struck between due process and efficiency. I have tried to strike an appropriate balance here but recognize that reasonable people may disagree about what that balance should be.
***************************************************************************************
ATTACHMENTS
Attached in the following single Microsoft Word formatted document are the following two items:
1) My October 24, 2001 commentary in the Severna Park Voice entitled “Should the GSPC Be More More Democratic?
2) My January 14, 2003 Presentation to the GSPC “Has the GSPC Become More Democratic?”
GSPC Presentation Notes, January 14, 2003
I am also including actual and potential GSPC membership data from 2002.
***************************************************************************************
GSPC website masthead as of July 2003
Note: The 2000 U.S. Census reports that Severna Park had 9,731 total households. The numbrer of households in the Greater Severna Park area is not readily available.
Effort to switch to an elected school board in Queen Anne’s County
November 29th, 2003The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
November 29, 2003 Saturday
SECTION: NEIGHBORHOODS; Pg. B1
LENGTH: 498 words
HEADLINE: Citizens petition for school elections
BYLINE: JULIA HOCKENBERRY, For The Capital
BODY:
A citizens’ petition drive may breathe new life into the issue of converting from an appointed to an elected school board in Queen Anne’s County.
Two Chester mothers are launching the drive to collect 5,000 signatures weeks after the county’s two legislators said it was unlikely to get the issue before the General Assembly session that starts in January.
They hope to convince the state to allow a nonbinding referendum on an elected school board during the 2004 election – and grease the skids for the 2005 session.
“Our county needs school board members who are responsive and accountable to taxpayers, not appointed by a governor who doesn’t live here,” said Karen Ehatt.
Debra Mills described her experience with the school board as “traumatic,” and called the switch in format from appointed to elected “imperative.”
“The future of our children depends on it,” said Mrs. Mills.
Currently, the five-member school board in Queen Anne’s County is appointed. Both the Republican and Democratic central committees submit nominations to the governor, who then makes the appointments.
The political party with the bigger number of registered voters chooses three of the five nominees. Board members serve for four years, are paid $3,000 a year and may not serve more than two consecutive terms.
The Board of County Commissioners flirted with the idea of bringing the issue of an elected school board to the General Assembly this year as part of their legislative package.
But sate Sen. E.J. Pipkin, R-Stevensville, discouraged them, saying it’s not as easy as it sounds.
“It’s a major initiative to get one of these through,” he said. The battle to convert the Prince George’s County school board several years ago has complicated matters for other jurisdictions wishing to do the same.
He and Del. Richard Sossi, R-Stevensville, advised the commissioners that in order for a petition drive to be effective once it reaches Annapolis, it cannot be as simple as a yes-or-no question.
“Take the time and go through the process as to the issues: membership, salary, terms, transition and removal,” Mr. Pipkin said recently. “The issues need to be discussed at length.”
“We can’t work out those details, so were doing it the best that we can,” said Mrs. Ehatt.
The current petition question does not include any specifics. She said the first step in getting the ball rolling is to simply measure citizen support for a change by way of a straw poll.
Volunteers will circulate the petition at venues such as ballparks, storefronts and senior centers.
Commissioner Mike Koval, R-Chester, sponsored a resolution to look into putting the question on the ballot. He and Commissioner Gene Ransom, D-Grasonville, signed the petition during Tuesday night’s meeting.
“Let’s let the citizens decide what they want. Let’s find out whether or not they want it first and then do the plan,” Mr. Koval said.
—
Julia Hockenberry is a freelance writer on Kent Island.
Does no good deed go unpunished?
November 27th, 2003What do you think of the proposition: “In politics, no good deed goes unpunished.”
I study telecommunications policy, and I think this is an apt description of how most politicians view this sphere of politics. With telecommunications, the government controls hundreds of billions of dollars worth of public rights of way, such as the public airwaves, and must decide how to allocate that resource. On the one hand, it faces an apathetic and ignorant public that doesn’t give a damn about telecommunications policy unless Congress makes things worse. On the other hand, it faces a handful of companies that know exactly what’s at stake and are, accordingly, passionately involved and attentive to everything Congress does. The result is that good deeds go unrewarded by the public but are viciously punished by the telecommunications special interests, who are very sophisticated in how they wield the levers of power.
Another example might be Iraq. Here we go in and remove an unpopular dictator who has brutally murdered 270,000 of his own people for not demonstrating adequate obsequiousness to himself. And what is the thanks America gets? It’s still not clear. But what probably is clear is that people are future oriented, not past oriented. The good deed is water under the bridge, and the question Iraqis are asking themselves is not whether Saddam Hussein or American (short-term) rule is better but what at this moment will maximize their own power and wellbeing. Perhaps the Somali example illustrates this point even better. America goes in and saves hundreds of thousands of Somalis from a miserable death from starvation. And the apparent thanks we get for it is having our soldiers killed and dragged through the streets.
To what extent is local politics like this? And if so, what are the consequences? This is perhaps the most fundamental question in political science. How can you build institutions so that what is good for the individual is good for society?
My experience leads me to believe that there may be severe institutional incentive problems at the local level. A lot of this is caused by opinion leaders’ extraordinary fear of saying anything controversial in their local communities. Except when there are exceptionally salient issues at stake (e.g., one’s own child’s education or a proposed development that would impact one’s property value), people let fear of conflict and reprisal dominate their cost-benefit calculations. That is, except for a small subset of issues, all the incentives seem to be lined up to praise those in power.
At low levels of government, there is no organized opposition that gives individuals the courage to express their minds. At higher levels of government, we have an organized party system that gives people this courage.
At low levels of government, media barely exist. And what little media does exist may be as fearful as the general public and see itself as little more than a distribution outlet for the press releases handed out by public officials. At high levels of government, there tends to be vigorous media competition and stronger media incentives to win over audiences by acting in the general public’s interest.
Of course, there are also collective action problems. Rational individuals will always want to free ride on the efforts of others. When given the opportunity to watch a movie or attend a public meeting, most rational invididuals will choose the movie. But collective action problems are rife at all levels of government and should be weakest at the local level where the ability to make a difference and reap the benefit of that difference are generally greatest. Thus, if we are to look for the distinctive democratic failures at a local level, we must look elsewhere.
Your comments about the severity and generality of democratic failure at the local level would be greatly appreciated. My own interest is in seeking to correct the problem. And here I believe that things like secret ballots and blogs like this could one day make a big improvement in the quality of local democratic governance. New technology is making this possible. The task is for local communities to seize the opportunity. Clearly, there are many public-spirited individuals involved in local community life. My goal is to point the way to empowering those individuals by empowering the public they represent.
State doesn’t enforce its public records laws
November 21st, 2003Comment: The Capital describes the large discrepancy between the state’s public records laws and its actual practice. But what about public records access at the County level? Not only may people have great difficulty getting sensitive information, but there is a culture of intimidation that prevents them from asking in the first place. Why doesn’t the Capital run a story on that?
Incidentally, when I ran for the Maryland House of Delegates, I sent Tom Marquardt and his statehouse reporter a detailed position paper on improving public access to state information (to see the position paper, check the archive for September 2002 or click on the “state” category and scroll down to September 2002). I never heard a word back from them. When I later asked about it, I got a blank stare.
Many legitimate requests for public documents denied
By JIM LEE For The Capital
A test of state agencies has revealed that people seeking public records have about a 60 percent chance of getting what they are legally entitled to and often face improper questioning.
J. Joseph Curran Jr., Maryland attorney general, said his office would launch a new training initiative for state agencies.
“We’ve made recommendations and we’ll follow through with our own training, and we’ll offer to do training at each of the local agencies with our line people and the people who will be getting these (public record) requests,” Mr. Curran said.
On Aug. 21, the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association’s Freedom of Information Subcommittee sent reporters from The Capital and other newspapers identifying themselves only as private citizens to 15 state agencies seeking a total of 25 public records.
The committee chose public records that residents and businesses could reasonably expect to want and were legally entitled to get under the Maryland Public Information Act.
Among them were the number of teachers who had their certification revoked, real estate property assessments, complaints against real estate appraisers and restaurant inspections.
Among the findings:
40 percent of requests were denied.
One request was denied because the public record contained information about a state senator.
No public agency would provide public records in electronic format, except for assessment records, which are available online.
Many requests were met with questions, such as who wanted the information, why they wanted it and who the requester worked for. The state law bars such questions.
Surveyors seeking teacher decertification records, driving records and restaurant inspection reports were among those who faced rigorous questioning from state workers.
That type of treatment, although illegal, is
typical, according to Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press.
“It does not matter who you are, why you want the record or what you are going to do with it,” she said. “Public is public. I am always astonished at the number of people who cannot comprehend that.”
Ms. Dalglish said that, in most cases, the workers don’t have evil intentions in making access difficult. Instead, she said, many simply aren’t aware of the laws regarding public records.
“They get into more trouble for releasing a record they shouldn’t than they do refusing to release a record they should,” she said. “That’s always going to be a problem.”
A similar audit conducted in 2000 revealed that the state Motor Vehicle Administration routinely denied people access to driving records. As a result of the audit, the MVA pledged to provide training for workers to improve compliance.
The laws have changed since then, and some of the information that was available in 2000 is now closed. People can, however, still get a three-year driving record of an individual, and an MVA request form specifically notes that record as one that is releasable to anyone requesting it.
But two of three regional MVA offices denied the latest requests for the information about a state senator’s driving record.
In one office, the person seeking the record was told that the “Maryland Privacy Act” forbids disclosure of the information. No such act exists.
In another office, the worker called up the record on a computer, but when he saw it belonged to a senator he refused to release it.
“Here you have an agency that was forewarned by a study less than three years ago that proved the point that the MVA has to release these records,” said Tom Marquardt, executive editor of The Capital and chairman of the association’s Freedom of Information Subcommittee.
“Yet when you have someone denying the record and saying it is part of the Maryland Privacy Act when the act doesn’t exist, it shows they are making this up as they go along and they haven’t been educated.”
He said denying access to a public record because it is about a state senator is even more egregious.
“That’s a cover-up,” Mr. Marquardt said.
State Transportation Secretary Robert Flanagan said the law on access is clear, and the records should have been released.
“The effort to protect your local official is not the appropriate response,” he said. “We need to evaluate the system and have a better result.”
Doing it right
Not all agencies did as poorly as the MVA. Some provided documents quickly, without questions.
A surveyor visiting the state Ethics Commission, for example, was led immediately to the files containing lobbyist disclosure forms.
Another was able to collect a relative’s death certificate in a matter of minutes. Death certificates are among those records where access is limited to people with an interest, such as a relative.
At state Department of Assessment and Taxation offices in Salisbury, Hagerstown and Frederick, staff quickly directed the requesters to computer terminals and helped them get the information they needed even though the information is available online.
“I think those agencies should serve as a model for other agencies to follow so the access to public documents is simple and convenient,” Mr. Marquardt said.
Attempts to get records from agencies unfamiliar with the law were less successful. The requesters were more apt to be shuffled to several people, and in some cases officials never responded.
“Customer service is an important part of this,” said Robert McDonald, chief of opinions and advice with the Attorney General’s Office. “I would think that one thing I would want to stress in the training is that people promptly and politely respond and let people know in a reasonable time frame whether they are getting the records or not.”
Of the 10 records that were denied or that officials failed to follow up on within the 30-day limit allowed by law, six were received after the deadline or have been made available by state officials.
Of those, four became available after the agencies were informed of the FOI committee’s records access test.
They include a list of teachers who had their certification revoked last year, the latest inspection report from the Bay Bridge, complaints against real estate appraisers and on-site inspection reports from the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health office.
Joe Seidel, public information officer at MOSH, said one request was referred to its computer specialist to see if a database of information was available. Another verbal request was never forwarded to him.
Joanne Ericson at the certification office of the Department of Education said the information requested of her department should have been provided quickly.
Bryon Johnston at the Maryland Transportation Authority said there was a delay on the Bay Bridge inspection report because it had to be checked for security.
The report was requested Aug. 21. It arrived Nov. 6.
Liz Williams at the Department of Labor and Licensing said a letter had been sent out to the requester stating that the records were available and that they would cost $5.75. A check for that amount was sent Sept. 30, but Ms. Williams said the agency never received any payment.
At the State Lottery Commission, all calls were referred to Assistant Attorney General Laura Davies Tilley. Ms. Tilley said she sent out a letter the day she got the request indicating that there were many complaints against lottery vendors and the request would have to be more limited.
“I wrote instantly,” she said. “The minute it was handed to me I wrote it and resent it.”
A more limited request was sent but the records, or a response from the agency, were not received as of Nov. 7.
Maryland Department of Environment spokesman Richard McIntire said he was unsure why a person requesting information about the state’s Emergency Response Team was told no records existed.
“The request many not have been routed to the correct place,” he said.
He said he would check on how long the agency maintains files. No answer has been forthcoming.
—
Jim Lee is editor of the Carroll County Times.
Next Top Story
Top Stories Page
Published November 20, 2003, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
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Comment: This editorial followed yesterday’s article.
Our say: State agencies reluctant to release public information
By THE CAPITAL EDITORIAL BOARD
IMAGINE a government that can operate secretly, without any obligation to expose its documents or its deliberations to public scrutiny. Decisions are made to benefit those in power at the expense of those who are not. Such governments exist today, but not in this country, whose Constitution insists on an open government and a free press.
Part of open government is having information gathered in government documents readily available to the public. The Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association recently put this to the test in Maryland, and the results were not encouraging.
Newspapers across the state sent reporters – identifying themselves only as private citizens – to ask state agencies for 25 records that are indisputably, legally public. These requests were denied 40 percent of the time.
Often requests for information were met with questions about the reporter’s identity, his reason for wanting the information, or who he works for – questions not required by the state Public Information Act.
Many state employees were helpful in finding the documents. But, in general, the results indicate that too many officials are either unaware of the state law or are defying it.
The worst experience was at a Motor Vehicle Administration branch office. An employee refused a request for the driving record of a state official by citing a nonexistent “Maryland Privacy Act.” In another surprise audit in 2000, another MVA employee had responded the same way. Then, as now, ignorance of the law seems common at that agency.
The documents were chosen because they could be of particular interest to citizens who want to know more about how their government operates. They included information on restaurant inspections, property assessments, revoked teacher certifications, hazardous waste spills, and more. Too many state employees seem to think the information in these documents belongs to their agency – not to the taxpayers who paid for that information to be gathered, for public purposes.
Absence of public scrutiny allows state officials to mismanage public money, make bad decisions without penalty, and cover up the truth. And public scrutiny requires ready access to government documents, as the law mandates.
The state Attorney General’s Office, which oversees compliance with the Public Information Act, has acknowledged the results of the test and is promising to initiate an education program for custodians of public records. That’s the least the public deserves.
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Opinion Page
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Published November 21, 2003, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Anne Arundel County schools purchase hundreds of cameras to hold kids’ accountable
November 17th, 2003Comment: If the school system can purchase and install more than 500 videocameras to hold the kids accountable, why cannot it purchase even one camera to hold the school board accountable?
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Published November 17, 2003, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
More area schools using cameras for security
By KIMBERLY MARSELAS Staff Writer
When a South River High School student reported several items had been stolen from him earlier this fall, administrators knew exactly where to look to solve the campus caper.
They went to the videotape.
Nearly three dozen cameras were installed at the Edgewater school during the first week of October, and Assistant Principal George Beaumont tracked down the would-be thief using digital evidence.
He knew roughly when and where the items were taken, so he pulled up a video image stored on the Internet and found the perpetrator.
“There’s not much they can do if they’ve been picked up and we can show them the footage,” Mr. Beaumont said. “It’s pretty hard to deny that.”
Three county high schools now have security cameras and two more are expected to be brought online this year in a systemwide effort to improve security and prevent violence in and around public schools.
Cameras are now on nearly all school buses operating in the county, including about 400 that take students on their daily routes and another 70 or so vehicles for disabled children.
This year’s push for in-school cameras began when South River administrators set aside money – raised mostly from vending machine snack sales – to purchase 32 cameras.
They’ve since trained the wall-mounted devices on hallways, stairwells and entrances throughout the building.
The school system will cover maintenance costs for those cameras and pay for installation of a similar system at North County High School in Glen Burnie and another as-yet-to-be-determined high school.
It costs about $60,000 to study each school’s layout and place cameras in all of the appropriate locations. Some of the money is coming from a federal grant, while the rest is being paid out of the school system’s security fund.
None of the cameras is in restrooms, locker rooms or “anyplace where there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy,” said Mark Black, supervisor of school security.
They’re not in regularly used classrooms either. Instead, the cameras are placed in areas that aren’t staffed by teachers or administrators.
They become extra eyes and ears in massive buildings.
Houston-based Progressive Systems reports use of its cameras and software reduces thefts by as much 65 percent and vandalism by up to 85 percent. The company also claims it can increase staff productivity and reduce response time in an emergency.
But Terra Snider, a Severna Park parent whose children are taped on the bus but not at school, wonders whether the cameras will be effective in Anne Arundel County.
“I don’t think it’s a great use of resources, personally,” Mrs. Snider said. “If they’re going to tape at all, why aren’t they putting them in the classroom? … There’s always money to survey the kids, but if we’re going to look at the kids, we should be watching the whole school system.”
She said parents deserved access to the footage, which can only be checked by administrators and school resource officers through a password-encrypted Internet.
The site can be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week from any computer.
In addition to the cameras’ real-time features, administrators can replay, freeze-frame or zoom in on clips they’re interested in, allowing for easier identification of students involved in fights or criminal activity.
Being able to look at most of a school through camera lenses also frees up administrators to spend more time in their offices working with students – rather than being called via walkie-talkie to respond to problems elsewhere.
“It’s becoming more than a security tool,” Mr. Black said. “It’s becoming a way to manage things.”
And the system selected for South River and North County is easier to manage than the loop-tape camera systems of old.
The Old Mill complex currently has older cameras that record activity around the building’s perimeter. But school officials plan to use the same grant funds they’re using to pay for North County’s cameras to cover an upgrade at Old Mill Middle School South, Old Mill Middle School North and Old Mill High School.
Then staffs at those schools will also be able to check live images on the Web.
Annapolis High School will continue to operate with the old system – at least for this year.
Other schools will be brought up to speed as considered necessary, Mr. Black said.
The security staff will decide which schools need surveillance depending on any unsafe areas they may have, past criminal activity and how administrators are currently monitoring their buildings.
At South River, administrators are already seeing the effects of the visible wall-mounted cameras.
“This could be a positive thing just from a deterrent standpoint,” said South River’s Mr. Beaumont. “If you’re a student and just contemplating doing something you shouldn’t and you’re in a spot that might be seen (by the camera), you might choose not to do it.”
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
For a very similar articles published in the New York Times, see:
Sam Dillon, “Cameras Watching Students, Especially in Biloxi.” New York Times, September 24, 2003, p. 1.
Are public hearings what they appear to be?
November 15th, 2003Comment: why does it so often happen that few parents attend public forums? Many cynical parents claim that it’s because what’s said at forums doesn’t really make a difference. This raises the possibility that the forums are as much aboutpublic relations as they are about genuine democratic deliberation
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Only the item in bold.
The Capital
Readers’ views: November 16, 2003 letters
School changes
On Nov. 9, Eric Smith, Anne Arundel County’s school superintendent, held a final forum to address the numerous changes he has implemented over the past year. Unfortunately, as often is the case, very few parents attended.
The parents who did attend were anxious to address numerous examples of how the newly imposed block schedule and pacing guides impacted their children’s lives and the teachers whose profession has been so dramatically changed.
The hardest words to hear are that both students and teachers are stressed and unhappy. The political and condescending answers to the often-complex questions and the examples of the students’ and teachers’ response to Mr. Smith’s plans uncovered an agenda that is not yet complete.
To say that change is unsettling and requires time for adjustment or compliance does not address the negative impact the students and teachers currently experience.
Talk to your children. Talk to your children’s teachers. Talk to your school administrators. Missing in Mr. Smith’s rhetoric, but clearly of utmost importance, are the true and literal results of these new programs in your child’s classroom every day.
Your child’s teachers are dramatically underpaid and are now being asked to teach directly to a very structured, highly paced, standardized curriculum guide. This not only sabotages their professionalism but hurries your child through a program designed to increase test scores.
Consequently, your child, if he or she can keep up, will have “learned” and retained very little in the long run. And check out your child’s level of anxiety about school. Have you noticed a change?
The issues – too numerous for one letter, too complex for one forum – are crucial and require your attention and energy now.
Newspaper Coverage of the Superintendent’s Proposal to Televise Board Meetings
November 6th, 2003Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Our say: Editor’s notebook
By THE CAPITAL EDITORIAL BOARD
LIGHTS, CAMERA, SCHOOL BOARD? – At today’s meeting, the county school board was scheduled to get a briefing on how much it would cost to put the twice-monthly board meetings on cable television, following the example set by the County Council and the Annapolis City Council.
Perhaps the school system’s strained fiscal situation doesn’t make this an ideal moment to invest in a deluxe camera system. But we agree with Superintendent Eric Smith that these meetings should eventually be aired, and rerun.
The school board’s decisions control by far the biggest and most expensive part of county government – the part in which many residents are most passionately and personally interested. Not everyone with a stake in these decisions can get to Riva Road, or take off from work to sit in on a daytime meeting. In the long run, the board will be helped by letting more of the public see how it conducts its deliberations on key issues.
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School board may televise meetings
Three proposals for airing sessions on county cable
By Laura Loh
Sun Staff
November 6, 2003
The Anne Arundel County Board of Education started examining yesterday whether to leap into the television age – something half of Maryland’s school boards have done.
School officials presented to the board three ways it could record and broadcast the twice-a-month sessions on the county’s cable channel. The methods vary from a $7,500 system with a manually operated camera to a $100,000 system with stage lighting and three remote-controlled cameras.
All other school boards in the Baltimore region televise their meetings. Baltimore City and Howard, Carroll and Harford counties broadcast live, and Baltimore County televises its meetings later, according to Anne Arundel officials.
Several board members said they support using television to reach people who cannot attend meetings, but warned that the school system may not be able to afford it now.
“If we do it, we’ve got to do it right,” said board member Michael J. McNelly, adding that he would rule out the least expensive, one-camera option.
‘Wise investment’
But board member Eugene Peterson said he favored televising the meetings as soon as possible. “I think doing this now, when we need to build public support for the school system and what we’re doing, is probably a wise investment of money,” he said.
It is unclear when the board would take action on the matter.
The school board offers three options for people to learn what happened at a meeting: an audio recording; a brief summary of each meeting posted on the school system’s online newsletter within a week; and minutes of the meeting posted about two weeks later, after the board reviews and approves them.
Easier to participate
Community members say televised meetings would make it more convenient for them to participate in the board’s decision-making process. Some people say they have to take off from work to attend the board’s daytime meetings, held on the first Wednesday of the month. Others say the nighttime meetings, held on third Wednesdays, are inconvenient.
Severna Park parent Terra Snider would have welcomed a TV broadcast of yesterday’s meeting.
She had stopped by the afternoon session to hear the proposal about televised meetings but had to leave two hours later – before the board got to the agenda item.
“I’ve got a violin lesson, Cub Scouts, Teen Court and a ballet lesson,” Snider said as she hurried out of the board’s Annapolis headquarters to pick up her three children.
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Published November 06, 2003, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Schools chief seeks to televise board meetings
By KIMBERLY MARSELAS Staff Writer
Superintendent Eric J. Smith wants to televise hours of exhilarating school board meetings starting next year, but he’ll need a divided membership to back his plan – and fund it – before anyone calls “action.”
School system employees yesterday previewed a $100,474 camera setup that would allow them to broadcast Board of Education meetings on local cable television channels, both live and in reruns.
At least one board member expressed concern that now might not be the ideal time to purchase professional-grade cameras and lighting.
“If we do it, we’ve got to do it right,” said Michael McNelly of Tracys Landing, noting he’d vote against cheaper proposals to use single camera systems that only show board members. “I just don’t think that the fiscal climate, for me, right now presents that opportunity.”
But colleague Eugene Peterson said the dire financial picture may add credence to the superintendent’s request.
“Doing this now when we need to build public support for this school system and what we’re doing, is probably a wise investment,” said Mr. Peterson, of Laurel. “I would be all for doing it yesterday.”
The school system purchased several pieces of recording equipment with $270,000 received last year in an agreement between Comcast Cable and the county government.
While the superintendent has had his staff tape some of his presentations, the board hasn’t yet consented to regular recordings or any permanent cameras in the board room.
The superintendent did not ask for that permission yesterday, but Design and Print Supervisor Don Cramer told the board he would like to see it approve the money during the upcom ing budget cycle.
After the meeting, Mr. Smith said he plans to formally recommended the purchase when he presents his 2005 operating budget next month.
Both school system supporters and critics say 100 percent of the board’s meetings need to be aired to prevent any kind of filtering, either by the media or by the superintendent and his staff.
For the last several months, the school system has taped and aired snippets of board meetings, mostly airing promotional materials such as student and teacher recognitions.
Mr. Smith used television to reach the public in Charlotte, N.C., where he helped turn a station inundated with public announcements into a 24-hour-a day channel complete with board meeting broadcasts and original programming.
He said he would like entire meetings shown here.
He was uncertain, however, whether the meetings would be shown in an online streaming video format, and he said long-term video storage is unlikely.
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
E-Mail to the Local Education Reporters
November 5th, 2003—–Original Message—–
From: Jim Snider
Sent: Wed 11/5/2003 12:29 AM
To: ortizv@washpost.com’; KMarselas@capitalgazette.com; laura.loh@baltsun.com
Subject: televised school board meeting item on tomorrow’s agenda
Dear local education reporters,
I cannot attend and testify at tomorrow’s BOE midday meeting on televised coverage because I must work. But I’d like to suggest a few questions you might think about.
Of course, the very fact that I must choose between work and attending a BOE meeting provides one reason why televising board meetings is so important: the current system disenfranchises a lot of citizens. Not everyone can leave work or home to attend a school board meeting.
The basic issue to be addressed is the extent to which the school system is designing televised coverage to serve as a PR or accountability mechanism. Along these lines, here are three sets of questions to keep in mind:
1) Is the school system planning 100% coverage? There is a huge difference between 99% and 100% coverage because the controversial decisions will take place when the cameras aren’t there.
2) Will a record be kept of the meetings? If so, how accessible will it be? Will it be accessible anonymously? The degree of accessibility is perhaps the most telling feature that reveals the BOE’s true intentions. Many school systems spend a fortune on coverage and then destroy the video record, which usually costs less than .1% of the annualized budget.
3) Will the BOE use the new County video streaming servers to complement the traditional cable TV distribution? The County now has the capacity to provide thousands of hours of video streaming over the Internet. Will that capacity be restricted to PR functions, internal training, and distance education? Or will citizens be allowed to use it to keep their representatives accountable? A consumer PC with a 120 Gigabyte drive now has the capacity to store a video record of every public meeting of the BOE for an entire year at VHS quality.
–Jim Snider
1:30 P.M. 6. Reports
6.01 International Baccalaureate – Middle Years Program (R)
6.02 Anne Arundel County FY 2005 Budget Forecast (R)
6.03 PMOC Goals/Timelines (R)
6.04 Televised Board of Education Meetings (R)
6.05 Overview: FY 2003 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (R)
6.06 Construction Status Report (R)
6.07 Anne Arundel County Adequacy of Public Facilities for Schools Ordinance (R)
Should the Public Meeting Enter the Information Age?
November 3rd, 2003This was published in the Fall 2003 issue of the National Civic Review, available November 3, 2003.
PEG Access in Queen Anne’s County
October 11th, 2003Copyright 2003 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
Oct. 11, 2003
Kent Island: County schools seek TV station
The Queen Anne’s County Board of Education has expressed interest in acquiring a public access station exclusively for public school programming.
“We could basically take everything that’s on our Web site and make it into a program. It would be great,” said spokesman Fred McNeil.
He added that if the request is granted, things like Board of Education meetings, budget hearings, sports events and PTA meetings could be broadcast options.
Another idea is creating a student-driven, weekly news magazine program, highlighting school activities and offering some courses via television.
“We could offer GED courses, non-credit courses, English as a second language courses. There’s nothing we couldn’t do,” Mr. McNeil said.
The Board of County Commissioners began broadcasting its weekly meetings in August, and has received positive feedback from the public, said Jeff Rank of the Department of Public Works.
“First we need to introduce the countys cable ordinance. After the ordinance is signed into law, we will work on franchise agreement negotiations with the cable operator,” he said.
Mr. Rank added that because the county is renegotiating the cable contract with Atlantic Broadband, the concept is only preliminary. “We’re at the beginning stages, but were certainly hoping.”
Washington Post Op-Ed on Public vs. Private School Enrollment
September 2nd, 2003Copyright 2003 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
September 02, 2003, Tuesday, Final Edition, Correction Appended
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A21
LENGTH: 990 words
HEADLINE: From Public School to Welfare Service
BYLINE: J.H. Snider
BODY:
All over the United States politicians face a dilemma: They need to pay for rising school costs without raising taxes. For example, when the federal government imposes unfunded mandates on local school systems, such as the $ 35 billion unfunded portion of the No Child Left Behind Act, the money must come from somewhere. Often at least part of the money comes from tolerating — or even encouraging — depressed public school enrollments.
Kids enrolled in public schools are costly for local governments. The average K-12 public school student costs taxpayers close to $ 8,000 per year. Over a 13-year public school career, that comes to more than $ 100,000. Raising taxes to pay for rising enrollments is a political nightmare, as is redistricting students out of crowded but desirable neighborhood schools.
If you assume that there just isn’t any way to ask taxpayers to pay more for schools, then you have no choice: You have to find a way to keep fewer kids enrolled in public schools. Whether they’re aware of it or not, U.S. politicians are doing just that in three ways. First, they’re discouraging development that includes family dwellings. Of course, the Federal Housing Act prohibits discrimination against people with children, so this must be done indirectly. Tactics include discouraging new residential construction, encouraging office and retail development, ensuring that single-family homes will be built on large lots subject to strict building codes (this increases property values and hence taxes per household with kids) and allowing high-density residential construction only for single- or double-bedroom houses that are designed for households that don’t have children in public schools.
A second way to keep costs down is to facilitate high dropout rates among poor, at-risk students. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the nefarious use of high dropout rates to keep test scores high (the students who drop out test poorly). Achieving improved test scores at at-risk schools is a centerpiece of the No Child Left Behind Act and a key requirement for keeping federal Title I money flowing to these schools. But high dropout rates also have another effect: They keep down student enrollments. If dropout rates suddenly decreased, many school districts would have a financial and facilities crisis. No one’s objecting too loudly about this loss, because there is neither the money nor the space to keep these students in the public schools.
In a similar way, tolerating high dropout rates among students of affluent families also can help politicians solve their tax dilemma. In Maryland, for example, public school enrollment increased by just 17 percent over the last decade, while private school enrollment increased by 36 percent. In my own school system in Maryland, Anne Arundel County (population 490,000), the corresponding figures are 13 percent for public and 58 percent for private school enrollment growth. For the past five years, the county’s figures are 2 percent public vs. 23 percent private school growth. The numbers would be even worse, but the good private schools are at capacity and cannot build fast enough to meet the demand. Much of the public school flight is concentrated in small, affluent communities such as Severna Park and parts of Annapolis.
Public officials aren’t the only ones at fault. Affluent families help cause the problem because they don’t want to fund schools their children don’t use. As public schools fall behind private schools in class size and other indicators, those parents with financial options exercise them. Until the 1970s, private schools had larger pupil-teacher ratios than public schools.
Yet public schools also are at fault, because they have developed curriculums and priorities that essentially say good riddance to those who can afford to leave the system. Every student who leaves means more dollars for those who remain. Instead of building new schools to meet rising enrollment, for example, money can be spent repairing dilapidated schools.
The result of the increase in private school enrollments is that public schools are being turned into a welfare service for the disadvantaged. A vicious cycle is being established whereby students at the margins are being driven out, which meets short-term budget needs and keeps most of those left in the system happy. But those who are safe now become at risk for the next round of enrollment cuts.
Of course, no one acknowledges this is going on, and many of the most active players bringing about this transformation have done so as an unintended consequence of their understandable priority to allocate scarce educational resources to those with greatest needs and fewest options. For example, the current shift to a back-to-basics curriculum to improve pass rates on reading and mathematics tests may have the effect of turning off ambitious parents who want their children to attend competitive colleges. These colleges expect students they admit to have a well-rounded education.
In the long-term, the transformation of the public schools into a welfare service is a disaster for the United States. Today local governments typically spend close to 50 percent of their resources on public schools. If public schools turn into a welfare service, that percentage will surely plummet.
There are no easy solutions. But as a start, I suggest that public school advocates stop supporting the legions of politicians who give lip service to excellent public schools and then send their own children to private schools. Politicians need to stop viewing the public schools constitutional protections as a place for other people’s children; that is, as a welfare service. Unless the politicians have a bone in this fight, they aren’t worthy of our trust.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and a former school board member.
CORRECTION-DATE: September 03, 2003, Wednesday
CORRECTION:
Yesterday’s op-ed article by J.H. Snider contained an editing error. The penultimate sentence should have read: Politicians need to stop viewing the public schools paternalistically as a place for other people’s children; that is, as a welfare service.
LOAD-DATE: September 02, 2003
Testimony Before the Anne Arundel County Council
August 18th, 2003Jim Snider
Testimony on Bill No. 38-03, An Ordinance Concerning Public Ethics
Before the Anne Arundel County Council
August 18, 2003
Ms. Chairwoman and Distinguished Members of the County Council, I would like to raise two issues with regard to Bill No. 38-03, An Ordinance Concerning Public Ethics. One concerns an omission, the other a commission. But both concern the accessibility of ethics commission information to the public.
First, the omission. It has been said that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” for the ills addressed by the ethics commission. But the Ethics Commission embodies a dated and inadequate view of that disinfectant. The Ethics Commission specifically states that the purpose of financial disclosure is to enable “the public to monitor possible conflicts of interest.” And it goes on to elaborate that financial disclosure “demonstrates to the public that interests are not hidden.” However, I went to the Ethics Commission website and saw that, with minor exceptions, its opinions are not available there; its annual reports are not available there; and the financial disclosures that it mandates be publicly available are not there. In today’s day and age, this is absolutely unacceptable.
Second, the commission. The Supreme Court has on numerous occasions endorsed the principle of anonymous dissemination of information relating to public affairs. The reason is that this is vital to a healthy democracy. We do not want members of the public to fear retribution when they criticize those in power. We want robust democratic deliberation. This ordinance, in Title 6, section 107, violates that essential democratic principle by requiring citizens to disclose their names and addresses to the public officials who are the subjects of every information request they make. Rest assured, this will greatly inhibit the request of such information and the democratic accountability that is the stated purpose of this ordinance. And it will most specifically hurt members of the general public. Opposition candidates will still be able to hire college students and others to gather this information in practical anonymity. Only citizen groups and others who have a legitimate interest to research this information but are fearful of the consequences of getting on the wrong side of those in power will be chilled and silenced by this ordinance. If the County Council wishes, I shall tell you many stories of the heinous abuses that have occurred when those in power have succeeded in abolishing anonymous public records access.
In conclusion, I am fearful that, in certain critical respects, this ordinance creates the illusion of openness, but in fact creates a regime of practical obscurity. To the extent this is allowed to happen, our democracy will suffer because information is its lifeblood. If you choke that flow of blood, you choke the democracy.
Thank you for letting me speak on this important topic. I request that my written statement be entered in the record.
Capital Op-Ed on Need for Independent PEG Management Board
July 27th, 2003Copyright 2003 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
July 27, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A9
LENGTH: 626 words
HEADLINE: Guest column:Independent board should regulate PEG access
BYLINE: J.H. SNIDER, For The Capital
BODY:
The county is spending an estimated $1 million on a public access TV facility in Glen Burnie. Check your cable TV bill and look at the PEG access fee – mine is 98 cents per month. This facility, which uses only a small fraction of total PEG (public, educational and government) funds, is supposed to enhance civic participation and public access to information. But you’d never know it based on how the county has gone about administering its PEG funds.
Do any readers have any idea what I’m talking about? Probably not. This is a classic insider job. Way back in 1999 the county hired a fancy consultant to do a needs assessment for what would turn into a $5 million PEG access facility budget, including a minimum of four cable TV channels and broadcast links to those channels from dozens of sites throughout the county.
Two public meetings were held and 20 people showed up. Since then, anyone with any concerns about the process is told: “Well, we offered the public a chance to participate, and no one took advantage of it.”
The PEG access budget is threatening to turn into a farce. The school system recently spent $270,000 for a state-of-the-art educational access TV studio, and then designed the system so the public couldn’t watch its “open meetings.”
Think of C-SPAN, and you’ll see how far the county has fallen short. More than 4,000 school systems, most with far smaller budgets and population than Anne Arundel County (which has the 42nd-largest student population in the United States), now televise their meetings.
The county government currently has a de facto monopoly on TV coverage within the county, and it must be forced to exercise that power responsibly. Specifically, PEG access needs to be turned over to an independent board, an action permissible under the county’s PEG access ordinance. Otherwise, it will continue its present course of becoming a public relations and information technology slush fund. This is a great misfortune because the county desperately needs C-SPAN-like coverage of public affairs.
One place to begin is with the Glen Burnie public access center. The county should hold a genuine public meeting to display the facility plans and discuss the future of PEG access. Construction bids are due Aug. 1.
The county also should start looking into setting up an independent board. One idea would be to put the school system’s Citizen Advisory Committees in charge of the educational access channel.
Every school in the county has a CAC consisting of parents and their elected leaders, which is mandated by state law to provide policy feedback to the Board of Education. The Maryland legislature could therefore consider incorporating CAC control into these statutes, specifically designing the educational access channel to empower these education-oriented citizens.
The county’s own PEG access ordinance, passed without fanfare in August 2000, says it all: “The County intends to ensure that PEG access facilities are managed in the public interest and that programming using public access channels is open to all residents and available for all forms of public expression, community information, and debate of public issues.”
Admittedly, this is all boilerplate PEG language, and I doubt even a single County Council member thought about what it meant or read the fine print. Nevertheless, it’s time for the county to take its own laws seriously. This means setting up independent governance and mandating better information disclosure.
—
The writer, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, was chairman of a task force on information technology and democracy for Vermont’s secretary of state before moving to Anne Arundel County.
LOAD-DATE: July 28, 2003
Sun and Capital Stories about BoardDocs
July 13th, 2003All Rights Reserved
The Baltimore Sun
July 13, 2003 Sunday CARROLL Edition
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 9B
LENGTH: 1054 words
HEADLINE: Board of education in Anne Arundel Co. tries going paperless;
Documents posted online; service not often accessed
BYLINE: Laura Loh
SOURCE: SUN STAFF
BODY:
The Anne Arundel County school board is trying to be make its decision-making process more transparent to the public – and save paper in the process – but few appear to have taken notice.
Two months ago, the board began piloting use of a software program that enables it to run “paperless” board meetings by posting agendas and copious supporting documents on the Internet, saving about 14,000 sheets of paper a month.
But not many people have used the new online service, perhaps because no contentious topics are before the board or because the pilot program began as the school year was ending, said some board members.
Meantime, at least one parent and a legal expert have expressed concern that one of the program’s features – not yet implemented by the board – may run afoul of sunshine laws by creating a private forum for people to make comments to board members.
Advocates of the fledgling movement to post board documents online, done by a few dozen school systems in the country, say the service makes it easier for the public to participate.
“This Internet system for Web-based board meetings … just has tremendous potential,” said Carl Smith, executive director of the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, which is sponsoring the six-month pilot program in Anne Arundel and hopes the idea catches on statewide. “Everything is out for everybody to see.”
But parent Paula Linn, a member of Old Mill High School’s Citizens Advisory Committee, said most parents don’t know it exists.
“They don’t advertise all these new features through the schools, and that’s where most people have contact,” Linn said.
The site, accessible through the school system’s Web page, is hosted by BoardDocs.com, a server run by Georgia-based Emerald Data Solutions.
Supporters say this is the first time members of the public can review, without requesting them, documents such as redistricting proposals, draft contracts and staff reports, days before a board meeting.
Previously, documents for the biweekly board meetings were distributed to about 70 people – board members, high-level schools staff, labor unions, parent volunteer groups and members of the media.
To get the pilot going, the school system bought 12 laptop computers for board members and some staff members and a scanner, for a total of about $22,000.
‘Electronic alternative’
Most board members said they are pleased about the electronic alternative to unwieldy document packets, despite initial glitches that include problems with passwords and not being able to log on from home computers.
“I kind of like it, myself, because I’ve got four or five boxes of papers from just this (past) year,” said board member Eugene Peterson. “I was thinking I was going to have to take out one of those public storage places to store it all.”
Caitlin Heidemann, the board’s new student member, said she likes the program’s note-taking function, which allows her to superimpose her notes onto documents. “I type faster than I write, so that’s easier for me,” Heidemann said.
Board President Paul G. Rudolph had reservations, however. “I read my materials not at home, sitting in front of my computer, but when I’m out somewhere waiting for my wife, in other words, to fill up my empty time,” he said.
Although board members and many parents applaud making more documentation available on the Internet, some are concerned that a potential feature of the service could let people post comments on the site that would be seen only by board members.
Comments posted on the “sounding board” would not be made public unless a resident or member of the media were to make a formal request to the schools, said Aristides Ioannides, president of the software firm. The feature is still being developed.
Decision-making
It may limit the public’s understanding of how board members make decisions, said Abraham Dash, a University of Maryland law professor. “Would members already know what they’re going to do (before a board meeting) because they’ve already heard from all the witnesses?” he asked.
Severna Park parent Jim Snider, who unsuccessfully sought appointment to the school board last year, said he relies on other people’s testimony when forming his opinions.
“Public comments should be public,” Snider said. “People learn from hearing each other. That’s the point of having public discussion.”
Ioannides said the feature would give people an alternative way of participating if they cannot attend meetings and is not meant to discourage people from testifying in person.
User complaints
Some people who have used the online service say parts of it are confusing and difficult to navigate.
Annapolis parent Steve Johnson noted that users cannot search for a topic of interest and must click through an entire agenda, item by item, to find what they are looking for.
“I don’t know anyone who would have the patience to click on each of these,” said parent Linn as she browsed through some of the more than 100 files that made up the school facilities master plan, an item on the board’s June 18 agenda.
On computers with cable or network connections, it takes only a few seconds to open a file. On a computer using a dial-up modem, some files take as long as a minute and a half to load. Once the files are opened, they reveal illustrations, photographs and more information than was available in paper versions of the facilities plan.
The Anne Arundel school board is expected to vote in October on whether to convert permanently to paperless meetings, at a cost of about $650 a month. Members said they have not gotten any feedback since the first paperless meeting June 4, other than Snider’s objection to the comment feature.
“I am a little surprised by it,” board Vice President Anthony J. Spencer said of the lack of response to the new site. He said it may be because schools are not in session. “We’ll probably gauge it better once the school year starts,” he said.
Board member Michael J. McNelly said he did not know why there was not greater public interest. “All you can do is put the information out there … and hope that people make use of the product,” he said.
To access the board meetings site, go to http://www.aacps.org/html/BoardOfEducation/ and click on “BoardDocs – Paperless Board Meetings.”
LOAD-DATE: July 14, 2003
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
April 27, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 725 words
HEADLINE: School agendas going high-tech
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
Starting next month, the school board will abandon the paper agendas it’s relied on for decades, posting information about upcoming meetings on a secure Web site instead.
The Board of Education has voted to participate in a five-month test of an online service, which shifts the onus of finding out about future board action to the public.
Agendas and accompanying school system reports are currently mailed or made available to 70 people – including board members – twice a month.
Starting with the May 21 meeting, the public will have to check a Web site for updates rather than the printed agenda.
Georgia-based Emerald Data Solutions will post all meeting materials on BoardDocs.com, providing public access to agenda items while giving board members access to more detailed information and upcoming presentations on a separate, password-protected page.
Anne Arundel will be the first school system in the state to use the technology, thanks to the program sponsored by the Maryland Association of Boards of Education.
“What we’re trying to do is make you more effective and help you forge a better relationship with the public,” Emerald President Aristides Ioannides told six board members during a workshop Wednesday afternoon. “This gives you more time to study the issues and allows the public to search through years of agendas.”
While the county’s in-house Web page lists agenda items, viewers cannot link to related documents on the Internet.
They must come to the meeting or request materials in writing if they don’t receive an information packet in advance. Requests for information from previous meetings have to be handled by staff and are often time-consuming.
So is preparing those 70 packets, but Mr. Ioannides said school systems that adopt his program reduce their prep time from two days to several hours. After the switch to online agendas here, paper copies will be available only upon request.
BoardDocs has unlimited space, so even 45-page reports could be added as attachments. Mr. Ioannides said the public could also view photos, such as images of school building plans, and watch how a project evolves over time.
There will also be a feature that allows readers to make comments to the board about upcoming agenda items. The public, however, would not be able to read those comments, and Mr. Ioannides said they’d be deleted – leaving no record of comments that could have influenced a vote – after the board voted on the issue.
There was no public comment on the proposal – online or otherwise.
The issue wasn’t on the published agenda for last Wednesday’s meeting, but after the workshop, members went into executive decision, added the item to the agenda at the beginning of the open meeting and then approved the pilot within an hour.
Public comment
President Michael McNelly said there’d be time for public comment before any permanent decisions are made, adding that the Maryland Association of School Boards wanted to get the program up and running soon.
“There are other people who are knocking on their door to participate,” he said.
Although the vote was unanimous, Board Member Eugene Peterson expressed concern about the online shift.
He suggested board members still make traditional paper documents available for public review when a “critical issue” comes before them. “Even though we’re getting more computer-literate, not everyone has a computer,” he said. “Some people are well into the information age, and some people just don’t have the money.”
A little more than half of all U.S. homes have a computer, according to the 2000 census.
Who’s using it?
About 20 school districts – the majority of them in Georgia – already use BoardDocs to post their agendas or policies.
Most pay $1,000 a month for the Internet service, while Anne Arundel’s service will be free during the testing period.
The school system will purchase $1,400 laptops for all eight board members – a total of $11,200 – and a scanner to help put the documents online.
If the board stays with the program after the pilot ends in September, it will pay $600 a month for the service.
If members ultimately decide against the program, the computers will be distributed to schools and the money will be subtracted from a computer-purchasing fund.
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: April 28, 2003
Letter to AACPS Regarding BoardDocs & PEG Access
June 6th, 2003—–Original Message—–
From: Jim Snider
Sent: Fri 6/6/2003 1:24 PM
To: ‘JBeckett@AACPS.org’
Cc: ‘ortizv@washpost.com’; ‘KMarselas@capitalgazette.com’; ‘laura.loh@baltsun.com’
Subject: follow-up query (with corrected paragraph spacing)
Dear Ms. Beckett-Donahue:
Four weeks ago last Wednesday I testified before the BOE (see attached comments) on the Board’s proposed implementation of BoardDocs. After my testimony I requested certain information from the Board and subsequently followed up with an e-mail.
The four items I requested were:
1) Mr. Spencer’s promised response (see May 7 minutes below). Mr. Spencer expressed sensitivity about inaccurate claims being made in front of the press, so I think it’s important that we get this right. Frankly, I found Mr. Spencer’s comments most unfair, since I explicitly stated in my testimony the source of my information (The Capital and BoardDocs public documents). I have also on numerous occasions asked the school system to send me 1) printed agendas of both public work sessions and general meetings (even when I was a BOE candidate, the BOE refused to send me this information), and 2) the agendas of the BOE’s committee on internal and external communications.
2) The $270,000 PEG budget for the BOE.
3) The BOE’s PEG needs assessment and future plan (I believe a written needs assessment is required by law).
4) Agendas for meetings of the committee on internal/external communications as well as a preview of its final report before it is submitted to the BOE.
Shortly thereafter I received a note from Greg Nourse offering to send me #2 and to set up an appointment to talk. I replied that after receiving the documents I would like to take him up on his offer. I have received no documents and not heard back from him subsequently.
Having looked at the new BoardDocs-enabled website, I now have a fifth query. The comments feature has not been implemented. Has this feature been dropped or is it being postponed for a future time? Also, is there any intent to note the time and date when the agenda was initially posted? Will subsequent changes be noted, including the time and date of the change?
Thank you for your prompt reply.
–Jim Snider
P.S. I recommend that the Board adopt a written and public policy concerning its disclosure of public meeting information. This policy should be prominently displayed on its web site.
Testimony Before the Board of Education—5/7/03
Mr. President and Board Members. I would like to comment on the Board’s selection of BoardDocs on a trial basis to facilitate access to BOE public meeting information. I suggest two principles that should guide such IT decisions:
1. The public should receive public information at the same time and with equal convenience as school board members. This principle is consistent with the intent of section 10-501 of Maryland’s Open Meeting Statute, and Section 10-612 of Maryland’s Open Record Statute.
2. The new information technology can serve this equalizing function.
Last week’s report in the Capital, “School Agendas Going High-Tech,” and my exploration of BoardDocs website, including its demo and white paper, lead me to believe that this was not the primary intent of the board’s initiative. Its primary intent appears to be to enhance the convenience of board members and give them superior access to information.
My four recommendations to the board are:
First, that it consult Maryland’s Office of Attorney General to determine that its use of a program to in any way enhance the discrepancy between insider and outsider access to information does not violate either the letter or the spirit of the state’s open meeting and public records laws. For example, the company claims it specializes in “collaborative groupware” and offers an annotation feature in its board password protected private section. Even if this is within the letter of the law, such a feature should raise a red flag with the Board.
Second, whether or not there is any impropriety, any password protected system that gives insiders privileged access to information needs a way for outsiders to verify that it’s not being used to bypass the public record and open meeting laws.
Third, the Board should purchase IT equipment with the primary purpose of empowering the public. For example, it should not purchase any program that does not support e-mail notification of meetings. It is a well-established fact that e-mail notification of time sensitive information such as agendas is far more helpful to the general public than requiring the public to search a website.
Fourth, public comments should not be restricted solely to the eyes of board
members. For a standard of public access, I suggest checking the federal government’s website, www.regulations.gov. When submitting comments to the Federal Communications Commission, for example, I electronically post them one day and they are posted for the general public to see the next day. Nor are they destroyed or removed from the FCC’s website after the FCC has taken action. The Board’s current plan, where only board members can read public comments and those public comments are selectively destroyed, is a bad plan that violates fundamental tenets of good democratic procedure.
In conclusion, I applaud the Board’s effort to enhance public access to public meeting information. And, to be fair, BoardDocs is not without advantages. But the Board’s focus should be on improving public access, not board access. Unless it is significantly improved, BoardDocs does not appear to be the best program to do this.
At a future Board meeting, I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss the Board’s use of $270,000 of PEG money to enhance access to information.
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY
MINUTES MAY 7, 2003
APPROVED MAY 23, 2003
Mr. Spencer commented to Mr. Snider that when information is shared with the Board and when the press is present that he should provide accurate information in his testimony. He further commented on the inaccuracy of several of the statements made by Mr. Snider. Mr. Spencer offered to provide Mr. Snider with accurate information when they have the opportunity to talk, so that Mr. Snider can be prepared with accurate information the next time he comes before the Board to testify on this issue. He thanked Mr. Snider for coming.
—–Original Message—–
From: Jim Snider
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2003 5:42 PM
To: ‘JBeckett@AACPS.org’
Cc: ‘ortizv@washpost.com’; ‘KMarselas@capitalgazette.com’; ‘laura.loh@baltsun.com’; ‘anthony.spencer@aacps.org’
Subject: Follow-up requesting clarification
May 11, 2003
Dear Ms. Beckett-Donohue:
Thank you for sending me the BoardDocs Powerpoint presentation to the Anne Arundel School Board. As you may recall, at the May 7 board meeting Mr. Spencer publicly stated that my comments were misinformed concerning the pilot BoardDocs program and presentation to the Board. As you know, I had tried to get the BoardDocs presentation prior to that meeting, first by calling Mr. Rudolph, and then some days later, at his suggestion, by calling you and requesting that the documents be e-mailed to me. During the Board meeting I clearly stated that my information was based on the front page story in the Capital and my reading of the information contained on the BoardDocs website. I also noted that I had requested information from your office prior to the meeting.
Now that I have received the BoardDocs Powerpoint presentation to the Anne Arundel School Board, I see that it is identical to the Powerpoint presentation contained on the BoardDocs website. In particular, the bullet points on the page What is Next? Sounding Board read:
Sounding Board for the public to provide input on any pending agenda items is under development.
Allows the public to enter feedback on pending agenda items.
Only board members can read the comment.
Not to be accessible to the public at large.
I believe this provision clearly conflicts with the statement of principles contained in section 10-501 of Maryland s Open Meeting Statute and section 10-612 of Maryland s Open Record Statute. Democracy requires the widespread dispersal of public information; it is premised on an informed citizenry.
I do not want to suggest that it is unusual for school boards to give insiders privileged access to public meeting information. As I stated at the meeting, my point was that new information technology can and should reduce the existing inequality between insiders and outsiders. BoardDocs makes some attempts in that direction, but its clear focus is to facilitate board member access to public meeting information. I recommended getting a program that has a clear focus on improving public access to information. For example, no program should be purchased that doesn t provide the interested public with e-mail notification of meeting agendas. It s actually hard to buy an online meeting/collaboration tool that doesn t have this feature.
Please ask Mr. Spencer to let me know the specific places where I made mistakes in my presentation. Of course, I was not present at the BoardDocs presentation. And nothing could make me happier than to be assured that my concerns about this particular information technology initiative are ill founded. Any commitment Mr. Spencer can make to using new information technology to reduce the current inequitable access to public information would win him my greatest gratitude. By inequitable I refer to both time and convenience of access. The information concerning the meeting at which BoardDocs made its public presentation would be a prime example of the type of inequitable information access to which I refer.
I also look forward to getting the PEG budget information I requested after the board meeting on Wednesday. As we discussed, I m looking for the school system s latest PEG needs assessment and long-range plan as well as the detailed budget for the $270,000 currently allocated to the BOE s Riva Road PEG access facility. Finally, I look forward to getting information on the progress of the BOE s committee investigating the use of technology to enhance internal and external communication.
Thank you for all the clarification and help you can provide. I welcome Mr. Spencer s feedback as well as yours.
–Jim Snider
Cc: Kimberly Marselas, Laura Loh, Vikki Ortiz, Anthony Spencer
Washington Post Op-Ed on Gaming Test Scores
May 25th, 2003The Washington Post
May 25, 2003, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. B07
LENGTH: 802 words
HEADLINE: Getting Real on Raising Test Scores
BYLINE: J.H. Snider
BODY:
There are two ways of raising educational test scores for students in kindergarten through 12th grade: the real way and the fake way. Maryland seems, at least in part, to have chosen the fake way.
In January 2002 the federal government passed the No Child Left Behind Act. In April 2002 Maryland passed the Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act. Both are key elements of national and state education reform, and both made raising test scores the centerpiece of their accountability systems.
No one in his right mind can be against raising test scores. That’s like being against motherhood and apple pie. The concern is over how it’s done: Are there adequate safeguards from abuse? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
There are many ways to abuse a system of test-based accountability. The most widely reported is “teaching to the test.” If tests don’t accurately measure real performance, then teaching to the test may detract from learning. My daughter’s ninth-grade honors geometry teacher, for example, tells me that he had to cut out most of the conventional geometry curriculum — learning how to do proofs — because this skill doesn’t test well on multiple-choice geometry tests. Similarly, textbooks are being bought with an eye to improving test scores, so next year my second-grade son will be using the language arts textbook put out by the publisher of the language arts test.
Another abuse is to dumb down the test: Instead of raising the performance of kids, the level of the test is brought down to that of the kids. Because the No Child Left Behind Act leaves the choice of test to the state, many have chosen this strategy. They can’t fail if they set the bar low enough.
Moreover, test-based accountability may measure only output, not productivity. Productivity reflects both test scores (outputs) and resources put into educating children (inputs). Anne Arundel County, ground zero of Maryland’s test-based accountability reform agenda, provides an excellent example of the results of Maryland’s perverse incentive system, which rewards higher output but not higher productivity.
The Anne Arundel school board has been ashamed that the county doesn’t do as well on tests as its income and demographics suggest it should. So last year it brought in a new superintendent, the most highly paid in Maryland, to raise test scores. And to back its hard-nosed business rhetoric, it offered him a generous bonus for meeting benchmarks of success. But the school board, like the state, has not asked for more productivity — only increased test scores. And therein lies the rub: One is vastly easier to achieve than the other.
The productivity abuse is very simple. Only a small fraction of subjects are actually tested. And only a small fraction of these — reading and math — are high-profile, high-stakes tests. So the trick is to shift resources from the untested subjects to the tested ones. These resources include time, smaller class sizes, money and quality materials. The untested subjects are getting larger class sizes, less class time, poorer supplies and older textbooks. Starting next year, 50 percent of class time in middle schools will be devoted to just two tested subjects — math and reading — up from 33 percent two years ago. Fortunately, in high schools, with Advanced Placement tests included in the test regimen, the abuse is less severe.
None of this was advertised. Advocates of test-based reforms didn’t call for a back-to-basics curriculum. They didn’t call for a shriveling of the curriculum and the ambitions of the public schools. They promised excellence and higher achievement across the board. The best schools have always had a well-rounded curriculum — including physical education, foreign language and the fine arts. Only the least advantaged schools settled for the three R’s as adequate.
Maryland needs a new accountability that takes into consideration inputs as well as outputs. It should begin by forcing school systems to disclose the often carefully guarded data detailing the changing flow of resources to tested and untested subjects. Tested subjects should not be allowed to cannibalize the untested ones without public awareness and debate. At a minimum, Maryland needs to enforce its current laws calling for a thorough, well-rounded education for all children — not just those lucky enough to be able to afford full-time private school or after-school enrichment.
No one who sees what’s going on in Maryland education will doubt that test scores will rise. The bigger question is whether the rise will come the fake-and-easy way or the real-and-hard way. So far, the results aren’t promising.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and a former school board member.
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2003
School Board Nominating Convention
May 14th, 2003The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
May 14, 2003 Wednesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A12
HEADLINE: Readers’ views:May 14
BODY: School board
Your editorial stating that the school board nominating convention “produces a grass-roots choice” (The Capital, May 9) was laughable. With only 200 convention delegates, this is a system that is easily stacked and manipulated. A group with a hidden agenda can easily get its candidate to be the nominee.
To continue with this system is not in the best interests of this county. The issues that face the school board should be discussed and debated throughout the county in a general election, with debates televised on our local television station. I hope that one day our state delegates will have enough confidence in democracy and the people of this county to let the people decide.
Please e-mail the head of our state delegation – maryann-love@house.state.md.us – to voice your opinion.
RICHARD ZIPPER
Crofton
Letter to AACPS Regarding BoardDocs & PEG Access
May 11th, 2003—–Original Message—–
From: Jim Snider
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2003 5:42 PM
To: ‘JBeckett@AACPS.org’
Cc: ‘ortizv@washpost.com’; ‘KMarselas@capitalgazette.com’; ‘laura.loh@baltsun.com’; ‘anthony.spencer@aacps.org’
Subject: Follow-up requesting clarification
May 11, 2003
Dear Ms. Beckett-Donohue:
Thank you for sending me the BoardDocs Powerpoint presentation to the Anne Arundel School Board. As you may recall, at the May 7 board meeting Mr. Spencer publicly stated that my comments were misinformed concerning the pilot BoardDocs program and presentation to the Board. As you know, I had tried to get the BoardDocs presentation prior to that meeting, first by calling Mr. Rudolph, and then some days later, at his suggestion, by calling you and requesting that the documents be e-mailed to me. During the Board meeting I clearly stated that my information was based on the front page story in the Capital and my reading of the information contained on the BoardDocs website. I also noted that I had requested information from your office prior to the meeting.
Now that I have received the BoardDocs Powerpoint presentation to the Anne Arundel School Board, I see that it is identical to the Powerpoint presentation contained on the BoardDocs website. In particular, the bullet points on the page What is Next? Sounding Board read:
Sounding Board for the public to provide input on any pending agenda items is under development.
Allows the public to enter feedback on pending agenda items.
Only board members can read the comment.
Not to be accessible to the public at large.
I believe this provision clearly conflicts with the statement of principles contained in section 10-501 of Maryland s Open Meeting Statute and section 10-612 of Maryland s Open Record Statute. Democracy requires the widespread dispersal of public information; it is premised on an informed citizenry.
I do not want to suggest that it is unusual for school boards to give insiders privileged access to public meeting information. As I stated at the meeting, my point was that new information technology can and should reduce the existing inequality between insiders and outsiders. BoardDocs makes some attempts in that direction, but its clear focus is to facilitate board member access to public meeting information. I recommended getting a program that has a clear focus on improving public access to information. For example, no program should be purchased that doesn t provide the interested public with e-mail notification of meeting agendas. It s actually hard to buy an online meeting/collaboration tool that doesn t have this feature.
Please ask Mr. Spencer to let me know the specific places where I made mistakes in my presentation. Of course, I was not present at the BoardDocs presentation. And nothing could make me happier than to be assured that my concerns about this particular information technology initiative are ill founded. Any commitment Mr. Spencer can make to using new information technology to reduce the current inequitable access to public information would win him my greatest gratitude. By inequitable I refer to both time and convenience of access. The information concerning the meeting at which BoardDocs made its public presentation would be a prime example of the type of inequitable information access to which I refer.
I also look forward to getting the PEG budget information I requested after the board meeting on Wednesday. As we discussed, I m looking for the school system s latest PEG needs assessment and long-range plan as well as the detailed budget for the $270,000 currently allocated to the BOE s Riva Road PEG access facility. Finally, I look forward to getting information on the progress of the BOE s committee investigating the use of technology to enhance internal and external communication.
Thank you for all the clarification and help you can provide. I welcome Mr. Spencer s feedback as well as yours.
–Jim Snider
Cc: Kimberly Marselas, Laura Loh, Vikki Ortiz, Anthony Spencer
J.H. Snider, Senior Research Fellow
New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: 202/986-2700
Fax: 202/986-3696
E-mail: Snider@newamerica.net
Testimony Before the Anne Arundel County Board of Education
May 7th, 2003Testimony Before the Board of Education—5/7/03
Mr. President and Board Members. I would like to comment on the Board’s selection of BoardDocs on a trial basis to facilitate access to BOE public meeting information. I suggest two principles that should guide such IT decisions:
1. The public should receive public information at the same time and with equal convenience as school board members. This principle is consistent with the intent of section 10-501 of Maryland’s Open Meeting Statute, and Section 10-612 of Maryland’s Open Record Statute.
2. The new information technology can serve this equalizing function.
Last week’s report in the Capital, “School Agendas Going High-Tech,” and my exploration of BoardDocs website, including its demo and white paper, lead me to believe that this was not the primary intent of the board’s initiative. Its primary intent appears to be to enhance the convenience of board members and give them superior access to information.
My four recommendations to the board are:
First, that it consult Maryland’s Office of Attorney General to determine that its use of a program to in any way enhance the discrepancy between insider and outsider access to information does not violate either the letter or the spirit of the state’s open meeting and public records laws. For example, the company claims it specializes in “collaborative groupware” and offers an annotation feature in its board password protected private section. Even if this is within the letter of the law, such a feature should raise a red flag with the Board.
Second, whether or not there is any impropriety, any password protected system that gives insiders privileged access to information needs a way for outsiders to verify that it’s not being used to bypass the public record and open meeting laws.
Third, the Board should purchase IT equipment with the primary purpose of empowering the public. For example, it should not purchase any program that does not support e-mail notification of meetings. It is a well-established fact that e-mail notification of time sensitive information such as agendas is far more helpful to the general public than requiring the public to search a website.
Fourth, public comments should not be restricted solely to the eyes of board
members. For a standard of public access, I suggest checking the federal government’s website, www.regulations.gov. When submitting comments to the Federal Communications Commission, for example, I electronically post them one day and they are posted for the general public to see the next day. Nor are they destroyed or removed from the FCC’s website after the FCC has taken action. The Board’s current plan, where only board members can read public comments and those public comments are selectively destroyed, is a bad plan that violates fundamental tenets of good democratic procedure.
In conclusion, I applaud the Board’s effort to enhance public access to public meeting information. And, to be fair, BoardDocs is not without advantages. But the Board’s focus should be on improving public access, not board access. Unless it is significantly improved, BoardDocs does not appear to be the best program to do this.
At a future Board meeting, I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss the Board’s use of $270,000 of PEG money to enhance access to information.
School board promises improved agendas
April 27th, 2003The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
April 27, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 725 words
HEADLINE: School agendas going high-tech
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
Starting next month, the school board will abandon the paper agendas it’s relied on for decades, posting information about upcoming meetings on a secure Web site instead.
The Board of Education has voted to participate in a five-month test of an online service, which shifts the onus of finding out about future board action to the public.
Agendas and accompanying school system reports are currently mailed or made available to 70 people – including board members – twice a month.
Starting with the May 21 meeting, the public will have to check a Web site for updates rather than the printed agenda.
Georgia-based Emerald Data Solutions will post all meeting materials on BoardDocs.com, providing public access to agenda items while giving board members access to more detailed information and upcoming presentations on a separate, password-protected page.
Anne Arundel will be the first school system in the state to use the technology, thanks to the program sponsored by the Maryland Association of Boards of Education.
“What we’re trying to do is make you more effective and help you forge a better relationship with the public,” Emerald President Aristides Ioannides told six board members during a workshop Wednesday afternoon. “This gives you more time to study the issues and allows the public to search through years of agendas.”
While the county’s in-house Web page lists agenda items, viewers cannot link to related documents on the Internet.
They must come to the meeting or request materials in writing if they don’t receive an information packet in advance. Requests for information from previous meetings have to be handled by staff and are often time-consuming.
So is preparing those 70 packets, but Mr. Ioannides said school systems that adopt his program reduce their prep time from two days to several hours. After the switch to online agendas here, paper copies will be available only upon request.
BoardDocs has unlimited space, so even 45-page reports could be added as attachments. Mr. Ioannides said the public could also view photos, such as images of school building plans, and watch how a project evolves over time.
There will also be a feature that allows readers to make comments to the board about upcoming agenda items. The public, however, would not be able to read those comments, and Mr. Ioannides said they’d be deleted – leaving no record of comments that could have influenced a vote – after the board voted on the issue.
There was no public comment on the proposal – online or otherwise.
The issue wasn’t on the published agenda for last Wednesday’s meeting, but after the workshop, members went into executive decision, added the item to the agenda at the beginning of the open meeting and then approved the pilot within an hour.
Public comment
President Michael McNelly said there’d be time for public comment before any permanent decisions are made, adding that the Maryland Association of School Boards wanted to get the program up and running soon.
“There are other people who are knocking on their door to participate,” he said.
Although the vote was unanimous, Board Member Eugene Peterson expressed concern about the online shift.
He suggested board members still make traditional paper documents available for public review when a “critical issue” comes before them. “Even though we’re getting more computer-literate, not everyone has a computer,” he said. “Some people are well into the information age, and some people just don’t have the money.”
A little more than half of all U.S. homes have a computer, according to the 2000 census.
Who’s using it?
About 20 school districts – the majority of them in Georgia – already use BoardDocs to post their agendas or policies.
Most pay $1,000 a month for the Internet service, while Anne Arundel’s service will be free during the testing period.
The school system will purchase $1,400 laptops for all eight board members – a total of $11,200 – and a scanner to help put the documents online.
If the board stays with the program after the pilot ends in September, it will pay $600 a month for the service.
If members ultimately decide against the program, the computers will be distributed to schools and the money will be subtracted from a computer-purchasing fund.
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: April 28, 2003
Capital Op-Ed on PEG Access
February 5th, 2003Copyright 2003 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
February 5, 2003 Wednesday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 1011 words
HEADLINE: School system to boost cable presence
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
After offering a smattering of shows that aired sporadically and often not until 2 in the morning, the county school system’s video production staff is gearing up for prime time.
Snippets from a recent Board of Education meeting and interviews with board members have begun airing regularly on the county government’s cable channel. There are also plans for a separate school-devoted channel by year’s end.
It’s all in an effort to keep the public informed about the school system and board news while offering learning opportunities for students.
“We’re taking baby steps right now in terms of production,” said Don Cramer, supervisor of the school system’s Design and Print operation, which includes television services. “I think when people start seeing the communications value, they’ll want more.”
Residents were in fact promised more, but the expansion of services has been slow in coming.
Comcast Cable agreed to set up five public, educational or governmental access channels in a 1999 agreement, and in early 2001 granted $5 million to the county to help get those channels off the ground.
The school system’s take was $270,000, which officials were only given access to in July.
“My question is, what took so long?” Mr. Cramer said. “That’s been the $270,000 question, I guess you could say.”
County officials said funding for the start-up was doled out in accordance with regular budgetary and bidding policies.
“Nobody has perceived any noticeable delay,” said Matt Diehl, a county spokesman.
As for getting the public schools channel on line, Comcast has until December to finish system upgrades and can wait until then to make all of the required channels available.
In the meantime, the county has agreed to give the schools 90 minutes of broadcast time each Tuesday and Wednesday night. Before, schools’ programs were scattered haphazardly throughout the day.
The 7:30 to 9 p.m. schedule has been in place for a little over a month now, and there’s a possibility the time slot could expand if the school system needs more on-air coverage.
On-air examples
The 90-minute allotment doesn’t compare with what most large school systems around the region are doing on TV.
Montgomery County, which has a larger school system than Anne Arundel, has one of the oldest cable programs in the area, with two channels airing 18 to 22 hours of programming each day.
The live “Homework Hotline” debuted in February 1986 and still gets 25-30 calls from students during all three weekly airings.
“It really is the basis of what we’re here to do,” said Dick Lipsky, supervisor of Montgomery’s Instructional TV. “Anytime we can help a child or even a parent understand an issue, that’s what we’re about.”
Board meetings are broadcast live, then twice the next day and twice the following weekend. Officials there also use public access to discuss safety policies, broadcast interviews with the superintendent and air shows ranging from “News Update” to “Prep Talk,” a program designed for the college-bound.
Anne Arundel officials will be able to borrow from Superintendent Eric J. Smith’s television experience in launching their broader services.
In Charlotte, N.C., he helped change a channel that once featured nothing but scrolling lunch menus and other announcements into one that produces five weekly shows and airs around the clock.
CMS-TV3 also covers student achievements and sporting events, offers high schoolers internships and plays every public meeting held by that city’s school board.
“He really helped us put TV on the map here and helped provide good news to our parents and students,” said Station Manager Russ Gill.
What to watch
What will be broadcast on this school system’s channel is still up in the air.
For now, the time on channel 19 is being used for what Mr. Cramer calls “hot items:” excerpts from a Dec. 18 budget meeting, interviews with board members and businesspeople and retrospectives on school system history.
A bevy of production supplies – including a robotic camera and VCR and DVD recorders- recently started arriving and should help Mr. Cramer’s video production staff capture more events.
Up until now the board has only permitted cameras at select meetings, but the public is asking for more TV coverage.
“It’s there. It’s available. Why not?” asked Sam Georgiou, chairman of the county Citizens Advisory Committee. “It would improve access to the board. It would promote accuracy. It could increase awareness.”
Mr. Georgiou would also like to see segments for student recognition and in-depth analysis of school issues on-air.
Jim Snider, a one-time school board candidate who served in the same position in Vermont, wants meetings of all legislative bodies to be broadcast live – and rebroadcast at least six times so that anyone who can’t make an actual meeting can find time in their schedule to stay abreast of the issues.
But he said what is most important is making sure all board activities are tapped, not just the ones that the superintendent or board members agree to ahead of time.
“There is a huge difference between covering 99 percent of meetings and covering 100 percent,” Mr. Snider said. “The difference is that you put all your controversial stuff in that other 1 percent.”
Without the board’s consent for full-time coverage, the public will have to settle for on-again, off-again coverage.
Mr. Cramer said the remote camera recently purchased will hang in the studio area rather than in the board room until members vote for regular tapings.
Board President Michael McNelly said the costs of regular recordings and broadcasts may be prohibitive, though he’s keeping an open mind.
“I haven’t quite made up my mind as to whether it would be worth the money we’d have to spend,” Mr. McNelly said. “We want to do everything we can to reach out to people and to keep them informed… But to get into it and go with both feet right now, I’m just not sure if it’s the right thing to do. We’re in a very tight budget.”
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: February 5, 2003
Capital Article on BoardDocs
February 5th, 2003Copyright 2003 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
February 5, 2003 Wednesday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 1011 words
HEADLINE: School system to boost cable presence
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
After offering a smattering of shows that aired sporadically and often not until 2 in the morning, the county school system’s video production staff is gearing up for prime time.
Snippets from a recent Board of Education meeting and interviews with board members have begun airing regularly on the county government’s cable channel. There are also plans for a separate school-devoted channel by year’s end.
It’s all in an effort to keep the public informed about the school system and board news while offering learning opportunities for students.
“We’re taking baby steps right now in terms of production,” said Don Cramer, supervisor of the school system’s Design and Print operation, which includes television services. “I think when people start seeing the communications value, they’ll want more.”
Residents were in fact promised more, but the expansion of services has been slow in coming.
Comcast Cable agreed to set up five public, educational or governmental access channels in a 1999 agreement, and in early 2001 granted $5 million to the county to help get those channels off the ground.
The school system’s take was $270,000, which officials were only given access to in July.
“My question is, what took so long?” Mr. Cramer said. “That’s been the $270,000 question, I guess you could say.”
County officials said funding for the start-up was doled out in accordance with regular budgetary and bidding policies.
“Nobody has perceived any noticeable delay,” said Matt Diehl, a county spokesman.
As for getting the public schools channel on line, Comcast has until December to finish system upgrades and can wait until then to make all of the required channels available.
In the meantime, the county has agreed to give the schools 90 minutes of broadcast time each Tuesday and Wednesday night. Before, schools’ programs were scattered haphazardly throughout the day.
The 7:30 to 9 p.m. schedule has been in place for a little over a month now, and there’s a possibility the time slot could expand if the school system needs more on-air coverage.
On-air examples
The 90-minute allotment doesn’t compare with what most large school systems around the region are doing on TV.
Montgomery County, which has a larger school system than Anne Arundel, has one of the oldest cable programs in the area, with two channels airing 18 to 22 hours of programming each day.
The live “Homework Hotline” debuted in February 1986 and still gets 25-30 calls from students during all three weekly airings.
“It really is the basis of what we’re here to do,” said Dick Lipsky, supervisor of Montgomery’s Instructional TV. “Anytime we can help a child or even a parent understand an issue, that’s what we’re about.”
Board meetings are broadcast live, then twice the next day and twice the following weekend. Officials there also use public access to discuss safety policies, broadcast interviews with the superintendent and air shows ranging from “News Update” to “Prep Talk,” a program designed for the college-bound.
Anne Arundel officials will be able to borrow from Superintendent Eric J. Smith’s television experience in launching their broader services.
In Charlotte, N.C., he helped change a channel that once featured nothing but scrolling lunch menus and other announcements into one that produces five weekly shows and airs around the clock.
CMS-TV3 also covers student achievements and sporting events, offers high schoolers internships and plays every public meeting held by that city’s school board.
“He really helped us put TV on the map here and helped provide good news to our parents and students,” said Station Manager Russ Gill.
What to watch
What will be broadcast on this school system’s channel is still up in the air.
For now, the time on channel 19 is being used for what Mr. Cramer calls “hot items:” excerpts from a Dec. 18 budget meeting, interviews with board members and businesspeople and retrospectives on school system history.
A bevy of production supplies – including a robotic camera and VCR and DVD recorders- recently started arriving and should help Mr. Cramer’s video production staff capture more events.
Up until now the board has only permitted cameras at select meetings, but the public is asking for more TV coverage.
“It’s there. It’s available. Why not?” asked Sam Georgiou, chairman of the county Citizens Advisory Committee. “It would improve access to the board. It would promote accuracy. It could increase awareness.”
Mr. Georgiou would also like to see segments for student recognition and in-depth analysis of school issues on-air.
Jim Snider, a one-time school board candidate who served in the same position in Vermont, wants meetings of all legislative bodies to be broadcast live – and rebroadcast at least six times so that anyone who can’t make an actual meeting can find time in their schedule to stay abreast of the issues.
But he said what is most important is making sure all board activities are tapped, not just the ones that the superintendent or board members agree to ahead of time.
“There is a huge difference between covering 99 percent of meetings and covering 100 percent,” Mr. Snider said. “The difference is that you put all your controversial stuff in that other 1 percent.”
Without the board’s consent for full-time coverage, the public will have to settle for on-again, off-again coverage.
Mr. Cramer said the remote camera recently purchased will hang in the studio area rather than in the board room until members vote for regular tapings.
Board President Michael McNelly said the costs of regular recordings and broadcasts may be prohibitive, though he’s keeping an open mind.
“I haven’t quite made up my mind as to whether it would be worth the money we’d have to spend,” Mr. McNelly said. “We want to do everything we can to reach out to people and to keep them informed… But to get into it and go with both feet right now, I’m just not sure if it’s the right thing to do. We’re in a very tight budget.”
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: February 5, 2003
Televised School Board Meetings
February 5th, 2003The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
February 5, 2003 Wednesday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 1011 words
HEADLINE: School system to boost cable presence
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
After offering a smattering of shows that aired sporadically and often not until 2 in the morning, the county school system’s video production staff is gearing up for prime time.
Snippets from a recent Board of Education meeting and interviews with board members have begun airing regularly on the county government’s cable channel. There are also plans for a separate school-devoted channel by year’s end.
It’s all in an effort to keep the public informed about the school system and board news while offering learning opportunities for students.
“We’re taking baby steps right now in terms of production,” said Don Cramer, supervisor of the school system’s Design and Print operation, which includes television services. “I think when people start seeing the communications value, they’ll want more.”
Residents were in fact promised more, but the expansion of services has been slow in coming.
Comcast Cable agreed to set up five public, educational or governmental access channels in a 1999 agreement, and in early 2001 granted $5 million to the county to help get those channels off the ground.
The school system’s take was $270,000, which officials were only given access to in July.
“My question is, what took so long?” Mr. Cramer said. “That’s been the $270,000 question, I guess you could say.”
County officials said funding for the start-up was doled out in accordance with regular budgetary and bidding policies.
“Nobody has perceived any noticeable delay,” said Matt Diehl, a county spokesman.
As for getting the public schools channel on line, Comcast has until December to finish system upgrades and can wait until then to make all of the required channels available.
In the meantime, the county has agreed to give the schools 90 minutes of broadcast time each Tuesday and Wednesday night. Before, schools’ programs were scattered haphazardly throughout the day.
The 7:30 to 9 p.m. schedule has been in place for a little over a month now, and there’s a possibility the time slot could expand if the school system needs more on-air coverage.
On-air examples
The 90-minute allotment doesn’t compare with what most large school systems around the region are doing on TV.
Montgomery County, which has a larger school system than Anne Arundel, has one of the oldest cable programs in the area, with two channels airing 18 to 22 hours of programming each day.
The live “Homework Hotline” debuted in February 1986 and still gets 25-30 calls from students during all three weekly airings.
“It really is the basis of what we’re here to do,” said Dick Lipsky, supervisor of Montgomery’s Instructional TV. “Anytime we can help a child or even a parent understand an issue, that’s what we’re about.”
Board meetings are broadcast live, then twice the next day and twice the following weekend. Officials there also use public access to discuss safety policies, broadcast interviews with the superintendent and air shows ranging from “News Update” to “Prep Talk,” a program designed for the college-bound.
Anne Arundel officials will be able to borrow from Superintendent Eric J. Smith’s television experience in launching their broader services.
In Charlotte, N.C., he helped change a channel that once featured nothing but scrolling lunch menus and other announcements into one that produces five weekly shows and airs around the clock.
CMS-TV3 also covers student achievements and sporting events, offers high schoolers internships and plays every public meeting held by that city’s school board.
“He really helped us put TV on the map here and helped provide good news to our parents and students,” said Station Manager Russ Gill.
What to watch
What will be broadcast on this school system’s channel is still up in the air.
For now, the time on channel 19 is being used for what Mr. Cramer calls “hot items:” excerpts from a Dec. 18 budget meeting, interviews with board members and businesspeople and retrospectives on school system history.
A bevy of production supplies – including a robotic camera and VCR and DVD recorders- recently started arriving and should help Mr. Cramer’s video production staff capture more events.
Up until now the board has only permitted cameras at select meetings, but the public is asking for more TV coverage.
“It’s there. It’s available. Why not?” asked Sam Georgiou, chairman of the county Citizens Advisory Committee. “It would improve access to the board. It would promote accuracy. It could increase awareness.”
Mr. Georgiou would also like to see segments for student recognition and in-depth analysis of school issues on-air.
Jim Snider, a one-time school board candidate who served in the same position in Vermont, wants meetings of all legislative bodies to be broadcast live – and rebroadcast at least six times so that anyone who can’t make an actual meeting can find time in their schedule to stay abreast of the issues.
But he said what is most important is making sure all board activities are tapped, not just the ones that the superintendent or board members agree to ahead of time.
“There is a huge difference between covering 99 percent of meetings and covering 100 percent,” Mr. Snider said. “The difference is that you put all your controversial stuff in that other 1 percent.”
Without the board’s consent for full-time coverage, the public will have to settle for on-again, off-again coverage.
Mr. Cramer said the remote camera recently purchased will hang in the studio area rather than in the board room until members vote for regular tapings.
Board President Michael McNelly said the costs of regular recordings and broadcasts may be prohibitive, though he’s keeping an open mind.
“I haven’t quite made up my mind as to whether it would be worth the money we’d have to spend,” Mr. McNelly said. “We want to do everything we can to reach out to people and to keep them informed… But to get into it and go with both feet right now, I’m just not sure if it’s the right thing to do. We’re in a very tight budget.”
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: February 5, 2003
Presentation to the Greater Severna Park Council
January 14th, 2003The attached file consists of two parts.
1) My October 24, 2001 commentary in the Severna Park Voice entitled “Should the GSPC Be More More Democratic?
2) My January 14, 2003 Presentation to the GSPC “Has the GSPC Become More Democratic?”
Capital Article on Elected School Board
January 9th, 2003Copyright 2003 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
January 9, 2003 Thursday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 542 words
HEADLINE: Burlison:Time to elect board of ed
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
Motivated by a controversial appointment following last year’s School Board Nominating Convention, a County Council member wants to make this the year the school board selection process changes.
Councilman Bill D. Burlison, D-Odenton, introduced a resolution Monday night asking the county’s State House delegation to support legislation creating an elected school board during the current session, which began yesterday.
Several Republican delegates crafted separate school board reform bills in 2000, but last spring’s appointment of businessman Konrad Wayson to the board may be the impetus they need to win bipartisan support.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening appointed Mr. Wayson to a five-year term, although the top pick of hundreds of community leaders who participated in the nominating convention was Severna Park parent and former Vermont school board member Jim Snider.
County Executive Janet S. Owens asked the governor to select Mr. Wayson instead, saying the board needed his business expertise. The selection sparked community outrage and calls for Mr. Wayson’s resignation.
“Because of the most recent incident, I think there’s great momentum for a change,” said Del. John R. Leopold of Pasadena. “The public is justifiably angered.”
He and Dels. Janet Greenip, R-Crofton, and David Boschert, R-Crownsville, have tried unsuccessfully to pass school board reforms several times in the past few years.
Mr. Leopold has drafted new legislation for 2003 and is considering introducing it in this year’s 90-day session, which opened yesterday.
He is looking for a Democratic co-sponsor for the bill, which would call for a referendum to let voters decide whether the county switches to a nonpartisan elected school board or a revised appointment process.
The appointment process Mr. Leopold favors would still start with a nominating convention, but the county executive – not the governor – would make the appointments.
The County Council would have to confirm the nominees, giving members the power to override the executive’s appointment if he or she does not follow the convention’s wishes.
“I think the governor should be removed from the process,” Mr. Leopold said. “The decision ought to be made by those closest to the office.”
For Mr. Burlison, that means voters. While he’s open to discussion on a variety of reforms, he said the only change he wholeheartedly supports is a switch to public elections.
“It’s the only modification preferable to what we have now,” Mr. Burlison said. “The school board members should be more responsible and more responsive to the people – and not to politicians.”
But Councilman Ed Reilly, R-Crofton, is leaning toward the county executive appointment option. He fears an elected school board could politicize important education decisions by narrowing the number of candidates and creating inappropriate campaign ties.
And that, he said, would create the same kind of criticism Ms. Owens faced when she appointed Mr. Wayson, a distant cousin and previous political appointment.
Del. Michael E. Busch, an Annapolis Democrat recently elected House speaker, said he’ll accept a resolution from the council, but he’d rather talk to council members one-on-one about their concerns.
LOAD-DATE: January 9, 2003
Capital on Elected School Board
January 2nd, 2003Copyright 2003 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
January 2, 2003 Thursday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 673 words
HEADLINE: Elected school board at issue
BYLINE: KIMBERLY MARSELAS, Staff Writer
BODY:
Motivated by a controversial appointment following last year’s School Board Nominating Convention, a County Council member wants to make this the year the school board selection process changes.
Councilman Bill D. Burlison, D-Odenton, plans to introduce a resolution Monday night asking the county’s State House delegation to support legislation creating an elected school board during the upcoming session.
Several Republican delegates crafted separate school board reform bills in 2000, but last spring’s appointment of businessman Konrad Wayson to the board may be the impetus they need to win bipartisan support.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening appointed Mr. Wayson to a five-year term, although the top pick of hundreds of community leaders who participated in the nominating convention was Severna Park parent and former Vermont school board member Jim Snider.
County Executive Janet S. Owens asked the governor to select Mr. Wayson instead, saying the board needed his business expertise. The selection sparked community outrage and calls for Mr. Wayson’s resignation.
“Because of the most recent incident, I think there’s great momentum for a change,” said Del. John R. Leopold of Pasadena. “The public is justifiably angered.”
He and Dels. Janet Greenip, R-Crofton, and David Boschert, R-Crownsville, have tried unsuccessfully to pass school board reforms several times in the past few years.
Mr. Leopold has drafted new legislation for 2003 and is considering introducing it once the session convenes on Wednesday.
He is looking for a Democratic co-sponsor for the bill, which would call for a referendum to let voters decide whether the county switches to a nonpartisan elected school board or a revised appointment process.
The appointment process Mr. Leopold favors would still start with a nominating convention, but the county executive – not the governor – would make the appointments.
The County Council would have to confirm the nominees, giving members the power to override the executive’s appointment if he or she does not follow the convention’s wishes.
“I think the governor should be removed from the process,” Mr. Leopold said. “The decision ought to be made by those closest to the office.”
For Mr. Burlison, that means voters. While he’s open to discussion on a variety of reforms, he said the only change he wholeheartedly supports is a switch to public elections.
“It’s the only modification preferable to what we have now,” Mr. Burlison said. “The school board members should be more responsible and more responsive to the people – and not to politicians.”
But Councilman Ed Reilly, R-Crofton, is leaning toward the county executive appointment option. He fears an elected school board could politicize important education decisions by narrowing the number of candidates and creating inappropriate campaign ties.
And that, he said, would create the same kind of criticism Ms. Owens faced when she appointed Mr. Wayson, a distant cousin and previous political appointment.
However, Mr. Reilly said council members are considering reforms to ensure that there’s more accountability in future selections, not to criticize any past missteps.
“This hoopla is not about Mr. Wayson’s effectiveness or abilities because he could be one of the best,” Mr. Reilly said. “This is not a discussion of who’s there today. This is a discussion of what’s happened over the last four to eight years and what we want to happen in the next four to eight.”
Del. Michael E. Busch, an Annapolis Democrat recently elected House speaker, said he’ll accept a resolution from the council, but he’d rather talk to council members one-on-one about their concerns.
He expects the delegation will consider school board reform even if there’s not a “groundswell” of support.
“Every four-year term, they start the debate again,” Mr. Busch said. “It’s healthy… There are a lot of options out there and we ought to explore them all. I don’t know that what we have is perfect.”
—
kmarselas@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: January 2, 2003
Capital Op-Ed on Elected School Board
December 29th, 2002Copyright 2002 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
December 29, 2002 Sunday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A13
LENGTH: 753 words
HEADLINE: GUEST COLUMN;
Best way to pick school board:Informed voters
BYLINE: JIM SNIDER
BODY:
Over the years, state legislators have introduced numerous bills to move Anne Arundel County from an appointed to an elected school board. During the last election, many winning legislators promised to introduce more such bills. Can the fatal defects of the earlier bills be fixed?
The move for an elected school board gained impetus last spring. In filling an at-large position on the school board, Gov. Parris N. Glendening decided to bypass the Anne Arundel School Board Nominating Convention’s recommended first and second choices. This decision generated a firestorm of protest.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries many mayors appointed school personnel, including school board members. Cronyism, nepotism and patronage were major factors in these appointments. This led to a push for elected school boards.
Even when so-called experts are appointed, they tend to be sycophantic legislators (Why criticize the person who brought you to the dance?) and lousy at constituent service (Why bother when you’re not elected?).
Today, more than 90 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school boards are elected. But there has been a small shift back to appointed boards, especially in large school districts.
For very few people – looking at ballots listing candidates for everything from U.S. president to county council members – pay attention to school board elections. And ignorance and democracy don’t mix well. The state legislature recently had to dissolve Prince George’s County’s dysfunctional elected school board due to its gross mismanagement. Elected school boards are no panacea.
About 4 percent of school boards now combine elected and appointed members. For politicians, this often seems like a good compromise. But there is little evidence a mixed system does much to fix the underlying weaknesses of elected and appointed boards.
School board nominating conventions are designed to make better-informed choices than the voters who pick elected school boards, while blocking the drift to patronage and cronyism seen in appointed ones. Convention delegates spend a lot of time questioning candidates. These elite delegate-voters arguably get more high-quality information out of the candidates than is garnered in any other election in Maryland, except perhaps for high-profile races like that for governor.
But nominating convention delegates are still ultimately self-selected. They don’t really represent the public they purport to represent. Both delegates and candidates are discouraged from participating in the time-consuming process because of the possibility the governor will ignore the result.
Convention officers are unpaid, hard to recruit, and prone to sloppiness and arbitrary, spur-of-the-moment decision-making. The convention also lacks the rigorous due process requirements of conventional democratic institutions. The rules are sketchy, unenforced – perhaps unenforceable. The system relies on goodwill.
In my judgment, the ideal electoral system for our schools would be an elected school board. But this is desirable only if the quality of information available to the public can be radically improved.
So I suggest modernizing and enhancing the school board nominating convention while leaving the final authority in the hands of the voters, rather than the governor.
Among the numerous changes needed: The nominating convention should be televised on both the Internet and cable television. And its recommendations should be printed on the ballot next to each candidate’s name.
There are other important issues I haven’t addressed here:
Should school board elections be held annually with staggered terms (the current system) or grouped less frequently (as with most nonschool elections)?
Should candidates be elected at-large or by district?
Should voting be yes-or-no (the current system) or rank-ordered (which is preferred by many political scientists)?
Should nominating convention delegates be largely self-selected (the current system) or chosen by random sampling (the way juries and some presidential debate audiences are selected)?
But none of this changes my central point: The prerequisite for creating a truly democratic school board election is to create the conditions necessary for an informed public.
—
The writer, a Severna Park resident, was the top vote-getter of five candidates at the 2002 Anne Arundel School Board Nominating Convention. He is a fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
LOAD-DATE: December 30, 2002
Capital Article on Elected School Board
October 3rd, 2002Copyright 2002 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
October 3, 2002 Thursday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 524 words
HEADLINE: Owens, Bissett differ on picking school board
BYLINE: MELISSA MONTEALEGRE, Staff Writer
BODY:
In one of their first faceoffs before next month’s election, County Executive Janet S. Owens and Republican challenger Phillip D. Bissett differed last night over how the school board should be selected.
With the community still smarting over the last school board nomination process, Ms. Owens told about 150 residents gathered in Severna Park that she would work with either an elected or appointed board as long as it is filled with people “committed to building a first-class school system.”
But Mr. Bissett, a resident of Mayo, said he favored an executive-appointed board with County Council approval.
“Decisions are best made at the local level,” Mr. Bissett said. “If I am funding education, then I ought to be held responsible for it.”
The answers hit home with the crowd of adults and students sitting in the school’s unairconditioned gymnasium. Just over four months ago, Gov. Parris N. Glendening passed over Severna Park resident Jim Snider – the top vote-getter of a citizens convention for an at-large school board seat. Instead, he named Ms. Owens’ surprise choice, Harwood resident Konrad Wayson.
Last night, Mr. Snider sat at the front of the room at Severna Park Middle School as a candidate for the House of Delegates seat. He and all the other candidates for the District 33 state Senate seat and the District 33A House of Delegates seat supported an elected school board in some fashion.
“We have to move more toward public participation,” Mr. Snider said.
Incumbent Sen. Robert R. Neall said he favored an elected school board, but only if it had fiscal authority. His opponent, Del. Janet Greenip, R-Crofton, said she also supported an elected school board.
Both District 5 candidates for the County Council said the county needed to “move toward” an elected school board.
But Democratic challenger George Maloney said board members should be voted in by either councilmanic or high school feeder districts, while incumbent Republican Councilman Cathleen M. Vitale said it should be only by feeder districts.
The forum, co-sponsored by the Greater Severna Park Council and the Severna Park Chamber of Commerce, hit upon a number of other issues as well.
Moderator Dan Nataf, executive director of Anne Arundel Community College’s Center for the Study of Local Issues, asked whether the candidates for General Assembly supported or opposed the tenets of the Thornton Commission.
The group recommended a comprehensive school aid plan, which gives an additional $70 million to the state’s public schools in the current year. Anne Arundel will receive an additional $2.9 million for its schools in each of the next two years, increasing to at least an additional $60.5 million by fiscal year 2008.
Heiner and Barbara Popp, both of Severna Park, said they were interested in education funding issues. But Mr. Popp said he believes Ms. Owens has spent too much money during her four years of office.
“There might be a lot that has to be done, but the county should be run like a house,” he said. “It doesn’t all have to be spent in four years.”
—
mmontealegre@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2002
Direct Mail Piece on the Public’s Right-to-Know
September 27th, 2002See my September 20, 2002 post for background information. This was the popular, mass distribution version of the position paper.
Democratic Reforms for Maryland
September 20th, 2002In the summer and fall of 2002 I ran for the Maryland House of Delegates and won the Democratic nomination in District 33a. Attached is a position paper I wrote and sent to local press calling for improved access to government information at the state level. Also attached are links to information on this issue from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
September 2002
Democratic Reforms for Maryland
America is a great country today largely because of our democratic values and institutions. We were the first large-scale representative democracy on the face of the earth, and we remain a democratic beacon to all nations. Look at a failing country, and you will usually find a failing democracy.
But democracy is a work in process, not a finished product. From our Declaration of Independence in 1776 until the present day, preserving and strengthening our democracy has been a constant struggle. One reason is that those in power are always devising clever ways to make their actions and motivations invisible and thus unaccountable to the public. Another reason is that the strength of a democracy, like an economy, is based on certain technological foundations. As those foundations change, the possibilities for democracy also change. Yet our leaders have little incentive to use that technology to make themselves more accountable. Only through the vigilance of the public and its opinion leaders can the possibilities of democracy be realized.
In September 2000, after convicting an Annapolis lobbyist of fraudulently bilking his corporate clients, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Moss accused “lobbyists, legislators and the citizens of Maryland’s of tolerating a “culture of corruption.” In response to this widely reported statement, the Maryland General Assembly enacted a number of democratic reforms so that the citizens of Maryland could more easily hold their representatives accountable for their actions.
But much remains to be done. Wherever secrecy flourishes, so does cronyism, special interest politics, and government waste. Yet the reforms enacted by the General Assembly only scratched the surface of the problem of excessive secrecy at all levels of Maryland government.
Jim has been working on these issues for years. As a school board member in Vermont, he chaired the Secretary of State’s Task Force on Information and Democracy. As an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he researched a white paper on information and democracy for the co-chairs of the Congressional Internet Caucus. He has also written on related topics in trade publications, scholarly journals, and major newspapers. As a fellow at a Washington, DC think tank, Jim has worked with members of Congress and public interest group leaders to ensure that the public has the information it needs to hold its representatives accountable.
A Few Needed Reforms
1) Televise the General Assembly. More than half the states now provide their citizens with C-SPAN-like video coverage of their state legislatures. Such video coverage provides citizens with valuable information about the operation of their government. The video is distributed through a variety of media, including cable TV (our County has five public access cable TV channels, all grossly underutilized), broadband Internet TV, over-the-air public TV, and even the post office (for mailed video records).
Today, governments remotely operate millions of video cameras to monitor citizens’ behavior. This coverage includes video cameras on school buses, within schools, at traffic lights, at metro stations, in parking lots, and at major public spaces (such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and Washington DC’s Mall). If government leaders can afford to do all this watching of citizens, surely citizens should be able to do at least a little watching of their government leaders.
2) Update Our Open Meeting and Public Record Laws. Our open meeting and public record laws have become archaic and need to be updated for the 21st century and the Information Age. There is no longer a valid excuse, for example, why all members of legislative bodies, including school boards, county councils, and the General Assembly, shouldn’t be held responsible for their votes. It used to be time consuming and wasteful to tally votes by the name of each member of a legislative body. But with today’s automated vote counting technology, this is no longer a valid excuse.
3) Update Mechanisms of Public Notice. In Anne Arundel County, 85% of residents now have access to e-mail either at home or work. With automated e-mail systems, citizens should now have the option of receiving information about public meetings at the same time and with as much detail as the insiders, the lobbyists and legislators, who currently have exclusive access to timely and accessible information.
4) Institute Online Roll Call Votes. Incumbents know that challengers will attempt to comb through their record to hold them accountable for their actions. As a result, they try to make this process as time consuming and difficult as possible. Currently, the General Assembly keeps track of how its members voted but organizes the information by bill, not member. Thus, if you want to see how a member voted during the last general assembly, you must poor through some 700 bills, excluding even the countless amendments that a member may have made. To enhance accountability, voters should be able to easily determine how a particular representative voted on bills and amendments. This information should also be available online. The same principle applies to school boards, county councils, and other formal democratic legislatures.
5) Redefine Conflicts of Interests. The public needs to be able to more easily determine whether a commission is an independent commission or a rubber stamp for the public officials who have set up the commission. Too often we have high-powered private citizens on public fact-finding commissions who appear to ask very naïve or irrelevant questions. This surprising behavior can often best be explained not by a lack of knowledge and intelligence, but by a financial conflict of interest. The greater the conflict of interest, the dumber and more politicized the questions and reports tend to be.
The problem is that current rules define a financial conflict of interest too narrowly. Consider a developer (e.g., a private home builder) who does a lot of business with a county and is put in charge of a commission on a subject where he does not have a direct financial conflict of interest (e.g., school construction costs). The developer has no interest in winning school construction contracts, but he may nevertheless feel beholden to the public official who placed him on the commission and controls his access to building permits and choice land.
If commissioners–especially those that chair such commissions and control the agenda–are dependent on the business of the government officials whose work they are supposedly evaluating, then they have a material financial conflict of interest that needs to be disclosed as such.
The Bottom Line
Jim will fight to pass legislation to ensure that citizens can hold their representatives accountable for their actions. This is what democracy is all about, and it is what largely determines the efficiency and quality not only of government but also of the greater society of which the government is only a part.
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Links to Relevant Information from the National Conference of State Legislatures (the major research arm for state legislatures)
Listing of states, including Maryland, with some type of public affairs TV channels:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/press/2002/LegLive.htm
List of resources on public affairs TV channels:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/press/2003/more_resources.htm
CRS Report based on my e-Congress proposal
July 2nd, 2002The Congressional Research Service wrote this report based on my e-Congress proposal following 9/11. To see my speech, go to December 15, 2001.
Memo To Superintendent Smith
June 11th, 2002Here’s the original Microsoft Word memo:
Download file
Here’s the extracted text:
From: Jim Snider
To: Eric Smith
Date: 7/11/02
Subject: Suggestions to improve school system communications
Note: A similar memo was submitted to the School system Search Committee in November 2001.
It is, of course, de rigueur for any school system to claim that it advocates openness and public participation. After all, these values in a democracy are like motherhood and apple pie. Who could be against them? But experience has proven that there is a huge difference between lip service and actual practice. This has certainly been the case in Anne Arundel County, where a culture of secrecy, masked by a rhetoric of openness, has reigned supreme. Assuming the lip service to universal values simply won’t do, what might be done for the school system to demonstrate a commitment to improved transparency and public participation? Here is a check list:
1) Will the school system commit to posting meeting agendas at least 5 days prior to a meeting (14 days would be much preferable), except in emergency situations? Will it clearly note such emergency situations on the public record? What will be done if the employee responsible for this duty regularly misses this deadline?
2) Will the school system commit to setting up an automated e-mail notification system so that all interested parents can receive e-mail notification of public meetings? Will this include all meetings categorized as open under the open meeting law?
3) Will the school system endorse giving the public the option to submit written comments for the record? How about entering and retrieving the comments via the AACPS website? The current practice is to hold meetings for the convenience of administrators, not the public. This means holding meetings during working hours when the general public cannot attend and are thus effectively disenfranchised from participating.
4) Will the school system commit to televising 100% of school board meetings that fall under Maryland’s Open Meeting Statute? Such a practice would be consistent with the stated purpose of holding open meetings, but has been opposed by past school systems. The government now operates hundreds of remote video cameras within the County to monitor citizens’ behavior. These include video cameras on K-12 school buses, within school buildings, at traffic intersections, at fire stations, at police stations, at courthouses, in parking garages, at public transportation stops, and elsewhere. It seems like the behavior of everybody but our public officials is now monitored. With the County’s new I-Net system, including interactive video at every County administrative building, high school, and middle school, it is inexcusable not to have complete video coverage of school board meetings. The memory cost to store 120 hours of video online (approximately one year of bi-monthly school board meetings) is now under $100.
5) Will the school system commit to accessible and anonymous access to public records of school board meetings and all documents cited therein? This means, at a minimum, posting all agendas, minutes, budgets, and committee reports to the school board website; and making those records accessible via a search engine. Given today’s computer storage costs for audio (under 20 cents/hour), it is inexcusable not to provide a full audio record on the website of all meeting proceedings. This record should be linked to the posted agenda. And given the cost of storing text today, text records should be permanently available.
6) Will the school system commit to developing productivity indicators rather than just output indicators of performance? A test is an output. The resources used to generate a test result are an input. For example, if test scores are increased by eliminating or increasing the class size of untested subjects, then the test scores are being increased at an incremental cost. Will the school system commit to revealing that cost publicly? Will it commit to providing detailed class size information in the school budget and on the County’s website? This information would need to include detailed school-by-school and class-by-class data. AACPS already collects it in electronic form; it just needs to commit to publicly disclosing it.
7) Will the school system commit to developing innovative output measures in addition to testing? For example, will it publicize the public-to-private-school drop out rate and attendance figures for each school and feeder system in the County? Will it survey “customers” who leave the public schools to find out why they have left and what can be done to get them back?
Capital Article on Elected School Board
June 4th, 2002Copyright 2002 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
June 4, 2002 Tuesday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 667 words
HEADLINE: Rally protests school board pick
BYLINE: LAURA GREEN, Staff Writer
BODY:
A crowd of protesters turned out at a County Council meeting in Annapolis last night to challenge the selection of Konrad Wayson to the county school board.
About 50 supporters of Jim Snider of Severna Park, the top choice of a citizens convention for the at-large school board seat, said the governor’s appointment of Mr. Wayson was a step away from democracy.
“Without civic participation, like night follows day, you get a politics of cronyism and special interest politics,” Mr. Snider told a rally at Lawyers Mall in front of the State House before the council meeting.
Political rivals and even some of her former supporters have seized upon County Executive Janet S. Owens’ decision to ask Gov. Parris N. Glendening to appoint Mr. Wayson over Mr. Snider.
Ms. Owens pushed for Mr. Wayson – a contractor and former treasurer of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. who is a distant relative – because she wanted more construction expertise on the eight-member Board of Education.
Sherry Snider of Severna Park, who is not related to Mr. Snider, carried a sign that read: “Who Needs Democracy When Janet Owens has Friends and Relatives?”
“There was a democratic process at work that was totally overthrown,” she said.
Jane Andrews, a former school board member, said the nominating convention, which allows members of county civic and religious groups to recommend school board candidates to the governor after a series of public hearings, works as it is.
“Consistently, the process lets us see who has what it takes to serve on the board. Don’t we wish we had a nominating convention for county executive candidates,” she said, drawing cheers.
After some brief speeches at Lawyers Mall, the group walked over to the nearby Arundel Center, where the County Council was holding its bimonthly meeting, to voice its frustrations.
Mr. Wayson’s backers also came to the meeting to offer their support.
Vincent O. Leggett, a former school board member who recalled the complicated construction proposals that come before the board, said it could use a member with Mr. Wayson’s construction experience.
And he said he supported Ms. Owens’ intervention.
“I have not worked with a county executive who (was) more committed to education than our current county executive,” he said.
Members of the council said the school board appointment was out of their hands.
“I have no input,” Councilman Pamela G. Beidle, D-Linthicum said after the council meeting. “(Ms. Owens) made that decision.”
But Councilman Daniel E. Klosterman Jr. said last week he would seek General Assembly support to change the law to allow the county executive to appoint school board members with council approval.
Parents and students at last night’s rally were nearly equalled by the number of candidates and politicians drawn by the appointment controversy.
Attending the rally and meeting were:
Del. John R. Leopold, R-Pasadena.
Herb McMillan, a Republican running for the District 30 House of Delegates seat.
Vicky Overbeck, a Republican candidate for the District 33-A seat.
Scott Conwell of Crofton, a Republican running for Congress.
Terry Gilleland, a former school board candidate and chairman of the county Republican Central Committee.
Republican county executive candidates Phillip D. Bissett and Tom Angelis.
Mr. Snider’s supporters are hoping the dispute will move beyond a rallying point for politicians. They’re asking Ms. Owens to withdraw her support for Mr. Wayson and ask him to step down.
The county executive has said she won’t change her mind.
“Mr. Wayson is still who the county executive believes to be the best fit for the school board,” said Matt Diehl, Ms. Owens’ spokesman.
“The county executive made the recommendation based on the best interests of Anne Arundel County. It wasn’t a political decision.”
Mr. Wayson has also said he has no intention of stepping down.—
Melissa Montealegre contributed to this story.lgreen@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: June 10, 2002
Capital Article on Elected School Board
June 3rd, 2002Copyright 2002 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
June 3, 2002 Monday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 510 words
HEADLINE: Council to eye board process
BYLINE: MELISSA MONTEALEGRE, Staff Writer
BODY:
A county councilman is seeking support in the General Assembly for legislation that would allow the county executive to appoint school board members with council approval.
Councilman Daniel E. Klosterman Jr., D-Glen Burnie, is mulling a council resolution asking the General Assembly to change the selection process in the wake of Gov. Parris N. Glendening’s appointment of Konrad Wayson to the board.
County Executive Janet S. Owens recommended the Harwood businessman for the at-large seat, even though he was not chosen by the School Board Nominating Convention for the position.
“It seems to me that if the county executive is going to take the heat, why shouldn’t he or she have the flexibility to appoint the school board?” said Mr. Klosterman.
The appointment has reopened public debate about the county school board appointment process. Two civic groups plan to rally tonight in Annapolis to ask Mr. Wayson to step down, marching from the State House to the Arundel Center for the 7 p.m. council meeting.
Currently the convention, a coalition of civic and religious groups, forwards its recommendations to the governor. Mr. Glendening and his predecessors have abided by the convention’s choice, with some exceptions.
This year, the convention selected Jim Snider of Severna Park for the at-large seat.
The General Assembly last looked at the issue in 2000, when the House Committee on Ways and Means killed a resolution 19 to 1 that would have given the executive power to appoint with consent of the council.
Del. Mary Ann Love, chairman of the county House delegation, said she doesn’t know whether delegates would feel differently today.
“If the delegation stays true to form, I don’t think I could get the votes to pass it,” said Mrs. Love, D-Glen Burnie.
Del. John Leopold, R-Pasadena, who co-sponsored the 2000 House bill, said he would find a council resolution “appropriate and helpful.”
Council members last week gave mixed reviews on the idea.
Council Chairman Bill D. Burlison, D-Odenton, said he prefers an elected school board but called Mr. Klosterman’s suggestion “better than what we’ve got.”
Councilmen John J. Klocko III, R-Crofton, and Shirley Murphy, D-Pasadena, said they would evaluate the measure if it came before the council.
“It’s at least getting power a little closer to the people,” Mr. Klocko said.
But Councilman Barbara D. Samorajczyk, D-Annapolis Roads, said she would prefer to see the executive and council limited to the choosing of a candidate from the School Board Nominating Convention.
“That would return integrity to the process,” she said.
Sen. Ed DeGrange, D-Glen Burnie, said a council resolution may not be the best route.
While serving on the County Council, he won approval of a similar measure in 1995. But the General Assembly took no action on it.
“It may be more useful to the council members to start a dialogue with the General Assembly,” Mr. DeGrange said. “I’d be more than willing to sit at the table if it came up.”
—
mmontealegre@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: June 10, 2002
Capital Article on School Board Nominating Convention
May 24th, 2002Copyright 2002 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
May 24, 2002 Friday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A8
LENGTH: 680 words
HEADLINE: OUR SAY;
Owens’ school board pick:A bad mistake
BODY:
COUNTY EXECUTIVE Janet Owens had the right to ask Gov. Parris N. Glendening to ignore the choices of the School Board Nominating Convention.
That doesn’t mean it was a good idea. In fact, it was the worst decision Ms. Owens has made in a long time. The choice of Konrad Wayson for that vacant seat will raise charges of cronyism against Ms. Owens – charges of the sort that hurt Ms. Owens’ predecessor, John Gary, in the last election.
It will also focus attention on the county’s weak, trouble-prone system for picking school board members. The system has endured this long only because county legislators and officials can’t agree on how to fix it.
Under the system, civic groups come together in a nominating convention to screen possible board members. The convention then sends its top two picks for each slot to the governor. In theory, the governor picks anyone he wants. In practice, county executives and ranking legislators murmur in the governor’s ear – and then he usually picks from the convention’s choices. After all, if the convention selections were always ignored, why would anyone bother to participate in the process?
Mr. Glendening has always abided by convention choices – until this week. Then, at Ms. Owens’ urging, he picked Mr. Wayson, a contractor from Harwood, for an at-large seat.
The convention’s first choice – and top vote-getter – had been Jim Snider of Severna Park, a member of a Washington, D.C., think tank who has a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard and had served on a school board in Vermont. The alternate choice was Terry Gilleland, chairman of the county Republican State Central Committee.
Mr. Wayson has been treasurer of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. He’s also president of a landscaping firm that, this year alone, has contracts worth nearly $200,000 with the school system. And he’s a distant relative of Ms. Owens and a member of a highly influential family from Ms. Owens’ own part of the county.
And unlike Mr. Snider and Mr. Gilleland – who went before the convention to seek the job, answer questions and make pledges – Mr. Wayson apparently expressed no interest in a board position until the matter happened to come up during a chat with Ms. Owens.
So how did Ms. Owens think this would look? Is she surprised that a lot of people – particularly those who took part in that convention – are furious?
We don’t think Mr. Wayson’s past business dealings with the school system create an ethical problem that should bar him from the job. But he’ll probably have to recuse himself from important votes. And that undercuts Ms. Owens’ rationale for choosing him – that the board needs someone with construction industry experience.
Apparently Mr. Snider’s Harvard MBA and experience with a family construction firm weren’t enough. Or did the reluctance to see him on the board have something to do with his wife’s leadership role in a group that has been arguing with the school board over the middle school curriculum?
In any case, Ms. Owens has handed her opponents an issue on a silver platter. They’ll use it. The county GOP promptly renewed its call for an elected school board – an idea that it otherwise might have left on the shelf, given the recent shipwreck of the elected board in Prince George’s County.
But it may do this county some good if a consensus finally emerges on changing the current system for picking school board members.
If the county executive is going to make the choices anyway, should we get rid of the charade of gubernatorial involvement and give the power to the county executive outright – subject to confirmation by the County Council? Should the choices be made by County Council members for their districts? In either case, what should the role of the nominating convention be?
Or is there truly support for an elected school board? And with or without its own taxing authority?
It’s a complex issue – probably too complex for a clear consensus to emerge in an election year. But it’s one the county must resolve sooner or later.
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2002
Capital Article on Elected School Board
May 22nd, 2002Copyright 2002 Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
May 22, 2002 Wednesday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 902 words
HEADLINE: Firestorm over school pick
BYLINE: LAURA GREEN, Staff Writer
BODY:
Infuriated by Gov. Parris N. Glendening’s decision yesterday to appoint a south county contractor to the school board over two community-backed candidates, organizers of the nominating process are threatening to disband.
They joined a chorus of residents who accused County Executive Janet S. Owens of snubbing them and further eroding the school board appointment process by asking Mr. Glendening to name Konrad Wayson, 41, of Harwood, to an at-large board seat.
“To me, it really smacks of the machine politics,” said Randy Landis, treasurer of the School Board Nominating Convention Committee. “You get (Ms.) Owens who doesn’t care about the regular citizens and a governor who’s trying to micro-manage the process.”
Mr. Landis said the decision reduces the nominating convention – the only chance residents have to offer direct input on who should be appointed – to “a waste of time.”
Jim Snider of Severna Park, a Harvard-educated fellow at a Washington, D.C., think tank, was nominated as the convention’s first choice. Terry Gilleland, chairman of the county Republican State Central Committee, was the alternate.
Ms. Owens instead recommended Mr. Wayson, a distant relative who has contracts with the school system and is treasurer of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp.
Ms. Owens could not be reached for comment. Her spokesman, Matt Diehl, was reluctant to comment on Mr. Wayson’s specific qualifications.
“The county executive is very happy with all of the appointees by the governor,” Mr. Diehl said.
Mr. Snider said the governor’s representative told him Ms. Owens wanted a candidate with more experience in finance and construction.
Mr. Snider said he thinks the real issue is his wife’s advocacy for the arts and his push for more public access to the county.
School board President Carlesa Finney said she is “greatly concerned” that the board is becoming less representative of the community it serves.
Ms. Finney, who’s beginning the last year of her second five-year term, is the only adult female on the eight-member board.
Student member Ashley Nathanson, who was also appointed by the governor yesterday, has a one-year term on the board.
“It does not reflect the diversity and composition of our student population in any way not to have an educator, not to have a representative number of females,” Ms. Finney said.
“If the county executive and the governor had to get together to go against the process, if you will, I would have thought they would have looked at the whole structure of the board and made some decision based on the students’ needs – not just what is needed in terms of business perspective.”
It was the first time in his nearly eight-year term that Mr. Glendening has appointed someone outside of the school board convention process.
The School Board Nominating Convention is made up of members of local civic and church groups who vote on candidates seeking a seat on the school board.
The convention sends its top two picks for each open board seat to the governor who can appoint one, or name his own candidate.
Sen. Robert R. Neall, D-Davidsonville, who had supported Mr. Snider’s candidacy, said to go around the convention “gratuitously like this is a real slap in the face to all the citizens who go to all the meetings and go through the convention process.”
Mr. Landis said the nominating committee will meet this week to decide whether to continue.
Meanwhile, some residents are sending angry letters condemning Mr. Glendening’s appointment.
“With this appointment, you have effectively discouraged many caring and involved citizens from ever putting forth any effort again to improve our education system,” wrote parent Sally H. VanZandt of Millersville.
Others are questioning whether Mr. Wayson’s background in construction would create a conflict of interest.
Mr. Wayson said he plans to step down as treasurer of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. at the end of the week, but he also has ties to school construction projects.
Mr. Wayson is president of Childs Robert W. Landscape Contractors Inc., which has been paid $196,000 for work at schools this year, and secretary-treasurer of Hopkins & Wayson Inc. General Contractor.
Mr. Wayson said he’d like to put his background to use in controlling school construction spending.
“I think we could save some money on construction,” he said.
Terra Snider said her husband and others going through the convention had to sign a statement promising not to profit “from any contract or purchase to which the Board of Education is a party.”
School system Staff Attorney Synthia Shilling said Mr. Wayson’s interests in the companies do not prevent him from taking the board seat, but could limit his ability to vote on matters relating to the companies.
Mr. Wayson, who said he was approached by Ms. Owens about the job three weeks ago, vowed to avoid any conflict.
“If (a contract) does pose a conflict, we just won’t do it,” he said.
Mr. Glendening also appointed:
Eugene Peterson, 52, of Laurel, who was the nominating convention’s choice for the District 32 seat.
Ms. Nathanson, 17, of Crofton as the student board member.
Ned Carey, 40, of Brooklyn Park, who will complete the remaining three years of the late Janet Bury’s term.
The five-year terms for all four appointees are effective July 1.
—
lgreen@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: May 25, 2002
Getting the School Board to match its rhetoric and practice of public participation
February 12th, 2002This commentary published in the Serverna Park Voice calls on the Anne Arundel County School Board to match its rhetoric about public participation with actual deeds. At the time, Carlesa Finney was the School Board’s President.
From What Planet Is Carlesa Finney?
Carlesa Finney, President of the Anne Arundel School Board, reportedly asserted at a recent school board meeting: “I want you to know that I am a member of the National School Boards Association, and I’ve learned something very interesting at the meetings. You don’t know how lucky you are. This school system is one of a handful in this country that has this degree of public participation. Most school boards don’t even allow the public to attend their meetings. They certainly don’t give them an opportunity to voice their opinions. We are extremely unusual in our openness to the public.”
Now anyone who has paid the least attention to politics knows that successful politicians always try to create an aura of openness with their constituents. When was the last time you heard a public official brag to her constituents that she is secretive? It just isn’t done. But usually the claim of openness is made by example: a friendly smile, an attentive ear, an aura of trustworthiness. It’s relatively rare to get such an explicit statement that can be objectively scrutinized.
I’ve been studying public meetings for years, both as a public official and political scientist. I can assure readers that Carlesa Finney’s self-flattering assessment of the Anne Arundel School Board’s openness bears little relation to reality.
Consider the difficulty in verifying the exact wording of Ms. Finney’s statement about openness, made at a legally recognized public meeting. This author wanted to watch the meeting at which she spoke but couldn’t because the meeting wasn’t televised. As a matter of policy, the School Board insists that the only way a parent can watch a meeting or comment on an agenda item is to physically attend a meeting. My wife attended the meeting, but I had to stay home and watch the kids. Not only did I get the comment second hand, but I also couldn’t verify its exact wording because a transcript of the meeting will not be placed on a public website or made available on a timely basis. Moreover, what is said at a school board meeting is not necessarily what will show up in the official transcript. For in the weeks or even months it takes to publish a meeting record, school board members have the right to redact any comments, or the wording of any contents, that they later come to regret.
And why were the parents at the school board meeting in the first place? It was because a year before the school board, expecting significant parental opposition, had tried to sneak through a radical new reading program without any public discussion. The committee that proposed the reading program to the board didn’t even have any parental representatives. They were kicked off when it was found they might oppose the school board’s plan. By the time the school board presented the reading program to the public, it was presented as an all-or-nothing fait accompli. It was also presented at a weekday morning school board meeting, a time when few working parents could attend. Only after the state forced the school board to abandon the program did the board seriously solicit public input.
And even then, the school board designed a system to maximize the appearance but not the reality of public input. To implement the state’s mandate to teach untested subjects such as physical education, arts, and health education, the school board had the administration set up a committee to consider necessary changes. With great fanfare, parents were invited to serve on this committee. But the school board was careful to make sure that the committee would not be an official public body (any body directly appointed by the school board must, by state law, follow the rules of official public bodies). The school board wanted the appearance, but not the risk, of genuine public participation. Accordingly, parents had no due process rights, and the committee chair could completely ignore their comments. Indeed, when the parents wrote a minority report, the committee chair refused to acknowledge it or append it to the published report.
If Carlesa Finney and other school board members are really serious about openness, I suggest the following simple reforms:
1) Televise school board meetings. Most school boards with a tenth the population and budget of Anne Arundel County now routinely televise their meetings. Consider Vermont, where I once served on a school board. The population of the entire state of Vermont is about the same as Anne Arundel County’s, but it is subdivided into dozens of school districts. The average size of a community in Vermont with televised public meetings is just 8,000 people. Even the Anne Arundel County Council, with a budget about the same size as the school board’s, televises its meetings. But the Anne Arundel School Board has repeatedly been adamant in its opposition to televising its board meetings. It’s not a budget or technology issue. As of December 2001, every high school and middle school in the County has had access to a state-of-the-art interactive video network. And the school board alone has put in a request for a half million dollars of equipment for a state-of-the-art digital video studio so it can remotely train school personnel and provide information–also known as PR–to the general public. The School Board even plans to put video cameras and video recorders in every school bus in the County. My estimate is that the incremental cost would be $5,000/year (approximately $200/meeting) to provide comprehensive and professional televised coverage of school board meetings.
2) Provide convenient access to school board meeting agendas and minutes. Like the County Council, the school board should mail agendas to all citizens in the County who request them. Currently, the school board will only mail agendas to school personnel. Even reporters have to pick them up at the school administration building. The school board should also post meeting agendas and minutes on its websites. Any public document voted on in a public meeting, such as the school budget, should also be a posted on the website. Finally, the school board should provide agendas and minutes for its committees and working sessions. This is where the real substance of its decision making gets done. These meetings are legally public but because of poor notice and general inaccessibility, they are private for almost all practical purposes.
3) Make so-called “public bodies” conform to the public meeting and record laws. When the Governor, Maryland Legislature, County Executive, County Council, or School Board appoints a commission or special committee, that committee is legally public under state law and must follow state public meeting laws mandating democratic processes. Unfortunately, however, the state of Maryland provides an exemption for bodies appointed by school superintendents. The school board should not exploit this exemption to form so-called public bodies that violate standard democratic norms of due process.
4) Allow written comments on agenda items to be placed in the public record and made available on the school board’s website. It is now standard practice for federal agencies and their appointed public bodies to take formal written comments from the general public and post those comments on their websites for the general public to access. The school board should do the same.
Politicians are often accused of living on a different planet than the rest of the American public. Carlesa Finney’s statement suggests that she is not immune from this accusation. The task for Ms. Finney is to stop crowing about the school board’s openness and start taking concrete steps to prove to the public that she genuinely considers openness an achievable and desirable goal.
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J.H. Snider lives in Severna Park and is a Markle Fellow at the New America Foundation.
Anne Arundel County Charter Revision Commission
January 17th, 2002The Charter Revision Commission was an interesting phenomenon. Ostensibly public, it had minimal public participation and appeared to discourage what little there might be. Ostensibly independent, it let elected officials preview its decisions for approval before releasing them to the public.
Prior to the first public hearing of the Charter Revision Commission, I was promised twenty minutes to speak and told to arrive at the beginning of the meeting, which involved leaving my work in Washington, DC before I would normally have done. At the designated meeting, I arrived on time. But the board talked amongst themselves for more than an hour and completely ignored the audience (which in any case only had a couple of people). After it became clear that if I stayed for public participation I wouldn’t be able to fulfill a prior commitment, I left. The second meeting was canceled due to a scheduling problem of one of the board members. But no notice of the meeting cancelation was mailed out or otherwise conveyed to expected public participants. At the third meeting, I was finally given a chance to speak. But whereas I had been told I would get twenty minutes, including question and answer time (it wasn’t as though many members of the public were interested in speaking to the Charter Revision Commission), it was decided at the last moment, without advance notice, that I would only be given five minutes.
Many months later at a cocktail party, the Chair of the Commission informed me that the County Executive had approached him directly and privately, saying she opposed my recommendations and didn’t want the Commission to address them.
The Capital (Annapolis, MD)
January 17, 2002, Thursday
SECTION: Arundel; Pg. B1
LENGTH: 538 words
HEADLINE: Charter revision….
BYLINE: By MELISSA MONTEALEGRE Staff Writer
BODY:
… Jim Snider of Severna Park recommended that the commission support e-mail notification of public meetings and more widespread televised public meetings. Doing both would spur more public participation, he said. “It doesn’t help when it’s difficult for the public to find out when something they’re interested in is being discussed,” Mr. Snider said after the meeting….
___mmontealegre@capitalgazette.com
LOAD-DATE: January 17, 2002
Is It Time for an E-Congress?
December 15th, 2001This speech was delivered to members of Congress after 9/11 and was subsequently published in Vital Speeches of the Day. The proposal here later served as the basis of a Congressional Research Service report.
A call for e-mail notification of County public meetings
December 5th, 2001This op-ed, called “An Open Letter to County Executive Janet Owens,” was published in the Greater Severna Park Voice and later distributed to the County’s Charter Revision Commission. It calls for e-mail notification of County public meetings. Subsequently, the County’s public information office treated me as a non-entity. At a meeting of the Democratic Almost 7:30 Club, the County’s spokesman claimed it would cost $100,000 to implement this proposal. A similar statement would later be privately conveyed to the Chair of the Charter Revision Commission.
An Open Letter to County Executive Janet Owens
Dear Ms. Owens:
It was a pleasure seeing you at the concert at Quiet Waters Park and later chatting with you. Although you did not know who I was, you greeted me with warm enthusiasm and listened to my ideas with all the attentiveness I could possibly have desired. You may recall that I was the person who complained about the way the County gave notice for its public hearings. To illustrate my point, I told you about my experience with the Parks and Recreation Department. Last fall I had contacted a senior administrator in your Department of Parks and Recreation. I told him I was amazed at the lack of a short bicycle path connecting two of the County’s most expensive recreation areas. Your senior administrator said “good idea” and “the time to express this idea would be at a public meeting to be held in about six months.” Did he know exactly when the meeting would be held? No, but if I called him in six months, he could tell me. So I marked six months down on my calendar and called him back on the designated date. This time he said to call back in three weeks; he still didn’t know when the hearing would be held. So that’s what I did. And when I spoke to him yet again, he said he still didn’t know, and I should regularly consult the County’s website to check for its date of announcement. At that point I gave up. I appreciated his friendliness and desire to help me, but I have family and work responsibilities that must take precedence. If enough hurdles are thrown in front of me, I’ll give up.
More recently, I wanted to attend a meeting of the Charter Revision Commission. When I showed up for the meeting, I was told that the meeting had been postponed the preceding Friday (two business days before) because one of the commissioners could not attend. No one saw fit—or had a practical mechanism—to notify me of this change. The fact that I had to leave work one-and-a-half hours early to attend a non-existent meeting was nobody’s business. When I finally did attend the meeting, I was the only member of the public to sign up to testify.
Here’s another similar example from several weeks ago. A friend of mine attended the public hearing for the new school superintendent. Only four people showed up. The County representative who attended attributed the poor attendance to the fact that the people in Anne Arundel County must be happy with their schools. If they weren’t, they would have showed up to get their voice heard.
So what was my proposal to alleviate this type of problem? E-mail notification of public meetings. Allow citizens to go to the County Website and click on a checkbox next to any of the 30 or so public bodies in the county for which they want notification and minutes of public meetings. The technology is ubiquitous, inexpensive, and readily available. Governments and businesses all over the Country use it. Indeed, even Anne Arundel County uses it to keep its own employees posted on events of interest to them.
Of course, I didn’t say we should replace the system of physical notice that Anne Arundel County had been using since its founding in the distant past. But we now lived in the 21st century. More than 75% percent of Anne Arundel County residents now had home access to e-mail, and well over 90% e-mail access either at home or work. Posting a notice on a physical bulletin board in the Arundel Center—or even sending a notice to the local paper and hoping it would prominently print it—was no longer an adequate standard of public notice.
Ms. Owens, your enthusiasm for the idea encouraged me. So when I later heard from you that you’d love to do it but couldn’t afford the projected expense, I was distressed. Clearly, you had been misinformed.
Surely, the costs could not be technical. Anne Arundel County already has automated e-mail notification technology and has experience using it for in-house communication. No new technology need be purchased. Indeed, this type of “listserv” technology is now so inexpensive that Yahoo and others provide free use of it.
Nor are the costs of e-mailing agendas and minutes significant. The difficult and time consuming task is to write the agenda or minutes. Assuming your senior employees don’t use old-fashioned typewriters (and I’ve observed they don’t), all they need to send an already written document to a pre-prepared list of e-mail addresses is to type in the name of the list, then click the send button. I can assure you this involves a trivial amount of time and technical sophistication. And once this work has been done, it costs the same amount whether one or a million e-mail notices are sent.
However, having said the above, I do not in any way want to suggest that implementing an e-mail notification system is easy or without significant costs. Changing people’s entrenched patterns can be very difficult. It is doubly difficult when they perceive that the change is not in their interest.
The fact of the matter is that it is an extremely well documented phenomenon that many public officials who give lip service to open government and public participation actually dislike it in practice. Public participation tends to be one of those “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” phenomena. You absolutely need to have public hearings for political cover; but the actual content of those meetings is often unpleasant.” People who participate often do so because they dislike something government has done. It is not at all uncommon for them to be a pain-in-the-ass and throw a monkey wrench into some public official’s dearly beloved plans. Sometimes when only four people show up at a meeting, it’s not because people don’t care or because they think things are perfect. It’s because they get the message, sent in innumerable little ways, that actual public participation, as opposed to the appearance of public participation, is really not welcome.
So I have no doubt that you’d face a lot of internal resistance if you opened up County government. Indeed, if all Anne Arundel County officials joyously embraced public participation and government transparency, I might have to conclude they were aliens from another planet. But I believe that it is the job of elected officials to bear these types of costs. That’s why we elect you. You cannot properly serve the public if the public cannot efficiently and publicly bring their concerns and grievances to your administrators and appointees. As the County’s Charter itself says, “the requirement that government function in the public view and not in the back room needs no explanation.”
If, despite all this, you still think e-mail notice is expensive, take it out of your $5 million public, educational, and government (“PEG”) access budget. Remember, that is the deal the County worked out with Comcast last year to enhance citizen access to County government, including public meetings. By the way, how are those funds being used? Why isn’t the public allowed to see the line item budget for that $5 million before it is actually spent? And how come when a public meeting was held to discuss the uses of the County’s $15 million advanced interactive video broadband Internet network (to be finished this December), only three members of the public showed up? We’re going to have sophisticated video surveillance technology up and down major intersections on Ritchie Highway and Benfield Road (the fiber was laid late this summer); we’re going to have interconnected interactive video to train personnel in every County building; we’re going to do a million amazing things to empower our administrators and generate PR for their programs. But we’re not going to do even the most trivial things to empower our citizens and strengthen our democracy. You may not recall, but that was the reason for PEG legislation in the first place.
I do not in any way want to suggest that e-mail notification will solve all the ills of our democracy. I just picked this reform out of the hat because it is such an obvious, easy, and inexpensive thing to do, yet isn’t being done. Ask me about other ideas to spend your $5 million PEG budget, and use our new multi-million dollar network, and I’ll give you an earful. Just don’t expect the ideas to be popular with your staff.
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J.H. Snider, a Markle Fellow at the New America Foundation, lives in Severna Park.
Should the Greater Severna Park Council Be More Democratic?
October 24th, 2001DATE: October 24, 2001
PUBLICATION: Severna Park Voice
Severna Park, MD. Since incorporating on October 22, 1960—more than 40 years ago–the Greater Severna Park Council (GSPC) has made great contributions to the people and environment of Severna Park and nearby surrounding areas. GSPC should take a lot of the credit for making Severna Park one of the nicest areas in Maryland, let alone Anne Arundel County.
The GSPC is composed of representatives from community associations in the Severna Park area. It meets the second Tuesday of every month at the Severna Park library. Its goal, “to provide a unified voice for the area in legislative councils and in the executive departments of both County and State, and… for this voice to speak with some authority,” remains as valid today as it originally did. Its masthead reads: “The Greater Severna Park Council—Representing [as members] more than 10,000 households.”
Although the GSPC has no formal political power—for example, it has no power to vote on county budgets or regulations—its power should not be underestimated. The GSPC has proved to be a training ground for many future leaders of the community. And as long as the bulk of the population remains apathetic, uninformed, and even occasionally hostile to the political process, GSPC’s voice will fill the vacuum. Testament to this power is the fact that the press and our elected representatives routinely attend GSPC meetings.
But even the best of organizations need to change with the times. The Severna Park of 40 years ago is not the Severna Park of today. During much of the last 40 years, Severna Park was the fastest growing area in the County. It grew from a sleepy rural enclave with a population of 3,728 in 1960 to an elite suburb with a population of 28,507 by the end of 2000 (see accompanying figure). The GSPC (which represents thousands of additional residents in an even larger geographical area) has grown correspondingly. But with this power needs to come greater accountability. The GSPC needs to either become more democratic in representing the interests of Severna Park or be replaced by an organization willing to serve that function.
Throughout the United States there are thousands of democratic intermediary organizations like the GSPC. Like the GSPC, they groom future leaders and provide an efficient mechanism to link the concerns of individual citizens with their government. But the elite style of self-governance adopted by the GSPC is by no means universal. If other similar organizations can thrive while being more democratic, why can’t GSPC?
I’ve been interested in the question of how to make public bodies more democratic for a long time. Last year I served as an American Political Science Association congressional fellow, helping to research a white paper for the co-chairs of the Congressional Internet Caucus entitled “The Internet and the Future of Democratic Governance.” Some years back I chaired a task force for Vermont’s secretary of state on information technology and democracy. For the last 8 months I’ve been attending GSPC meetings.
In my opinion, the basic problem with the GSPC is the disproportionate influence of the largest and wealthiest communities in Severna Park. Representatives from small communities are less likely to regularly attend meetings and become well-informed, so the large communities fill the vacuum. Moreover, 41% of citizens in Anne Arundel County don’t even have homes that belong to an association, let alone a large one. (Since 1983, the County has required all subdivisions with 15 or more homes to create an association). My guess is that within a quarter mile radius of my home there are about 300 homes, only about 30 of which belong to a community that is even a member, let alone an active member, of GSPC.
Consider an early experience I had with the GSPC. The GSPC has a rule that you cannot get agendas unless you pay a $35 membership fee. So even though I attended meetings for some months and signed numerous signup sheets, I wasn’t able to get agendas. Nor are they regularly posted on GSPC’s website. The $35 wasn’t a problem for my community, but since it is new, small, and meets infrequently, it took a full six months for the board to officially authorize membership on the GSPC.
This led me to thinking. What if I weren’t part of an association? Well, obviously the GSPC wouldn’t represent me, even though it describes itself as representing both members and the Greater Severna Park area. And what about all the even smaller communities around my community that either don’t belong to the GSPC or rarely attend? Surely, there must be some way to make this organization more democratic. This line of reasoning led me to the following ten reform ideas:
1. Put the application for membership form on the website, so it’s easy to join.
2. Give all citizens of Greater Severna Park the option to receive agendas and minutes via e-mail (even my son’s elementary school PTA manages to e-mail agendas and minutes). Using an automated listserv, it costs no more to send an e-mail agenda to a million people than to one person.
3. Invite public comments at the beginning rather than the end of a meeting as at the school board and county council. By the end of a meeting (which often runs late), many have gone home and the rest are tired and want to go home. The practical result is to concentrate power in the hands of the board members who control the agenda.
4. Make the committees that constitute the GSPC more transparent. These committees set the GSPC’s agenda and arguably exert more power than the GSPC itself. This is especially true of the Executive Committee, which not only sets the GSPC’s agenda (like a conventional committee), but also, quite remarkably, acts as its trustee (like an elected official between elections) before governmental bodies. The only restriction, vaguely worded, is that this authority cannot be exercised unless a government “hearing date precludes consideration by the [members] at a regular meeting.” It is vital that the Executive Committee follow strict rules of parliamentary procedure, including written minutes and roll call votes (roll call votes are easy to tally when only a few people are involved). No one should have difficulty determining whether the GSPC’s Executive Committee representative acted contrary to an explicit vote of GSPC members.
5. Allow individuals, not just community representatives, to join the GSPC. Severna Park needs a forum where everyone can speak out, not just those lucky enough to belong to a qualifying community. The entire public pays for the GSPC’s meeting space at the library; taxation without at least the potential for representation went out with the American Revolution.
6. Eliminate the membership fee for individuals and small communities willing to receive e-mail notification of agendas and minutes. Those insisting on receiving information via the postal service should pay.
7. Reduce the focus on development issues. Severna Park is growing much less rapidly than in the past (see accompanying figure) and will shortly be a mature community. More attention needs to focus on maximizing Severna Park’s voice with County and State government. Elected officials only respond to an alert public, so the more alert a public is, the greater will be its voice.
8. Encourage the library, high school, and renovated Woods Community Center to get both a reverse cable TV feed and high speed Internet service, thus allowing both cablecasting and webcasting to the community. Before an election, the GSPC should televise candidate debates and presentations to the entire community, not just the handful of GSPC members present. If the average town of 8,000 in Vermont can both wire its public spaces for remote cable TV viewing and find volunteers to man the videocameras, surely the much wealthier and larger Severna Park could do the same the few times a year when it would be most useful.
9. Apply the bylaws consistently. Often the leadership will rule petty infractions, such as a comment not obviously related to the subject of discussion, out-of-order. But major infractions, such as holding votes without the quorum (1/3rd of all members) required by the bylaws, are routinely ignored. The sad fact is that the GSPC often lacks this minimal quorum, especially when votes are taken late in the evening when many have gone home.
10. Publicly disclose the members of the GSPC. This could be done by posting the names on the website. Unless this information is made public, it’s impossible to enforce the rule that a quorum must be present to conduct a vote. Without an accurate list of members, it’s also not possible to know how much democratic legitimacy the GSPC really has. Requests for membership should also be speedily processed. Joining the GSPC should not be like joining an elite country club where some applications are speedily processed, others are not, and requirements are only disclosed after the fact.
Past experience suggests that these reforms won’t be implemented unless there is strong and broad-based community support for them. The most striking thing I learned from my political experiences in Vermont and in Washington DC is how resistant public officials are to making themselves more accountable to the public. Even today, Congress refuses to allow citizens to search for voting records by individual name. And citizens still have to physically visit a special office in Congress to get politically sensitive information such as travel, gift, and lobbying expenditures. In Vermont, the pattern was no different. The same officials who gave great lip service to democracy and wanted it for others, hated it when it was applied to themselves. Like students who give a multitude of creative excuses for handing in a paper late to a professor, there will always be some reason why those in power don’t want to institute procedures to make themselves more accountable.
Some opponents of democratic reforms to the GSPC say that they would introduce unacceptable inefficiency. They are correct that democracy is an incredibly inefficient form of governance. It’s always vastly more cost-effective to have a single benevolent despot control the levers of power than to share that power. But centuries of experience have shown that those unwilling to pay the price of democracy endure an even greater price in the long run. In the words of Winston Churchill, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.”
The public should applaud the well-meaning and hard working volunteers who participate in the GSPC. The GSPC is a valuable institution–so valuable that it is worth thinking about how its voice might be strengthened and made more democratic.
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J.H. Snider lives in Severna Park and works at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.
The Politics of E-Government vs. E-Democracy
August 1st, 2001E-Government is often thought to include E-Democracy. But the politics of E-Government and E-Democracy are very different. This commentary explains why.
School Board Meetings Should Be Televised
June 12th, 2001Letter To Editor
It is truly shocking that the Anne Arundel County school board can afford to put fancy theft proof video cameras and VCRs in every county school bus but cannot afford video cameras and VCRs to televise and record its own so-called public meetings. I would suggest that if we can afford to keep kindergartner’s accountable for occasional misbehavior on a bus, we can certainly afford to keep our unelected school board accountable for how they spend the public purse. The county needs to make a choice: either make the school board an elected body or open its rulemaking procedures to the public. Recognition of this principle is embedded in the federal government’s Administrative Procedures Act. But Anne Arundel County has failed to learn the lesson that unelected boards need even more formal public participation and accountability than elected ones.
Jim Snider, Severna Park
Government Access at the National Level
January 27th, 1999Copyright 1999 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
January 27, 1999 Wednesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: COMMENTARY; Pg. 13; ZONE: N
LENGTH: 742 words
HEADLINE: SENATE HYPOCRISY OVER ‘HOT’ TESTIMONY
BYLINE: By James H. Snider. James H. Snider, an expert on legislative TV, is a fellow in the political science department at Northwestern University.)
BODY:
One argument in favor of calling witnesses before the Senate is that even though Monica Lewinsky may have already been deposed 22 times neither the Senate nor the public has ever had a chance to see her non-verbal communication.
The 60,000 pages of testimony sent to the Senate suffer from the same communications gap. In Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) words, “For 500 years, the law has recognized that the way in which a witness offers testimony–the non-verbal cues or demeanor of the witness–is an important element in evaluating credibility.”
Rep. James Rogan (R-Calif.), an impeachment trial manager, laments that independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr did not videotape more of the testimony he gathered: “When I was a district attorney I understood there was a big difference between reading to people what the case was about and letting the witnesses come in and tell the jury the story . . .” When asked if the Clinton grand jury videotape was an adequate substitute for live testimony, he continued, “but we don’t have videotapes of any other witnesses and so unfortunately, because we cannot call witnesses . . . we’re limited to a cold record.”
Should the same standard apply to members of Congress? Should political opponents be able to use video–i.e. “hot records”–against members of Congress? Currently, Congress says no. Congressional proceedings are purportedly public, but the only record that an opponent can legally use against an incumbent, unless shown by a government-sanctioned news program, is a cold record. Its rationale is that political opponents might unfairly use video records out of context.
The double standard over cold (print) and hot (video) records illustrates how our right-to-know laws have not kept up with current technology: Congress–and other legislatures throughout the country–have different right-to-know standards for print (the old technology) and video (the new technology). Political opponents can legally quote from the cold version of the Congressional Record, but they violate the law if they show its hot version.
In addition to C-SPAN at the national level, 19 states and more than 3,000 local communities (out of more than 20,000) televise legislative proceedings. Many legislators worry that political opponents could use video records of these proceedings against them. Thus, with rare exceptions such as the state of Oregon, legislators have created clever rules to drastically restrict the use of video records, restrictions that no one would dream of tolerating for print records.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, getting a videotape of House proceedings involves signing a contract that includes the following language: “The use of tape duplication of broadcast coverage of House proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the rules of the House of Representatives.” The contract adds that any violation of these terms is a criminal offense and that violators must indemnify the Library of Congress for all attorneys’ fees necessary for enforcement.
One might think that one could circumvent signing this contract by taping directly off C-SPAN. Wrong. Congress grants C-SPAN a copyright to its coverage. C-SPAN, eager to avoid the wrath of Congress, obliges by copying the congressional contract language prohibiting its broadcasts from being used for political purposes. State legislatures have largely mimicked Congress.
One reason legislators oppose access to video records is that if such records were abused by political opponents, then legislators would limit their statements, thereby skewing legislative deliberation. But it is unclear why this argument does not also apply to print records. After all, no law prevents members of the public from using print public records to advocate a cause or candidate.
Then, too, Congress thinks nothing of using short video clips–such as Clinton’s grand jury testimony–when it suits its own purpose. While the U.S. Congress is in session more than 50 senators per week sometimes request copies of their own Senate floor speeches, mostly to send home to their local TV broadcast outlets.
If Congress allows hot records to be used against outsiders, it should allow outsiders to use them against itself. To do less is hypocrisy. If the public has a right to video records about its government, just as it has a right to print records, then something is seriously amiss.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHICGRAPHIC: Illustration by Graeme MacKay.
LOAD-DATE: January 27, 1999
Hooray! The Capital stands up for breaking down the insiders’ monopoly on information.
January 30th, 2004Our say: School board’s closed-door salary vote not justified
By THE CAPITAL EDITORIAL BOARD
IN DECEMBER the Board of Education went behind closed doors to vote on a 1 percent salary increase for the superintendent and other senior administrators. According to the board’s attorney, the private meeting was permitted by law because the board had to discuss some administrators by name.
But the appearance that raises were granted out of earshot of the public rankled some members of the County Council. In fact, many council members, like us, were surprised to learn that the salary increase for union employees also applied to about 30 top administrators – the superintendent included.
We don’t think the board or the superintendent were up to any mischief when the board discussed this issue in executive session. Nonetheless, we don’t think the meeting was legal. General discussions about salary increases are not exempt from the state’s Open Meetings Act. For that reason, The Capital has filed a complaint with the Open Meetings Compliance Board, which will review the legality of the meeting.
School Board President Paul Rudolph, to his credit, has recognized the harm done by the appearance of secrecy – even if legal – in voting on raises in executive session. Since the story surfaced in The Capital, he has said he will ask for a policy that requires public votes for all raises for groups of employees. We heartily concur.
Raising salaries in private heightens fears that officials are wasting tax dollars by avoiding public exposure of their decisions. That was not the case with this particular decision, but a closed-door decision to raise top-level salaries – particularly at a time of tight school budgets – is an invitation to public suspicion and mistrust.
The Open Meetings Act allows public officials to close the doors when discussing compensation issues that apply specifically to individuals. It does not permit private discussions on compensation for a group of employees. We think the board’s discussion applied sometimes to individuals but at other times to a group. And, although the law allows executive sessions, it does not require them.
The board should have recognized the importance of public discussion of salary increases, especially one this controversial. But we are encouraged that board members acknowledge that a change is in order. We hope the board approves Mr. Rudolph’s new policy.
Published January 30, 2004, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Posted in #2--County (Anne Arundel) School Board, @Due Process: School Board Meeting Agendas & Comments | Comments Off