When 137 to 0 Is Not Enough

An Annapolis whodunit

THE DEATH this month of legislation in Maryland authorizing Montgomery County to adopt a system of public financing for local elections is an Annapolis whodunit.

Practically every delegate and state senator from the county itself backed the bill, which would have established a voluntary system of public financing for qualifying candidates for county executive and the nine seats on the County Council. No lawmaker in either chamber of the Maryland General Assembly publicly opposed it. In the House of Delegates, the measure sailed to passage by a vote of 137 to 0.

In the Senate, where the bill was assigned to the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, a single witness testified on the bill (council member Phil Andrews), explaining its merits and encountering nothing but favorable reactions from the senators who were present. And then, mysteriously, the bill never came up for a vote. Call it death by silence. (A similar bill to establish a statewide system of public financing for elections also died in the legislature, for at least the sixth time in the last decade.)

It's unclear who administered the coup de grace to the Montgomery bill. Some suspect Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), an opponent of campaign finance reform at the state level -- but he denies it. Perhaps it was the committee chair, Sen. Joan Carter Conway (D-Baltimore), who didn't return our phone call. If so, she didn't tip her hand to other members of her committee.

Whoever the culprit, the bill's death is a fine example of the opaque art of legislating in Annapolis, where transparency and good government are no match for the special interests, monied contributors and backroom deals that are the General Assembly's stock in trade.

It was just those special interests and monied contributors whose influence would be curtailed by the campaign finance legislation. It would pave the way for a system that would set overall spending limits and match small individual donations with public funds. That would provide an incentive for elected officials to be more independent-minded and accountable to the broad electorate rather than powerful public employee unions, developers and other lobbies.

Such a system could cost the county a couple of million dollars. That's pocket change compared to what might be saved by council members who, feeling less beholden to campaign donors, would be able to say no to special interests at budget time. When you consider the fat contracts regularly lavished on county employees -- the early retirements on generous terms, the 8 percent annual raises -- the savings from a more independent-minded council could be considerable.