Dayhoff Soundtrack: 20080117 O’Malley: Slow To Govern, Quick To Make Mistakes by Maryland Republican Party Chairman Jim Pelura

Friday, January 18, 2008

20080117 O’Malley: Slow To Govern, Quick To Make Mistakes by Maryland Republican Party Chairman Jim Pelura

O’Malley: Slow To Govern, Quick To Make Mistakes

An Op-Ed by Maryland Republican Party Chairman Jim Pelura

January 17, 2008

Democrat Gov. Martin O’Malley was inaugurated one year ago today. What a difference a year makes! We started 2007 with his do-nothing Regular Session of the General Assembly and ended with his rush-to-do-everything Special Session.

Early in 2007, Martin O’Malley was criticized for being “slow to govern.” Democrats were complaining that O’Malley had no legislative agenda and that he had not filled vacancies within his Cabinet. When O’Malley did come up with legislative priorities, he failed to build majority support for a repeal of the death penalty or granting in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.

After the Regular Session ended, editorial boards took note of the unfinished business and what would need to wait until the next Session. In particular, O’Malley pushed through a $30 billion budget without the necessary revenue to fund it. The Republicans, on the other hand, put forth a fiscally responsible, budget alternative that would have balanced the budget without raising taxes. Indeed, O’Malley was “slow to govern” and was not “ready for primetime.”

One month after his do-nothing Regular Session concluded, O’Malley’s Public Service Commission dropped a bomb shell. They announced they were approving a request by BGE to raise utility rates. Candidate O’Malley promised on the campaign trail to “stop the rate hike.” As a candidate, he blamed Governor Ehrlich for the proposed rate hike a year before and claimed Ehrlich could act, but wouldn’t. Now, O’Malley was claiming that he, as Governor, had no authority to stop the rate hike. In fact, his hand-picked Public Service Commission was approving a rate hike higher than what Ehrlich’s PSC approved. This would be just one of many campaign promises O’Malley would break within his first year in office.

O’Malley then spent the summer trying to convince Marylanders that they should pay more in taxes. He tried every angle – “the rich need to pay more of their share,” “vital services will need to be cut,” and “I inherited this big deficit from Governor Ehrlich.” Nobody was buying it. They knew O’Malley, a tax-and-spend liberal, was raiding the wallets of working families to deliver political favors to his left-wing allies.

Martin O’Malley was even forced to backtrack on his quest to raise the gas tax. With record gas prices, O’Malley wanted to increase the burden on working families so he would have more money in the transportation slush fund to use for his left-wing agenda. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse last summer, O’Malley even tried to make the case that he needed to raise the gas tax to address the state’s infrastructure needs. In particular, his Administration revealed that the Bay Bridge was built similarly to the Minneapolis Bridge that collapsed. The Maryland Republican Party put out information showing that the Bay Bridge and many of the state’s major bridges and tunnels were self-funded by tolls collected and were not permitted to receive gas tax money. We called on O’Malley to be honest in his dealings with Marylanders, and he eventually gave up on the gas tax increase.

Martin O’Malley then called a rush-to-do-everything Special Session, since he failed to lead earlier in the year. He did so without the agreement of Speaker Mike Busch, Senate President Mike Miller, or the Republican Caucus. Republican and Democrat leaders and editorial boards of several newspapers cautioned against calling a Special Session. The Maryland GOP predicted that if a Special Session occurred, legislators would not be able to fully deliberate over the details of legislation and that members of the public would not be given adequate notice and time to voice their opposition. Unfortunately, our predictions proved to be true.

On the first day of the Special Session, the Maryland Republican Party organized the largest anti-tax rally in Maryland history and brought the message directly to the Democrat leadership. Marylanders saw the Special Session as the sham that it was. O’Malley’s disapproval numbers jumped by ten points and a majority of the coveted unaffiliated voters indicated that they believe that Maryland is going in the wrong direction under Governor Martin O’Malley. In recent weeks, O’Malley’s approval rating has dropped even further to among the lowest in ten years.

Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters flooded their legislators’ phones and e-mail accounts with outrage that the largest tax increase in Maryland history was occurring in the dark of night. Everyone but O’Malley and the Democrat leadership knew that there was a spending problem, not a revenue problem. They understood that the tax increases being proposed were extremely regressive and would hurt those least able to pay. They also knew that if their own families had to work within a budget so should the state government.

Every day of Special Session, O’Malley and the Democrats targeted another group of Marylanders for higher taxes. They hit a wall of opposition everywhere they turned. In the end, they shifted their tax increase to computer services without any public hearings or debate. Many legislators who supported this tax increase now realize that they acted rashly and that the tax will be difficult to enforce and will cripple the high-tech sector in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., which competes with Northern Virginia. Republican legislators are putting forth legislation for a full repeal of the computer services tax.

O’Malley’s do-nothing Regular Session and his rush-to-do-everything Special Session demonstrate that he is slow to govern and quick to make mistakes. He is ill-equipped to lead and has made errors in judgment that will have long-term ramifications for the state’s economy and the freedoms of our citizenry.