Maryland Business

Ellen Valentino agrees with Gov. Martin O’Malley: Maryland business needs fewer regulations.

In a statement addressing the governor’s State of the State address Wednesday, Valentino, the state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said the average small business spends $10,500 per year, per employee, in order to comply with federal regulations.

“We can only imagine that the state costs mirror federal compliance, and the irony of it is that federal and state regulations are duplicative, or even conflicting,” she said.

O’Malley, who in October issued an executive order for agencies to assess ways to streamline the state’s regulatory processes, reiterated the call in his speech Wednesday.

“This session, we are submitting 750 pages of regulations for you to reform, reduce and remove from the books,” he said.

That equals “more than 150 current state regulations to be repealed and/or streamlined,” according to the governor’s website.

“If the governor’s initiative can reduce the burden in terms of money [spent] and time wasted, we’ll see positive results in the economy,” Valentino said.

Less appealing are the governor’s proposed tax hikes.

“Small businesses and consumers are struggling in this economy, and the governor’s heavy emphasis on higher taxes is disappointing,” she said.

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To tax? To build? To reprioritize? Regardless the answer, all of the state leaders who gathered Monday morning for the Greater Baltimore Committee’s legislative forum wanted to talk transportation.

The debate sparked after Paul Kelly, chairman of the Maryland Motor Truck Association, said that the proposed gas tax, coupled with proposed increases in registration fees, meant “[the legislature’s] just driving business away from Maryland.”

The panel, headed by Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the GBC, consisted of E.J Pipkin, Senate minority leader; Edward J. Kasemeyer, chairman of the Senate’s Budget and Taxation Committee; Anthony J. O’Donnell, House minority leader; and Michael E. Busch, speaker of the House.

Pipkin, who staunchly opposes the proposed tax, said the real need was to re-prioritize funds, adding that, “If it’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs, we should be working to improve our road networks, not building mass transit.”

The proposed tax would help fund a Purple Line from Bethesda to New Carrollton and a Red Line in Baltimore.

Fry, though agreeing maintenance and repair is important, said that a growing population needs new transportation.

The Red Line, which would provide access to about 175 job sites along its route “would also help spur economic growth around the various stops,” Fry said. The line would connect Baltimore’s light rail and metro line.

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Baltimore City mayoral candidate Frank Conaway has posted a rap on his campaign site that’s a little hard to miss.

It takes just a couple swipes at his competitors for the spot — Otis Rolley, Catherine Pugh, Joseph “Jody” Landers and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

While we’re not sure this is actually Conaway rapping himself, the song is prefaced with an “I approve this message” statement from Conaway.

We’ve taken a few listens to jot down some lyrics for those of you reading:

“Here’s the first mistake

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

again, Stephanie Rawlings-Fake.”

As for Pugh:

“Heard you’re friends with Catherine Pugh

That ain’t the only thing I smell in the room

Get it? I smell poo.”

Rolley:

“Otis Rolley, who that dude?

I’m going to watch Martin if I want to see you.”

Landers:

“J-J-J-Jody, J-J-Jody Landers

We already know you can’t stand us…”

While the reference to fecal matter is a bit show-and-tell from a lyrical standpoint, the rhyming of “mansion” and “bandwagon” is surely genius.

You can listen to the full rap in the player below. If the audio player does not appear, you can listen to it by clicking here.

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State Sen. Catherine Pugh literally danced her way into the city’s mayoral race Monday evening.

As disco music blared and nearly 150 supporters jammed inside a community center on West North Avenue near Coppin State University, Pugh strutted into the room amid cheers and hugs and took the podium to declare her intention to run for the city’s top job. She said the crime and grime she sees everywhere had moved her to run.

Pugh, a marathon runner, wore a bright yellow suit and told the crowd she first moved to Baltimore from a suburb of Philadelphia to attend Morgan State University — and then adopted the city as her new hometown.

“I was a cheerleader,” she said, of her college days at the northeast Baltimore campus. “And I’m going to be the greatest cheerleader this city has ever had.”

Pugh is a Democrat and former member of the City Council who entered the state senate in 2007. She is a member of the powerful Finance Committee and chair of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. She would not have to give up her senate seat to run.

At the announcement, Pugh decried the city’s crime rate, gang violence, unemployment, perks to rich developers and the high housing vacancy rate in communities and pledged to focus on those issues if she is elected in the primary Sept. 13.

“It’s time to stop, Baltimore,” she said, of the city’s high property taxes, bottle tax and high water and sewer rates. “With me we can do better. Young people must be our top priority.”

Current Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has raised funds to run, but has yet to file. The field is crowded, though, with former city planning director Otis Rolley III, Baltimore Clerk of the Courts Frank M. Conaway Sr., Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors Executive Vice President Joseph T. “Jody” Landers III already declared candidates. Vicki Ann Harding is the lone Republican candidate who has filed.

Pugh said she plans to focus on cutting the city’s property tax rate in half in her four-year term and attracting 80,000 new residents to Baltimore by 2020. She also said any money left over from her campaign would go into a new endowment to help pay for the $12 million in lead paint poisoning court orders against the city for children who were harmed in city-owned units.

“That is an issue that has weighed very heavy on my heart,” she said. “The city spent $4 million defending itself and then lost. We owe these families and we must pay.”

Pugh said that as mayor, she would focus more on community building and less on granting taxpayer subsidies to wealthy developers. That is a signature of the Rawlings-Blake administration, she said.

“I am so passionate about Baltimore. I love this city,” she said. “I actually go to bed at night thinking about fixing up this city.”

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With City Hall as a backdrop, Frank M. Conaway Sr. declared at noon on Monday his candidacy for mayor in what is looking like a crowded Democratic primary race on Sept. 13.

Conaway, 78, a resident of Ashburton and the city’s clerk of Circuit Court for the past 12 years, said he plans to make job creation the chief focus of his campaign.

“Baltimore has fallen behind,” Conaway said, as nearly 30 supporters stood nearby, holding bright gold campaign signs. “I’m running to restore Baltimore to prominence. Baltimore was a place of opportunity. Baltmoreans made things… obviously, something went wrong in the second decade of this millennium.”

Conaway joins Otis M. Rolley, former city planning director, and Joseph T. “Jody” Landers III, a former city councilman and current executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors, in the race.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has yet to file to run, but is raising money. City Councilman Carl Stokes has also said he plans to run.

In his brief remarks, Conaway highlighted several large developments and redevelopments currently planned for the city as examples of over-stretching resources. Those developments include the Superblock and Westport.

He also said the city’s high property tax rate, the steepest in Maryland, is also “a great cancer eating away at our neighborhoods.” The city’s huge inventory of vacant, blighted houses, that Conaway said totals 47,000, is also a crisis he would tackle as mayor.

“I would re-establish the $1 house program,” he said, of an initiative by the late former mayor, William Donald Schaefer, to sell vacant properties for $1 to urban homesteaders who would renovate them.

Conaway also said he planned to make city government more open by operating out of a mayor’s office “with no door.”

He took a swipe at Rawlings-Blake by referring to her as “elitist” and saying, “we have a mayor who, for some reason, keeps shooting herself in the foot.”

Conaway’s wife, Mary, is the city’s registrar of wills and his daughter, Belinda, is a member of the City Council. His son, Frank Jr., is a state delegate who represents the 40^th District. Conaway, too, served in the House of Delegates from 1971 to 1975 and then again from 1979 to 1983.

“We are a public service family,” he said, to cheers. “We live it. We dream it. We hope. And we will do our best for the citizens of Baltimore.”

Conaway pledged to begin to hold small meetings with voters around town and in places like Lexington Market.

“I would like to have tea and crumpets in neighborhood houses to let people know I am one of them,” he said.

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Much has been written about William Donald Schaefer since his death Monday. Here are some stories and blog posts on Baltimore’s former mayor and Maryland’s former governor and comptroller that, if you haven’t already seen, would be worth your time.

Esquire Magazine has posted Richard Ben Cramer’s classic profile of then Mayor Schaefer, published in October 1984. The magazine’s editors say there were inspired to post the story online — “in its entirety for the first time” — after getting requests in the Twitterverse from various big-name political writers. Cramer’s story is filled with vivid set pieces and insightful analysis of what drove the man. Among them: “You don’t need a charming, wavy-haired talker for a mayor. You need the toughest, canniest, most obsessive sonofabitch in town. You need someone who’s going to make it his life.”

Josh Kurtz, a longtime chronicler of Maryland politics, offers his own unique perspective at Center Maryland on Schaefer’s legacy. Kurtz, who for years covered the State House for The Gazette newspapers in the D.C. suburbs, pays tribute to Schaefer’s career in public service. He also writes of the shifting spheres of influence in Annapolis, and how those shifts have occurred over time at Baltimore’s expense, and how Schaefer and his loyalists handled the changing balance of power.

The Baltimore Business Journal has reaction from local business leaders on Schaefer’s influence in shaping the city. H&S Bakery’s John Paterakis shares a revealing anecdote on the early machinations behind what would become Harbor East.

Anyone who’s been asked by a demanding boss to “do it now!” can appreciate the recollections of Robert L. Di Stefano, a retired Baltimore police major who writes in a letter to the Sun of his days as a commanding officer under Schaefer. Sun sports columnist Peter Schmuck, meanwhile, assesses Schaefer’s impact on Baltimore as a sports town, and Jay Hancock writes of Schaefer’s ongoing dialogue with Maryland businesses, unique as it was.

Former Sun reporter and editor David Ettlin offers his own remembrance of Schaefer at his blog, The Real Muck. It includes a very funny run-in with the then mayor over an apparent City Hall leak of a story.

Doug Birch, who covered Schaefer in City Hall and Annapolis, bids him a fond farewell in the Baltimore Brew. “My tormentor, my nemesis, my exasperating tutor” the post is titled.

The New York Times obituary on Schaefer concludes with this passage:

When he lost his re-election bid [for comptroller] in 2006, Mr. Schaefer was asked how he would like to be remembered. “There are two words,” he said. “ ‘He cared.’ People mock me and make fun of it. But it’s the truth.”

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Howard County Executive Ken Ulman announced Tuesday afternoon that for the next week, he has banned the use of the word “chief.”

For now, the two chiefs on his payroll — Police Chief Bill McMahon and Fire Chief Bill Goddard — will be called Bill #1 and Bill #2, respectively.

If you haven’t caught on yet, this ploy is an effort by Howard County to express its pride for the Baltimore Ravens as they go on to face the Kansas City C#!@%s on Sunday in the NFL playoff Wild Card round.

“I have said it for a long time – Howard County is where Maryland comes together, and nothing brings us together like the Ravens,” said Ulman in a written statement. “We want to make sure the Ravens and all of their fans know that purple passion cannot be contained at the Baltimore border – it’s all over the state.”

Earlier Tuesday, Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake joined the Ravens’ painting crew in spraying the team logo in the grass at War Memorial Plaza.

The mayor, dressed in a Ray Lewis jacket and jeans bearing the Ravens logo on each back pocket, took hold of the sprayer and helped the crew outline the logo on a giant tarp.

“This year, to show our pride, we are going to ‘Go Purple’ by firing up the purple lights and painting the town purple,” she said in a statement. “No team in the NFL will have as much hometown support as our Ravens.”

The painters also went to Federal Hill Tuesday to leave their mark, and purple light fixtures are being installed around the city.

Ulman also said the Howard County government’s George Howard Building in Ellicott City and the Gateway Building in Columbia will have a purple glow cast on them as long as the Ravens stay alive in the playoffs.

But as for stripping words from our vocabulary for football’s sake, let’s just hope we don’t have to play New England at some point. It might be a little more difficult to convince the region to stop being American patriots for a week.

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Pensions, horse racing and football were some of the topics driving last week’s most-read stories reported by The Daily Record’s business news team. There was also news for Maryland oenophiles and mergers and acquisitions buffs.

1. Md. pension commission recommends shifting burden to employees
The recommendations will be forwarded to the governor and General Assembly before the start of the legislative session Jan. 12. But, the Public Employees’ and Retirees’ Benefit Sustainability Commission will be back in 2012 for another go at finding solutions to keep the massive and underfunded benefits system afloat.

2. Maryland comptroller wants to allow direct shipments of wine
After reviewing direct wine shipping practices and laws in 37 states and the District of Columbia and interviewing hundreds of people, the Comptroller of Maryland’s office is recommending legislators draft a law that would allow the direct shipment of wine to state residents.

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It seems that every election cycle a high-profile former business executive announces plans to run for public office. Government needs to be run like a business, they say, with greater accountability and more sophisticated performance-based measurement.

Sometimes that message resonates. It’s worked wonders for Michael Bloomberg in New York City. I covered former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner a little bit in the early aughts, and the former venture capitalist from Northern Virginia proved fairly effective at winning over red portions of the Old Dominion with his message of bipartisanship and making state government more modern and efficient. The Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008.

This week, however, three business executives with big names got beat like a drum at the polls — and spent a lot of their own money for the pleasure.

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Government-sponsored mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have outlined a plan to combat any deficiencies they might encounter during the foreclosure process.

“The country’s housing finance system remains fragile and I intend to maintain our focus on addressing this issue in a manner that is fair to delinquent households, but also fair to servicers, mortgage investors, neighborhoods and most of all, is in the best interest of taxpayers and housing markets,” Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco said in a statement announcing the plan.

The FHFA released the plan as the “robo-signing” scandal continues to grow. The FHFA is the regulator and conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the regulator of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks. Fannie and Freddie provide more than $5.9 trillion for domestic mortgage markets and financial institutions.

The plan, which seems pretty straightforward, is:

1. Verify the process: Review the process and procedures and make sure they’re legal.
2. Remediate any problems
3. Refer suspicion of fraudulent activity
4. Avoid delays: “In the absence of identified process problems, foreclosures on mortgages for which the borrower has stopped payment, and for which foreclosure alternatives have been unsuccessful, should proceed without delay. Delays in foreclosures add cost and other burdens for communities, investors, and taxpayers,” the agency wrote.

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