Maryland Democrats love democracy. Until they don’t.
Why elect a Board of Education when you can usurp its power instead?
Maryland Democrats love democracy until they don’t.
A case in point is a local Howard County bill sponsored by Senator Clarence Lam and Delegate Courtney Watson that would usurp the power of Howard County voters to choose the members of the Howard County Board of Education.
Ho.Co, 10-23 would alter the composition of the Board of Education by adding two appointed members of the board to be selected by the County Executive, chosen from a list of candidates selected by a nominating commission, who would then be confirmed by the County Council.
This scheme was altered from the bill as originally drafted, which called for the election of board members via county council districts to state senatorial districts, cut short the terms of recently elected members, as well as ensuring the County Executive’s potential appointees would be selected from a carefully curated list of politically reliable cronies.
Lam and Watson tried to add the lipstick of Citizens Election Fund access for board candidates, and enhanced compensation for board members to the pig that is this bill.
No one was having it.
After word of the original draft spread it caused a bipartisan uproar among various groups in Howard County that rarely find common ground. Democrats, Republicans, The PTA Council of Howard County, the League of Women Voters, Chinese American Parents Association, Howard County Citizens Association, The People’s Voice, Progressive Democrats of Howard County, NAACP, and individual members of both the Board of Education and the Howard County Council
Carleen Pena’s testimony best summed up the rank cynicism fueling this bill
“Bill 10-23 is garbage. Honestly it is a giant turd… What I honestly think is that you don’t like how we vote. We don’t always vote the way you think we should. And honestly we don’t always elect the best candidates but that’s my choice, that is our choice it isn’t your choice and it is not the choice of the Howard County Executive.”
The changes are currently “in draft” so we will have to wait and see the delegation’s final work product. The Howard County delegation was scheduled to meet on January 12, the second day of the legislative session for a work session. No video of the work session is available on the General Assembly website.
It’s ironic that after hearing–ad nauseam-during the previous election cycle about the importance of our democracy and the threats to it from Courtney Watson, the people of Howard County need to defend a threat to democracy from… Courtney Watson.
See the rest of Delegate Watson’s performative hymns to democracy here.
Lam and Watson’s ostensible justification for this power grab is to implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. Meaning they want politically pliable board members, who will take orders. This justification would be laughable if it weren’t so incandescently cynical. The cynicism lies not only in its blatant arrogation of power, but equally in its contempt for the people to wisely choose their representatives.
This contempt was crystallized by a Howard county land use attorney/developer lobbyist with skin in the game for board of education decisions turned WBAL radio host, waxing authoritarian on the potential of Ho.Co. 10-23:
“We have a romanticized ideal of what it means to have a democratic choice. We have a romanticized idea of what it means to vote for something…when there is a democratic choice, meaning you get to participate in voting for that person, but it is underutilized and there is a lack of attention paid to that, a lack of knowledge generated around people running for that office, does democracy itself spoil, does the fact that we are democratically electing these people become a broken system? Because I would suggest to you it is. I would suggest to you that when you have something that everyone has the opportunity to vote for but a very small number of motivated people do vote, that is a spoiled democratic system that needs to be reformed.
Strip away the thin facade of this “justification” and we’re left with what is essentially, too clever by half partisan gerrymandering of the Board of Education. Given that the sponsors of this bill also supported the partisan gerrymandering of Maryland’s congressional and legislative districts, no one should be surprised that they have no compunction about usurping the right of county voters to choose their elected officials.
However, we should thank Senator Lam and Delegate Watson, because they have laid bare the rhetorical trickery in Democratic messaging. Democracy isn’t the process and rules by which political leaders are selected by the people as government power is justly derived from the people, no Democracy–to flip Orwell’s famous quote on the definition of fascism–has no meaning except in so far as to signify what Democrats find desirable.