This morning, Maryland Gov. O’Malley (D) and his Republican challenger, former Gov. Bob Ehrlich, taped what is likely to be this year’s only televised gubernatorial debate, for broadcast this evening on WJZ TV Baltimore (click HERE for live streaming 7pm tonight). Early reports suggest Gov. O’Malley dispatched Mr. Ehrlich as handily as he did when the pair debated four years ago, but both sides are spinning.
Here’s what I hope to see addressed....
Bob Ehrlich still has not offered an HONEST plan to pay for the false sales tax promise that is the centerpiece of his campaign.
Like a student council candidate promising a soda machine in the cafeteria, Bob Ehrlich’s top campaign promise is to roll the state sales tax back from 6% to 5%, but he still hasn’t explained how he would replace the $625 million in annual revenue that would be lost, as blogger Adam Pagnucco of Maryland Politics Watch first pointed out.
Earlier, Mr. Ehrlich claimed the $600 million figure doesn’t factor in any increase in sales (and therefore revenue) that the small cut might bring, but legislative analysts did consider that factor, concluding the state could expect a negligible 0.5% increase in instate consumer spending from Marylanders who might be less tempted to do their purchasing in sales tax free Delaware (where a hidden gross receipts tax raises the price of consumer goods by an amount comparable to Maryland’s sales tax anyhow). In the same comment, Mr. Ehrlich said he would use slots revenue to offset the sales tax, but state budget projections already account for that revenue. Mr. Ehrlich would have to defy the laws of arithmetic to spend the same money twice.
Mr. Ehrlich recently received undeserved praise for proposing to offset his sales tax roll-back by discontinuing state education funding to districts with higher costs (Montgomery, Prince George’s and Baltimore City), but that would only save $125 million, which is 20% of the revenue Mr. Ehrlich would do without. He has no answer for the remaining 80%. You can’t fill a $600 hole with $125 million, and I have a hunch that Maryland voters would rather pay the current sales tax than cut education as Mr. Ehrlich proposes.
Bob Ehrlich’s criticism of other taxes Mr. O’Malley raised rings hollow because Mr. Ehrlich isn’t proposing to repeal them, a tacit admission they were necessary to balance state budgets while preserving educational and other priorities (they also paid for an income tax CUT secured by Gov. O’Malley for people earning up to $150,000).
Bob Ehrlich never reconciled his HYPOCRISY on furloughs.
Bob Ehrlich criticizes Gov. O’Malley for choosing furlough days for all state employees instead of the massive firings that would otherwise be necessary to balance state finances in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The furloughs amount to a temporary 2% pay cut for modest income state employees, rising to 5% for top earners.
At the same time Mr. Ehrlich criticized Gov. O’Malley for temporarily cutting state workers’ pay 2% to 5%, Mr. Ehrlich’s law and lobbying firm permanently cut its own workers’ pay 10%, blaming the recession. The Womble Carlyle pay cut didn’t reach the top, however. We learned earlier in the campaign that Mr. Ehrlich collected $2.2 million in salary from his firm while employees’ pay was being slashed. Gov. O’Malley, on the other hand, took a pay cut along with the rest of the state’s employees.
Mr. Ehrlich confirmed his hypocrisy on furloughs when he attended a fundraiser for his benefit in Virginia on the same he criticized Gov. O’Malley’s furloughs, hosted by Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) who had just furloughed his states’ employees. The week before, Mr. Ehrlich endorsed Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold (R) who enacted a furlough plan for county employees identical to Gov. O’Malley’s state plan.
Bob Ehrlich hasn’t told the TRUTH about his own record.
Bob Ehrlich says his campaign is about the future, not the past, but he can’t spend his entire campaign criticizing Gov. O’Malley for making decisions similar to the ones he made when he was governor four year ago and then say he doesn’t want to talk about the past. Here’s a refresher:
· Bob Ehrlich raised revenue $3 billion, and Gov. O’Malley raised revenue $3.6 billion. We can quibble over the details; Mr. Ehrlich’s figure includes a $188 million HMO tax enacted over his veto, and Gov. O’Malley’s figures includes $146 million in slots revenue, but if Gov. O’Malley’s tax increases were "the biggest in state history," as Republicans often say, Bob Ehrlich’s tax increases were a very close second.
· Bob Ehrlich lied to reporters twice on video, saying he raised "fees," not taxes, but the truth is he raised property taxes 57%, and he broke his campaign promise not to raise income taxes when he sneakily eliminated tax deductions in 2004 and 2005. By eliminating deductions, he raised income taxes.
· Bob Ehrlich’s self-proclaimed "surplus" was the kind of "surplus" in your checking account the night before your next mortgage payment and a couple of hefty debit card purchases post. In 2006 Maryland was one of 42 states and countless municipalities, including then-Mayor O’Malley’s Baltimore City, experiencing a one-time unanticipated revenue windfall, thanks to the short lived real estate bubble. Mr. Ehrlich’s own budget at the time projected $4.6 billion in future deficits, before the devastation of the Bush/GOP economic disaster decimated state revenues across the country. By Mr. Ehrlich’s fuzzy math, Gov. O’Malley could claim the state presently has a $1 billion surplus ($650 million Rainy Day Fund plus $350 FY10 ending balance), but Gov. O’Malley tells the truth about the budget.
· Bob Ehrlich submitted budgets exceeding spending affordability guidelines in three of his four years, and he proposed the largest annual spending increase in Maryland history in 2006, which the Democratic legislature scaled back.
· Bob Ehrlich accepted federal bailout money with strings attached and transferred funds to cover budget deficits in easier financial times, but he criticizes Gov. O’Malley for using the same tools to cope in much harder times that have caused severe revenue shortfalls in every state except Montana and North Dakota.
· Bob Ehrlich circles the state stoking business owners’ soreness over an unemployment tax spike and corporate filing fees, but he fails to mention that both were caused by his actions when he was governor.
· Bob Ehrlich is full of anecdotes about businesses leaving Maryland, closing or choosing to locate in other states, but without breaking a sweat I assembled a very long list of businesses doing the same when he was governor.
Bob Ehrlich LIED about his firm’s lobbying activity.
When the O’Malley campaign first opened discussion about Bob Ehrlich’s lobbying activity, Mr. Ehrlich lied to the Baltimore Sun, claiming no one from the Baltimore office of his law firm was lobbying. His partner David Hamilton repeated the same lie a few weeks later to the Washington Post.
The timing of Mr. Ehrlich’s and Mr. Hamilton’s lie was crucial to their denial of the O’Malley campaign’s valid charge that Mr. Ehrlich was either lobbying without registering or collecting huge lobbying fees while others did the technical work requiring registration. If their lie wasn’t so important to the story they were spinning, they wouldn’t have said it and then repeated it. In fact, exposure of two of Mr. Ehrlich’s former gubernatorial staffers registering to lobbying Congress from the Baltimore offices of Womble Carlyle could have led the press to probe Bob Ehrlich on a simple question he has never answered:
Did Bob Ehrlich communicate or attend any meeting with any federal, state, or local government official on behalf of any paying client, otherwise known as lobbying?
Mr. Hamilton later walked back his lie, describing the lobbying registrations from his office to TBD.com reporter Kevin Robillard without acknowledging he and Mr. Ehrlich didn’t tell the truth in the first place, but the damage was already done. This is relevant because Mr. Hamilton unashamedly sold access to Mr. Ehrlich when he was governor, otherwise known as "influence peddling," securing millions of dollars in state business for his clients.
If nothing else, Bob Ehrlich should be pressed for a clear statement on what barriers, if any, he would place between his administration and his former lobbying law firm in the unlikely event that he is re-elected.
Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele paid $417,000 of their donors’ money to a friend who isn’t in any kind of campaign services business.
Last year, WBAL TV’s Jayne Miller reported that Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele paid $417,000 of their donors’ money to a defunct company registered to a friend who had never been in any kind of campaign services business. The payments were spread over 28 transactions from four different state and federal accounts Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Steele controlled. Mr. Ehrlich was not a candidate at the time, so when he refused to answer questions, the story died.
Paying donors’ money to a friend for non-campaign purposes is stealing, and it’s also against the law to pay campaign money to a friend to conceal the true payees and purpose of the payments.
If Mr. Ehrlich has an explanation for these payments, he needs to provide it, along with invoices and receipts supporting what he says. Mr. Ehrlich should not get a free pass just because this was done four years ago and he dodged questions when it was first exposed. Countless public officials, including former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, have been exposed and ultimately prosecuted for equally old or older actions. The Sandy Roberts payments are only four years old, and Jayne Miller exposed them over a year ago. Mr. Ehrlich owes his donors and the public a full explanation.
- Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis
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