Gaithersburg Speech, Q&A

Only in Montgomery County, 17 months before the election, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, would we get a capacity crowd, I really want to thank you all for coming. Mayor Giamo thank you very, very much for your leadership for making us proud of the city of Rockville. I want to thank Joe and I also want to thank Elly for pulling all of you together, for bringing you together.

A person came up to me at the beginning of this, and she said “Are we going to get to ask questions?” I said “It’s Montgomery County, of course you’re going to get to ask questions.” What the heck kind of candidate would I be if I didn’t entertain questions? There is a hand already.

I also want to acknowledge that we are joined today my friend from law school days – John Maloney – who’s a prosecutor and would make a great State’s Attorney. There goes our first cell phone.

I really want to thank all of you for coming out today. It’s a humbling honor to have the privilege to serve in any elected office. It is a particularly humbling honor to be able to have the opportunity and responsibility to be able to step up now as we approach 2006 – when all of us, I think, evidenced by the fact that you are here today, feel in our gut and our core that Maryland can do better, and that Maryland should do better, and indeed Maryland has an obligation and a special place in our country to do better.

I wanted to share some thoughts with you, but I want to give a disclaimer right up front I am not the Shell Answer Man, I do not have the answer to every thorny problem that confronts us. But I can promise you this: in the years I have had the privilege of leading some of the most resilient and hardworking people in our state, the people of Baltimore, we have never shied away from the tough problems, we steered to them.

We’ve managed together to come up with ways not to make excuses, but with ways to make progress against some of the thorniest problems that many in the past have shrugged their shoulders, thrown up their hands and said there is nothing we can do about it. We have been making progress.

Indeed that is one of the blessings that we have by being citizens of this state is that throughout our history our people have always made progress, we’ve come together and we make progress by respecting one another, by realizing that yes, both tolerance and diversity that make Maryland and make America stronger.

I was recently out in the blue-green hills of Frederick, Maryland, land of Barbara Frietschie, and they had a Jefferson Jackson day there, and it was on the anniversary of the death of a great American in Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They had printed on the front of the program words that Roosevelt had delivered to Congress in January of 1941 – certainly not an easy time in our nation’s history. The words were these:

“In the future days, which we seek to make more secure, we look forward to a world that is founded on four essential freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and freedom of expression, everywhere in the world.

The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his or her own way, everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, everywhere in the world.”

Now we are a people in a nation that has some beautiful words, whether they’re found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, but I don’t think you’ll find a more succinct statement of the creed of the great ideas that Americans believe than you will in those words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They are not cautious words, they are revolutionary words, they are revolutionary words that call forth the high ambition from the people who are lucky to be living in the strongest nation on the planet.

I wonder, and I ask you as I asked the other day in Frederick, what would Roosevelt say about us today as a nation if he were here, if he were looking at the current ebb and flow, the pendulum swing in politics; what would he say about the freedom to worship God, every person in their own way, if he looked at how leaders selectively site very limited passages from the Bible, only with the purpose of playing division politics, fear politics, vilifying and separating us from one another. I wonder what he would think about the freedom of speech, freedom of expression, as he watches the stuff that spews out of what President Clinton called the killing machine, the Fox News Channel. And, I wonder what he would say about the freedom from fear in this post 9-11 world.

As Marylanders we have always been fearless. We have always been united by the hopes and ambitions that bring us together as a people. We are not a people who seek to divide, we are a people who seek to unite, and to heal and to move forward, and that is why those of us who have a choice as to where we live choose to live in Maryland.

Over the last six years, I wanted to report to you just a little bit about the progress we’ve been making in one part of our state I believe we are stronger when any member of our state becomes stronger. In the City of Baltimore, when I was elected in 1999, our one major city within the boundaries we- I’m sorry, two, with Rockville. One big American city in the boundaries of our little state, we-d allowed our major city to become in 1994 the most addicted city in America. We stayed there in 1994 and ‘95, ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, and ‘99.

And by 1999 the FBI had declared us the most dangerous, violent city in the America. Now, needless to say, no one Democrat or Republican, rich or poor, chooses to live or stay in a place that is becoming progressively more dangerous, more unhealthy, and where there is less opportunity for their children.

And so we lost more of our population in the ‘90’s and more of our job base than any other city in the ‘90’s, but one thing that we never lost that we were still the people that Frederick Douglas and Johnny Unitas loved, that we were still the people who, instead of putting up a white flag and hunkering and surrendering, when the British Navy and Army came rolling up the Chesapeake, we dug trenches, 60% of us immigrants, 1 out of 5 of us free black citizens in a still and yet very imperfect country. And we believed enough in ourselves in one another to believe that we could choose our own destiny for our city.

And thanks to you, as Maryland taxpayers, we have been able to increase our investment in drug treatment, and lead all cities but Dallas in the rate of reduction of drug related emergency room admissions.

We have led all cities in the rate of reduction of violent crime. We have been able to turn around what had been thirty years of decline in our school system.

I grew up in Montgomery County, and I took, I suppose, some things for granted, growing up in Montgomery County – one of them being the very strong and functional public school system. In the City of Baltimore there was not one grade where a majority of students city-wide scored proficient in reading and math. Not one grade six years ago. As we look over our shoulders now, four years ago the 1st graders were proficient, they were followed the next year, thanks to our investment in early childhood education, the second graders were proficient, and the next year the third graders, and last week we celebrated the fact that on the most recent standardized test. If we keep up this trajectory of progress we will have one of the greatest turnaround stories in any urban school system in the United States America.

We also created more jobs last year, at a faster rate that our regional average in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area. And the human census, which has said every year for 30 years that we’ve been losing population, has now said our population has leveled off and we are poised for growth. I know that word has different connotations in Montgomery County but in Baltimore we think that growth is a great thing. You cannot support an aging infrastructure on the backs of a shrinking population.

What does that have to do with us as a state, and what does that have to do with the challenges and the choices that each and every one of you face with your elected officials in Montgomery County?

I think it has a great deal to do, because I do not subscribe to that new fashion-craze in politics that holds greed up as the great American value. Nor do I subscribe, and I don’t believe that you do either, to the notion that somehow we can be strong as individuals even if other parts of our community are hurting or suffering or not realizing their full potential or not being able to give their children the same hope that they’ve been able to give ours.

Over the last few years we have seen what I would describe as a very minimalist type of leadership coming out of our State House. It is the politics of division. It is the politics of fear. It is the politics that says, “Thus far shall we go and no further.” Governor Ehrlich was recently quoted in the Post as saying, “When you are a Republican in Maryland, you don’t make big plans for the future.” Indeed we have not been making big plans for the future. And as we talk about this race, and as we look at the issues that are woven together in a small state like ours, like growth, transportation, the environment, the economy, those things are interwoven in a state that resides on the banks of an estuary called the Chesapeake Bay. I think we have to ask ourselves, have we made progress over the last four years, or can we do better?

What does it profit us, if we grow up in one of the strongest states in America, and do not pass that to the next generation? What good have we done on this planet if because of Maryland’s assets and strengths, we allow ourselves nonetheless to slip from one of the top ranks in our country down into mediocrity. What does it say about this and the choices that we make and the leadership that we have put forward if the National Geographic proclaims to the rest of the country that the Chesapeake Bay earns an “F” with regard to its health, and yet the Governor refuses to allow the Attorney General to sue to enforce mercury restrictions against polluters who put mercury in the air.

What does it say about us when National organizations that look at accessibility to higher education, something we have always prided ourselves on, and they look at us and they declare that Maryland receives and F, because tuition has gone up 40%, during governor Ehrlich’s first term in office, imagine what it would be in a second term.

What does it say about us when we look at the fact, year after year, even though we know transportation is a problem, even though we know traffic congestions robs us of our quality of life and the ability to spend time with our families, and yet study after study, year after year, shows we are not making a lot of progress.

I think that Maryland can do better. In fact I know Maryland can do better. I think you and I see a state where we harness the great assets and creative potential of our universities, of our colleges, of our great healing centers like NIH and Johns Hopkins, in order to create new jobs for our futures.

I see a Maryland where we work and strive to make college education more accessible, so that kids who work hard, and play by the rules, and are responsible, can actually be all that they can be. You and I see a Maryland where we don’t shrug our shoulders in the face of transportation, and say in this new libertarian form of governance that there is nothing we can do about it. Instead we say no, there are many things we can do, if we only had the courage to come together with a statewide vision to make progress in transportation, and in our environment, not to mention bringing opportunity to those in Maryland who don’t have the same access to it that many others have.

I’m fond of telling a story that comes from 1776. All of you have heard Maryland referred to as the Old Line State. The reason we are called the Old Line State actually comes from a story that is an important story for us to tell, especially in this day in age, When to the Democratic has had fallen to its shoulder the responsibility of proclaiming the values of security, and opportunity, and responsibility.

1776 was a great year for the Declaration of Independence, it was an awful year for the American army. And in the Continental Army, in 1776, was this close to being snuffed out, only a few months after the Declaration of Indepedence, in New York, after defeats at White Plains and Harlem Heights.

And Washington and his army would have been annihilated by a much larger British force Were it not for your neighbors and mine, 400 Marylanders, not professional soldiers, citizen soldiers, who held the line, willing to risk their lives, to lay them down to protect the idea of the great country America could become.
And there is a plaque to this day, in Brooklyn, that reads “In Honor of the Maryland 400, who on this battlefield, on August 22, 1776, saved the American army.” It is not far from the mass graves of the 260 Marylanders who died there.

The reason why I share that story today is that we are called upon again as Marylanders to hold the line. Today we hold the line against the cynicism and minimalist leadership that tells us that our best days are behind us. We hold the line against leadership that in a state as strong and diverse as ours declares that multiculturalism is bunk, and that multiculturalism can never survive.

We hold the line against leadership that at election times would say that they are against taxes, and then did everything they could to create more taxes, fees, and other things, including property taxes in 16 months that a Democratic administration didn’t do in 16 years.

We hold the line against the politics of personal destruction that has been brought, Newt Gingrich-style, from Washington to Annapolis.

We hold the line against the cynicism that in one breath declares this as the Year of the Child, and in another breath cuts school construction dollars, cuts dollars for the eradication of lead poisoning in children, cuts dollars for daycare benefits to allow people to get into the workplace, and provide for their families.

These are the things we hold the line against. What we hold the line for is a better future.

How do we get there? We get there with mutual respect. With tolerance, diversity, with appreciation of the strength and the power that we have in one another, and the strength and the power of a government that works hard and open in transparent ways, to make our state better for the next generation.
Thank you all very much.

Question and Answer:

Q: My question is about the crime rate; the crime rate in Baltimore, with you becoming the next Governor, what is your plan to control that? The other candidates are going to use that against you; at the same time, you mentioned early, you had 155% crime rate, but you have the same problems; the FBI mentioned in an article you still doing very poorly on that. How do you improve that?

A: The question is all about crime or about public safety. Improving public safety is the first order of any civilized people. You can’t expect to have people doing the right thing if they can’t feel safe and secure in their own neighborhoods, but also in their school districts. The same FBI report that you quote, said that Baltimore’s had the largest reduction in violent crime of any of the top 25 cities in America; now you might have read all that article, but if you had pulled the report and looked at it, you will that Baltimore after being the most violent city in 1999, has had the biggest reduction; the one right behind us is Chicago. We have also taken steps to reduce drug addiction; what has works for us in the city and what I think is an effective form of governance is to set high ambitious goals and to measure your performance towards achieving those goals. Now there are those in this race, my competitors in this race, who would want to say that because there are still problems in Baltimore that we have not been effective in governance and that we have not made progress. We in City Hall believe that the people are smart of us to decide for themselves as to whether we have not made progress; in terms of the rate of improvement of violent crime, we would not want to trade places with anyone in that rate of reduction; the homicide goal which we set goes set of 175; everywhere I met when I was running for Mayor they I was asked if you except this goal for homicide rate, and I did. Now, the question, we’ve been saying that for about 300 hundred miles, if you look at the average of the fatalities compared to what it is now, it is almost about a 20% reduction in homicides, and for each and every family that is scared burying a young son, it is not a small accomplishment, and that in fact is progress. I would like to have it down to zero, that’s our new goal; zero is our goal. Now we may not achieve that in my time, certainly not in my time in office; and we will certainly get there quicker if we had a governor in the state of Maryland who doesn’t run from problems, but instead puts the urge in the well that he or she controls to help make our state safe. The Governor directly controls juvenile services, the governor directly controls parole relations, the governor must directly oversee foster care, social services, and workforce involvement, especially for the all the people that are coming out of prison each year and would like to get a job. These are all things that the Governor of Maryland can work for; if you look at your own county, I do not think you can have the reduction of crime anywhere near where Baltimore’s has had; you never started where were. In your major’s cities it has gone down, and as it goes down ((tech trace)) is going back up; $7 million/billion dollars in new investment coming back. I’ve been proud of the progress we’ve made and will never stop working so hard until we reach our goal of zero.

Question: Mayor O’Malley, I respect what you’ve done for Baltimore and appreciate that you’re here today, but how can those who of us who live outside of Baltimore, such in Montgomery County, can be sure that you’re going to have people for people who respect/help us?

Answer: The question has to do with we will you know, what can I say that might convince you that I willing governing the state of Maryland that I will value, respect, protect, and promote Mont. County equally to Baltimore City. It is often done in generalistic columns this tension between BC and MC. In my experience in Annapolis in the last six years I have seen that our delegations more often vote together than separately. When it comes to funding and the increase funding for education so we can have a full-day kindergarten, the school construction dollars that we’ve been battling to increase, those are things that M and BC come together around. The drug treatment dollars would not have happened were it not for MC and BC coming together; my style is leadership is one that brings people together, I’m not a practitioner of division politics. I think we are all stronger together. I grew up in Montgomery County; my sister is here, right by me. My sister still lives in Montgomery County, my parents live in Mont. County, and I was raised in a little log cabin in Mont. County. I grew up around BCC on Sleaford road, not far from where peoples used to be, and paulette’s used to be, and ((Dickens)) used to be, I went to Gonzaga for high school, I went to Linebrook for kindergarten, to Our lady of Lords for most of elementary school. I have an understanding of the width and the breadth and the depth of this state, and no person could ever call themselves an effective governor of Maryland if they did not appreciate the tremendous power and energy that is MC; you’ll just have to keep an eye to me and hear what I’m saying and look at what I’m doing to see if that’s true. In the same sense of Baltimore, we have very wealthy neighborhoods and we have very poor neighborhoods, and we used to think that if they were separate they could protect the strength. However, we’ve found that when we make the weakest among us stronger, it also makes the stronger among us stronger as well. So, I’m not a division politician.

Question: Thank you very much for coming. Will you support the right to a voter-verified paper ballot on the people’s machine?

Answer: Good question; we should spare no expense to safeguard our democratic process. We should spare no expense to safeguard democracy. We’re sending young men from Maryland to fight conventional wars to try to spread democracy; we should spare no expense to try to safeguard it here. I know that there are all sorts of logistical challenges, but I think in this day and age we be able to figure out a way where technology is able to help verify the ballot. I’m very concerned about the new voting machines, and the answer to your question is yes, I will help safeguard these procedures.

Question: I guess this a follow up on a prior question. I was here in Montgomery County when another Baltimore Mayor was Governor; and understandably Baltimore has a lot of needs, like 25 million bill, at that time when the Governor decided he needed a lot more money for Baltimore needs, and we had to pay for our teachers retirement money. I’m hoping today you can assure us that something like that will not be done to us again. This is a real concern to a lot of people.

Answer: I’m different than the people that are running for Governor; I’m different from William Donald Schaffer. I grew up in this part of the state, I still have family here, and my politics in Baltimore, my politics is making sure that quality of life for all of us improve. That’s how I aim to be available to you, and with the choices we can make together we can make better decisions; together, MC has become the Baltimore of the 21st century. All of us have challenges, and I think it’s a recipe for disaster to play counties and jurisdictions against each other.

Question: What will you do to oppose/enforce restrictions on tv?

Answer: Well, you know, you county executive has much more influence on that kind of a thing than I do. When you’re a mayor, the counties come to you all that time with questions. If you a center in the media market, maybe this is the quickest way I could show the difference. What’s going to happen when Washington got a baseball team? The same thing happened when Baltimore got a football team? People tried to tell us because of the Redskins that we couldn’t have a football team in the Ravens; we should have found another major city for another major league team. In the morning I have to confess you I don’t skim the sports pages, I skim the metro news and the front page for incoming missiles, but I don’t skim the sports page. So one time somebody asked me about the sports team; I gave the same answer, fair and frank law, William Donald Schaffer called me a traitor. But fair is fair, and I don’t think we should be opposing TV restrictions on teams either; I think if you put a good team as Mr. Angelos has done this year, that people will come to see that team. If the Nationals are a good team, people will come to see that team. If not, if you’re not just trying to eclipse, monopolize, and blackout the other, people might actually go out and see out both teams. I think we’re stronger together, and think we’re stronger together with two baseball teams to support.

Question: Will you pledge today that no more Maryland tax dollars will be spent build stadiums for private teams?

Answer: Will I pledge today that no more tax dollars will be spent on a new baseball or football stadium? I can honestly say that this has been done under my watch; however, they are also becoming an anomaly with the county, and what we can do well, and if it also healthy, and bring health to the center of the policy core, and fortunately I don’t think we’ll have to build any for a good, long time. If we can develop the economic impact of them, I think on balance there is an economic impact the country loves. I think we are making the repayments much quicker than anyone forecast we would, and I think are big challenge capital wise as we approach these future years is in transportation and new school construction. A county as strong of yours shouldn’t 17,000 kids going to school in trailers, no should a state as strong as ours have classrooms as crumbling as ours are, and those would be my priorities capital wise.

Question: I’m a student at the University of Maryland. Our tuition was raised last year by 1500 dollars; what will you do to help out with paying my taxes/tuition?

Answer: Our goal in order to be a strong state, in order to have a strong economy is to invest in great steps that leading economies have in this new world, creativity, innovation, and discovery, harness well-trained minds, and the asset of the human brain. We need to start making college more accessible, which means making it more affordable. Maryland currently receives an F in affordability, it has gone up 40%; I guess that’s one way to balance the budget. I think when we make it more difficult, rather than less difficult to work their way through college, you are also harming the state’s economy as well. And you are also around getting around the point of making a just society that we all hope to make together. How do we do that? We need to be talking about, debating, and discussing, not only though the course of the campaign but also with your representative-delegates. Fortunately, because of investments made by all of us in the past, we also have a stronger economy than many other states, which means it has grown at a quicker rate than many other states. But if you stop investing in the assets that allowed you to be strong in the first place, you’re going to backslide in time. We need to stop the backslide and we need get back to a point where college tuition is more accessible and more affordable, unfortunately we’re not going to get there in the next year or so.

Question: What is your opinion for lowering the age for driving?

Answer: That’s a good question, and we are not changing the driving age; as the father of a 13 year old, I feel one should not be allowed to drive until he/she is 30 years old (laughs). If you forced me to answer, I probably am not in favor of it.

Question: Eight years after you’ve been in office, what would your legacy be?

Answer: I would hope that my legacy would be that I brought the people in our state from working together to make our state a safer place. I would hope that I would make a positive return in foster care. I would that my legacy making a return in positive respect in healthcare to all families who work hard and shouldn’t have to choose between their health and working for a living. I hope that my legacy would be to reverse decades and decades of declining health everyday and help the state to recover again by making more responsible choices. I hope that my legacy would be that I helped the people of Maryland choose to invest in what is necessary to improve the quality of life and to extend opportunity to the next generation of Maryland. These are the things that I hope would be my legacy.

Question: The progress that Baltimore has been making on school achievement and crime reduction, what do we attribute it to?

Answer: We attribute it to a couple of things. We borrowed from NY with regard to policing performance-measuring styles, policing comstat; we put the cops on the dots, computer generation software that allows us to employ the police officers to where the crimes actually happened. I know this sounds simple, but a lot of places don’t do that; we started by reforming our police department and making it a lot more effective, a lot more performance driven, a lot more open and transparent; we set goals for crime reduction, not for less, but for crime reduction, and then we reward the commanders that are most innovative and make that happen. We built that a meritocracy in a police department that had become pretty worn-down and self-defeating in its belief that there was nothing we could do about crime. The other two things we’ve down, as a state, we’ve decided to invest more in drug treatment for our people; and that has made a huge difference. In the past we’ve said in Baltimore City we should we prevent drug offenders, or just treat our drug offenders. Well, you really can’t do just one or other; you really can’t pour half a glass of water between two glasses and expect them both to become full. President Clinton helped us put 200 divisional police officers on the street through the save cops program, which the Bush administration has virtually eliminated, and with that strength and the drug treatment, and performance measures, and we also started doing a third thing, which was monitoring the lives of children who were at risk. In a city we have a class of probably around 600 children who had racked up 3 or 4 narcotics distribution arrests before their 15th birthday. From that number, a certain number will be put into body bags if there is not an affective intervention. In light of the fact that crime right has been in free fall, and continues to fall, we started to involve ourselves in services for the kids that has been affecting the number of deaths for kids. But regarding the schools, if I had to say one thing that is responsible for turning around our schools, it would be when our state chooses to have full-day kindergarten. Because, in our city there are so many children that come out of the poorest neighborhoods and poor families, that often times, given our 30-year decline in the city school system, we still struggle with an adult literacy problem. It’s easy to tell parents that they should read to their children, its much more difficult because when a parent can’t read. That early childhood program, full-day kindergarten, and then going to about 100 full-day pre-k programs. You can just track the bump of the proficiency of that first grade, that is now in the fourth grade, and you can this wave is comes up. The other grades are also improving, but it surely there is children that have been not been affected by the early childhood education. I would take that at 70%, and staff support at 30%, and give our teachers the support they need.

Question: Montgomery county and other metropolitan areas of the state are really looking forward to a more environmentally sustainable and people-oriented transportation policy that has been pursued in the recent past that has been pursued by a previous Democratic governor. Yet I’m having trouble seeing any real differences in the polices that are proposed by the Democratic candidates. I’m hoping that you can help me find the difference in your policy.

Answer: Let me try, let me also let’s be patient; in the course of this campaign the ideas will develop, and the solutions will come to the floor, and we can choose to do what we want as a people in terms of transportation. One big difference, I will not sell public land secretly; well, actually it is, you can’t really talk about transportation unless you talk about growth polices and about protecting the environment as well. I’ve been a strong advocate as Mayor for a subway system that goes east to West; I know you take that for granted here. We have a subway system that goes from North to South, which is fine if you’re going from the Northern part of the city to the Southern part of the City, its not real good from getting from east to west. So I’ve been a strong advocate of that, but I’ve been told by the Governor’s office that you need to settle for fast buses. Well we don’t want fast buses, we want to preserve our health environment, and we want a subway system that goes east to west. We need to put together a vision for transportation that is truly statewide and inclusive, and having one highway for one county is not a truly statewide vision for transportation. Now, we probably do need two need to extend some highways, but we also need to invest in mass transit, yes to rail, yes to an extended subway system, probably even extending the subway system from the water out to BWI. We also need to invest in the open space that we have, in other solutions; we can’t fund it ourselves, we will have to get money from the federal government, but we should not be told by a temporary strand of libertarian republican leaders that we should settle for fast buses, give up green space, and expect sprawl because we just can’t afford to do better. If we had a statewide vision that we could implement together, then we could get people to buy in the statewide vision, and yes, maybe actually improve the American way, and invest in a better future for our kids tomorrow by investing today in those choices. It is not an easy solution; there are multi-faceted solutions, each are which are complicated with its ups and downs. But I really do appreciate all of you coming today, and I appreciate your patience, and will appreciate your ideas over the course of the campaign. We have a website, martinomalley.com, and we have a district organizer as well, and we’re organizing Montgomery County for O’Malley, and I really appreciate you all coming.

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