Legum’s New Line

The Capital, the paper of record in District 30, just endorsed my candidacy for State Delegate. Here is what they had to say:

Legum has campaigned hard to convince voters he can do the job. The attorney has shown both enterprise and a solid understanding of state issues. He wants to fast-track state permits and reduce unemployment insurance to revitalize small businesses. Instead of offering vague ideas on cutting government expenses, he is proposing four-day workweeks and zero-based budgeting.

You can read the full endorsement here.

Our campaign has also been endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County.

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Check out my opening statement at the October 2 candidate forum in Cape St. Claire:

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The Republican Governor of Indiana has an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal with some ideas to stimulate the economy that are worth thinking about. Some of his ideas seem promising:

• Payroll tax holiday. Suspend or reduce for the emergency period, say one year, the Social Security payroll tax on workers.

• Accelerated or full expensing of business investment. Economists differ about its success on past occasions, and certainly it involves a degree of pulling forward investment that would have happened eventually. But it seems well matched to the current situation where so much money is cowering on the sidelines, and a burst of new investment might jump-start growth that enables more investment in the future.

Some of his ideas I oppose strongly:

• A “freedom window.” Might we try some sort of regulatory forbearance period in which the job-killing practice of agonizingly slow environmental permitting is suspended, perhaps in favor of a self-certification safe harbor process?

I think the recent oil spill in the Gulf illustrates the danger in taking short cuts on environmental permitting.

But with unemployment over 9% nationally and over 7% in Maryland we certainly need a more aggressive effort to get people back to work. I don’t believe good ideas come with a party label.

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Delegate Bill Frick (D-Montgomery) recently introduced an interesting piece of legislation that would encourage the state government and localities to use banks chartered in Maryland for financial services. The Baltimore Sun has the story:

The Maryland General Assembly is considering legislation that would essentially give state-chartered banks an edge when bidding to serve state agencies or local governments.

Del. Bill Frick, a Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored the legislation, says he’s been frustrated watching giant out-of-state banks gouge Marylanders with high fees and rate increases.

“Why do we turn around and give them our money on state contracts?” he says. “Why do we want our state dollars going into Wall Street bonuses instead of local small business loans?”

Frick’s legislation is compelling because Maryland banks are much more likely to take the cash they earn from state government and lend it back to Marylanders. Local lending has significant economic benefit to the state, ultimately leading to more economic growth and higher tax revenue.

The legislation would provide a small edge to local banks when bidding against Wall Street giants for the state’s financial services.

You can check out the full text of Frick’s legislation HERE.

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A new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reveals that the Bay has become so polluted that swimming in it may be hazardous to your health. From the report:

The combination of warmer waters, nutrient pollution, and other factors in the Chesapeake Bay are contributing to the growth of bacteria called Vibrio that can cause life-threatening skin and blood infections and intestinal illnesses, according to Dr. Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation and current
Distinguished University Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and University of Maryland, College Park. Although infrequent, the number of annual Vibrio infection cases reported in both Virginia and Maryland has increased in recent years…

Nutrient pollution and warmer weather also stimulate the growth of harmful algal blooms. Blue green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, can cause liver disease, skin rashes, nausea, and vomiting…

During the summer, polluted runoff, animal waste, and sewage often create high bacteria levels at swimming beaches. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Pennsylvania had 22 closures at 17 swimming areas last summer; Maryland had 44 no-swimming advisories or closures at 31 beaches during the same period; and Virginia had 10 advisories at 6 beaches. But even these numbers might not reflect the true prevalence of pathogens at beaches, according to a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researcher.

CBF President William C. Baker stressed that the report does not mean that “one should never swim in local rivers or the Bay.”

Nevertheless, the report underscores that if we allow the Bay’s health to continue to deteriorate, a major source of economic activity for the state is likely to suffer. Conversely, if we take the steps necessary to restore the Bay to health, there will be significant long term economic benefit to Maryland in terms of tourism, recreation and related industries.

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Earlier, I wrote about a new lawsuit that alleges Wells Fargo systematically pushed African-Americans into subprime loans even when they qualified for a prime rate.

Tomorrow, the Baltimore Economic Crisis Response Network is organizing a protest of Wells Fargo. Some info from the organizers:

Where: Wells Fargo Home Financial Office. 1118 Light Street, Baltimore, MD 21230.

When: Thursday, June 11th, 4:30 p.m.

Why: Wells Fargo received $25 Billion in Federal funds as part of the banking bailout. Now they are refusing to extend credit to small businesses and refusing to work with homeowners to avoid foreclosures.

We will serve a “notice of default” to Wells Fargo for misusing taxpayer funds.

You can read more about the lawsuit against Wells Fargo at TPMmuckraker

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The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry is a major cause of the current economic recession. In many instances, these loans went bad because it enabled people to purchase homes they could not afford.

But now, a new law suit alleges that, in Baltimore, Wells Fargo systematically pushed African-American customers into sub-prime mortgages even when they qualified for a prime loan. The New York Times has the story:

As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

These loans, Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services…Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

…Both loan officers said the bank had given bonuses to loan officers who referred borrowers who should have qualified for a prime loan to the subprime division.

Many of the individuals who were pushed into these loans may have been able to avoid foreclosure if they were offered the prime loans for which they were qualified. A sub-prime loan on a typical $165,000 mortgage “adds more than $100,000 in interest payments.”

Wells Fargo received $25 billion from taxpayers so that it could remain adequately capitalized despite holding “troubled assets,” particularly subprime loans.

Read more coverage of the story in the Baltimore Sun and the Maryland Daily Record.

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Plans to award executives at AIG huge bonuses has created a national uproar over the last few days. Meanwhile, as Marylanders struggle to pay their utility bills, Constellation Energy Group — the parent company of BGE — created a plan to award top executives millions in “performance and retention incentives” over the next two years.

The Baltimore Sun has the details:

Constellation Energy Group, which narrowly avoided bankruptcy last year, negotiated a deal with France’s largest utility ensuring senior managers would receive up to $32 million in long-term performance and retention incentives during the next two years.

The move comes as the Baltimore company, which agreed to sell half of its nuclear power business to Electricite de France for $4.5 billion, has laid off hundreds of workers, slashed its stockholder dividend and is seeking rate increases for its BGE customers.

…”I can’t tell you the number of people who have called me, having trouble with their utility bills,” said state Sen. George Della Jr., a Baltimore Democrat. “It’s sad to think that we had a great utility here in the state of Maryland, and to reward someone for bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy and then giving them a … bonus, that’s beyond reason to me.”

In February, BGE announced that would “request an increase in the rate it charges for the delivery of electricity and natural gas.” Gov. O’Malley is proposing a partial re-regulation of the electricity industry in Maryland.

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Revenues from slot parlors in Maryland, approved by referendum last November, are lagging far behind projections. Today, the effort was dealt another blow. New data shows gambling revenues nationwide are plummeting. Bloomberg has the details:

Casino gambling revenue dropped 15 percent on the Las Vegas Strip in January and tumbled 19 percent in Atlantic City last month as the U.S. recession curbed spending on travel and betting.

…Betting proceeds at Atlantic City, New Jersey, the second- biggest U.S. casino center, fell to $310.3 million. Revenue from tables at the seaside town’s 11 casinos fell 20 percent to $96 million, while slot-machine play contracted 19 percent to $214.3 million, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission said today in an e-mailed statement.

The Maryland Daily Record asks: “At this point, why would any company want to put up the substantial capital necessary to open a slots parlor in Maryland?”

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As Marylanders struggle with skyrocketing electric bills, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. is planning what will surely be a very unpopular request: a rate increase for 2010. The Maryland Daily Record has the details:

BGE will wait to file with the Public Service Commission until later this year to request an increase in the rate it charges for the delivery of electricity and natural gas starting in 2010, said Mark Case, the firm’s vice president of regulatory affairs.

Case did not elaborate on the potential size of BGE’s rate request in an interview Thursday, but a settlement with the state requires that distribution rate increases be capped at no more than 5 percent of the distribution rate.

“We’re looking now at 2010, and essentially it’s a situation where we know with the economy and the cold weather we’ve had this winter it’s a tough time for our customers, so we’ve tried to hold out as long as we could,” Case said.

Anger over big electric bills has prompted Sen. James Rosapepe (D) and Sen. E.J. Pipkin, (R) to introduce bill that would re-regulate the electricity market.

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