HYPOCRISY – A MARYLAND TRADITION

HYPOCRISY – A MARYLAND TRADITION

BY KEN ROSSIGNOL

THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

If it weren’t for hypocrisy, St. Mary’s County would have nothing to learn from its public officials. Tuesday and Wednesday, March 25^th and 26^th, when the St. Mary’s Commissioners and St. Mary’s Board of Education began to dig into the proposed budgets for the looming fiscal year as well as future years, the chest-beating, crying, whining, and even tears being shed by Board of Education member Cathy Allen with a box of tissues being passed to her as she bemoaned anticipated cuts to programs and services to students, elevated the political chicanery to new levels.  

St. Mary’s Public Schools Superintendent Scott Smith, baying like a wounded sea lion, ended the Wednesday evening meeting following the presentations of several dozen citizens who performed a carefully choreographed one-act play of “It’s All for the Children,” thinking that the public is going to forget how the teachers’ union all demanded that the children learn by zoom during covid and teacher’s pay also needed to zoom to record heights.  

Even Smith admitted that the results of the school system are dismal; children aren’t learning at expected levels.  But Smith and School Board President Karin Bailey must have forgotten how they promoted LGBT school plays and how the school board blew a million bucks on a hot dog stand at a high school.

The superintendent must think the public has amnesia about how the school board blew eleven million dollars on paving sports fields with artificial turf instead of providing metal detectors at the high school’s front doors. But Smith played out his graphics, noting that there won’t be money for security in the proposed school budget, along with half a dozen other needs. The video of the old sea lion performing for the adoring crowd of those who want the moon as long as the taxpayers cough up more money is a performance worthy of an old English teacher. Perhaps Smith will revive the James Adams Floating Theatre and star in performances at Leonardtown Wharf to raise funds for schools and provide a venue for other actors.

With an extraordinary drama in Annapolis playing out as Democrat Loons who control the Maryland General Assembly foisted a historic tax hike on the State of Maryland while playing a shell game of shoving off state pensions for teachers and other fees to the counties, one of the loons in House of Delegates was exposed in an article in Maryland Matters. Delegate Brian Crosby (D-29B, St. Mary’s) voted to raise taxes on small businesses on the same day he announced that he was relocating his defense contracting firm to Virginia to avoid the higher taxes he supports being imposed on businesses. Crosby says he has nailed down a Navy contract worth $5 billion and can’t afford to operate his firm in Maryland.  This snake slithered into political office in 2018 and is likely to slither out in 2026 unless a more enormous snake swallows it up in the meantime.

Crosby, who packs big piles of campaign donations into his coffers from big energy companies and was responsible for passing legislation that eliminated competition for Baltimore Gas & Electric, then vilified a consultant, former Deputy Comptroller Len Foxwell, who advocates for relief for consumers from Crosby’s nefarious dance with the devils of higher home electric rates for millions of Marylanders. Crosby claimed that Foxwell was unnecessarily firing people up over their electric bills. An article in Talbot Spy by Clayton Mitchell fired back at Crosby. No one needs to fire these consumers up over the bills; they are roasting and drowning in high energy costs with the climate change film-film of the liberals that have closed coal power plants in Maryland and sending rates soaring.

 Since Crosby is moving his tech firm to Virginia, he ought to pack up his household and family and get out of Dodge while he can before DOGE comes looking for him and the others who have robbed Maryland in the past two years.

The St. Mary’s County Commissioners, who have been loading up tax hikes and adding tens of millions to the county credit card with more public debt, claimed on March 25^th that the budget work session was just the first one and when it becomes clear what funds won’t be available from the state, the commissioners will learn what it can and cannot afford.

These bozo Commissioners have blown millions on the planning for a new Sheriff’s headquarters in Leonardtown that may end up costing $60 million, spent a million on a Sheriff’s office in California that wasn’t needed, and another six million on a Sheriff’s station in Lexington Park, which wasn’t needed, and hardly used. Committing public funds to a YMCA was another waste of public funds when private funds are used elsewhere. However, the RINO Republicans on the St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners are just more tax and spend Democrats posing as Republicans.

Further along, the road to Perdition is the $14,000 each month for two years; the St. Mary’s Commissioners are paying for consultants to ram through a newly updated comprehensive plan that the overpaid Land Use staff failed to create. The report from the consultant presented at the Commissioners’ meeting and shown to the Planning Commission the night before indicates that the total number of citizens who participated in ten meetings and two online presentations is less than 300.

For a county of well over 120,000 people, having a rush of presentations over five weeks in January and early February to build a consensus reveals that the real audience for the commissioners is the developers who are lurking in the shadows with pockets of campaign cash to influence future development in the town centers and village centers for commercial development.  The public meetings are merely a subterfuge for the typical time-honored corruption in planning, zoning, and sewer allocations that have played out over the past fifty years.

Marxist Moron Wes Moore, the Governor who has spent and looted the treasury of a $5 billion surplus left by Gov. Larry Hogan in just two years, has even tried to blame President Donald Trump for the disappearing funds. Moore is a wily Pirate Chieftain of dubious background and stolen valor, certainly not a good role model for young people unless they are on the fast track from school to prison.