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Smith: Does Governor Really Love Baltimore?

Tom Chaulkey
Credit Tom Chaulkey

    

Governor Hogan says he loves Baltimore. He said he wants Baltimore to be the economic engine of Maryland. Really?

At the same time, he says he won’t go forward with a program designed to give the city and surrounding counties the transportation system an economic engine needs. And then, the governor and his transportation secretary, Pete Rahn, announced 700 million or so for highways but none of it for the city.

No easing of the Red Line pain here. No suggested Red Line alternatives. Not even thinking about alternatives apparently.

Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford suggested a better solution for the city would be bus rapid transit. Errant musings? Random thoughts of no official significance? Who knows? Those three words were absent from the secretary’s briefing to legislators on Tuesday.

Recent reports from Annapolis suggest that Mr. Hogan will deal with political matters first. Baltimore didn’t vote for him. The counties and rural areas of the state did. So he’s spending all the available money on suburban and rural roads.

When SecretaryRahnfinished, state Sen. Nathaniel McFadden asked if anything was left. No, he said.

It can’t be a surprise. Elections have consequences. But hey, it’s early in his term. Maybe he really does have something in mind for the city. If not, maybe he should throttle back on the “We love Baltimore” language.

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Fraser Smith has been in the news business for over 30 years. He began his reportorial career with the Jersey Journal, a daily New Jersey newspaper and then moved on to the Providence Journal in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1969 Fraser won a prestigious American Political Science Association Public Affairs Fellowship, which enabled him to devote a year to graduate study at Yale University. In 1977, Fraser was hired away by The Baltimore Sun where in 1981, he moved to the newspaper's Washington bureau to focus on policy problems and their everyday effect on Marylanders. In 1983, he became the Sun's chief political reporter.