Vote against Question A on the Harford County Ballot [Editorial]

Harford County voters should already know what they can do with Question A on the Nov. 8 general election ballot – send it to a resounding defeat.As we pointed out in this space back in April, this proposed amendment to the Harford County Charter is unwarranted, unnecessary and, frankly, serves no purpose that we can discern, other than to possibly obfuscate its real intent.Certainly our citizens have yet to receive a reasonable explanation from Harford County Executive Barry Glassman and his aides beyond that the amendment will promote &quot;efficiency.&quot;Its alleged purpose aside, Question A is downright confusing, a fact noted by the Harford County Board of Elections, which has tried to rectify that problem with an explanation on its website. Unfortunately, whether intentional or not, the wording of the amendment does not rise to the level of clearly telling people what will happen if they vote for it, and that's a big problem.The amendment removes one of the duties of the director of procurement: &quot;Providing for the purchase, sale or lease of real property by the County in accordance with and in the manner prescribed by the Council by law.&quot; That's all it says: Delete this clause.Where those duties will fall is not explained, other than in a preamble in the legislation the County Council adopted in April stating the duties are &quot;a function more effectively and efficiently managed by the Office of the Director of Administration.&quot; You won't, however, find anything about the Office of the Director of Administration in Question A as it appears on your ballot.Reason/motive aside, this is a frivolous use of the charter amendment process, which has seen too many abuses in recent years, in particular the 2012 amendment that removed the two-year ban on county council members leaving office and then going to work for county government.More importantly, there's a reason why Harford County's voters approved the addition of the procurement section to the charter in 1976: To spell out how the county should conduct its business of executing contracts and handling its real estate, rather than leaving it up to each county executive and his or her successors to make such determinations as they saw fit.The Glassman administration says the charter amendment won't change the way they do business, and we believe that's probably correct. The Board of Estimates, which was created as part of the same 1976 procurement section of the charter, will still vote on any real estate transactions and the County Council will still have to approve any planned sale of county-owned real estate.In addition, the current county executive has already turned the responsibility for presiding over the board of estimates to his director of administration, which under the law is his prerogative.So, we are back to our original point. Why is this amendment necessary? It isn't unless there's some ulterior motive that Glassman's people aren't being straight about with the county's citizens.Vote against Question A and let them come back with a better explanation – if they can.

Vote against Question A on the Harford County Ballot [Editorial]

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