It wouldn't be right to let the euphoria of Inauguration Week 2014 pass without comment on one of the more obvious parts of the Glassman Administration: Billy Boniface, the new director of administration and the former Harford County Council president.
Boniface is a likable sort, quite popular with the voters and served for the past eight years as Harford County Council president.
Former Harford County Executive Jim Harkins was also a likable sort when he was elected countywide twice after being elected a delegate representing the northern Harford County district.
Harkins, who retired after a Harford County Sheriff's Office career, was only looking out for number one – himself – when he resigned the office of county executive early to take a much higher paying job as the head of Maryland Environmental Services, a quasi-governmental agency. While what Boniface has done wasn't as blatant as the Harkins move, it's kinda the same thing.
Some believe leaving for a higher paying job, no matter the circumstances, is not only tolerated, but also expected.
Whether the decision by Harkins nearly decade ago to abandon a year and a half early those who supported his quest to be the county's elected leader was acceptable no longer matters. It does, however, serve as a reminder of how self-dealing in politics is so unsavory.
Which brings us back to Boniface, who chose to cast his lot on Glassman's coattails rather than ask the voters for a third term as county council president. If he would have asked for a third term, we most likely would have supported him, as would have the majority of those who voted.
We have no issue with him being the Director of Administration for Glassman, but it is distasteful that he helped change the system to make his immediate employment possible. When Boniface was elected, and re-elected, an elected county official had to wait two years from the end of his term before being hired as an employee of the county government.
Two years ago, Harford County voters overwhelmingly approved ending the waiting period, a measure advocated by the Harford County Council, including Boniface when he was that body's president. When the matter was first broached publicly, it was expected it was being done to facilitate Boniface's transition from the elected county council post to an appointed county government job without waiting two years between paychecks.
Boniface, certainly with the blessing of the majority of the county council and the voters, appears to have worked the system to his advantage. There's nothing wrong with that. Everything was done openly, and approved by the voters, who may or may not have been privy to, or even cared about, the motivation behind the measure.
Unknowingly, and in his own words, Boniface recently made our point for us that self-dealing is wrong.
"What we did today was wrong on so many levels, I can't even begin to tell you," Boniface said, reacting to the county's purchase of $1 million of waterfront property in Havre de Grace.
Boniface's reaction was to Harford County Executive David Craig working the system to purchase the land that Boniface's council had rejected when it had the chance.
Boniface said Craig was wrong for working the system to outmaneuver the council to get what he wanted – eternal preservation of waterfront property accessible to the public. Boniface's outrage to the land deal is sort of how we feel about the former county council president seemingly working the system to get what he wanted – the end of the two-year waiting period that allowed him to immediately get a county government job.