The two candidates for Anne Arundel County executive were at the newsroom of The Sun in Pasadena on Oct. 10 to debate. Democrat Theodore J. Sophocleus, a state delegate and former County Council member, and Republican John G. Gary, a state delegate, were questioned by three Sun reporters for more than an hour. What follows is an edited transcript of that exchange.
Mr. Gary, it costs about $66,000 to train and equip each police officer added to the 600 the county already has. How many more patrol men and women can county taxpayers afford to put on the street?
Gary: I believe in the current budget -- and it will depend on how the revenues run -- that you can assume that you are going to have approximately $30 million growth in the budget if you have a 4 percent growth each year. So assuming that you set your priorities for some type of standard pay raises for the general work force, as well as an increase in the cost of government, which are the non-personnel items that you have. Taking that in mind, I projected that you can probably afford 20 police officers a year, possibly more, depending on how the economy holds. If that's the case, you need 20, plus some staff support. That's what I have in my blueprint of a budget and I believe is affordable under the current tax cap that we are working under. If the revenues for income are true then you have a higher revenue gross, then I believe you could possibly put more than that on. But, being conservative and being within a realistic frame, I believe that 20 is about the number that would be affordable under current expenses.
Sophocleus: Basically, I have said the first two years of our administration would need about 49 officers. This was to implement the program of neighborhood policing in overlap shifts, which would cost about $1.2 million per year. You just take that portion and our new growth is one way of doing it and another way will be establishing a conservation program within the county. That will save anywhere from $2 million to $4 million under current expenses. So, we will be able to save that money and certainly reallocate in different areas.
Gary: One other item I think is important, we both said and I have said it before, and I think we both intend to do it when we come to office, is that all of our personnel staff has to be reviewed to see if it is functioning in the manner that it should. There may be some cost savings by restructuring the Police Department and if there are, then you can put more police officers on the street.
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Mr. Sophocleus, describe your concept of neighborhood policing and differentiate it from current police operations and your opponent's plan.
Sophocleus: Basically, neighborhood policing involves using sectors to divide the areas in which your police officer operates ,, under. You actually use existing neighborhoods as boundaries. The other thing we do is bring in an overlap shift in police so that there is more coverage, they can see there's more availability, that's why you need the additional police officers. We also want to do some things, if possible, within the community itself in little strip centers or shopping centers where you have a storefront where people can get involved more. Take Back Our Streets is a good example, the PACT operation, that was where you bring specialized police officers into an area to get rid of the crime, you target areas with that. You don't impact the neighborhood numbers in known terms of police that are involved there so that's another step forward. We're concentrating more on drugs, drug users, drug sellers on the streets with these PACT units. Also, in our crime package we have a portion of it that identifies the repeat offender -- who keeps track of them, where they are at all given times. We can certainly evaluate it in mode of operation, if you will, within a neighborhood. So, it changes the philosophy a little bit from those concepts of a certain area that overlaps neighborhoods to a neighborhood concept with more neighborhood involvement, the opening of facilities, gyms, where the people can go, gather, and communicate, play ball, have meetings. But it's going to take involvement from the communities. Also, leaning toward a high-tech DNA testing, smart car -- they have what they call surveillance vans, different things that allow us to bring the police together in a neighborhood rather than going back to a central location.
Gary: Well, I've never seen a storefront yet that could arrest anybody. So, he and I definitely disagree on that issue. I believe the storefront concept just creates more shuffling in paperwork and more bureaucracy within the system. I believe the idea is to get more police officers on the street so that you can shrink the size of the district that they have to respond in. I plan to do that. I do agree with Take Back Our Streets, but that's a voluntary program that was done by the police officers, it wasn't something that was mandated by the county executive. Consequently, I agree in bringing the community involvement in and bringing the community in wherever they can act as assistance. I don't think that's a basis for the foundation of your officers on the street. You got to have that basic troop out there.
Sophocleus: The storefront certainly don't arrest. You put police in to operate out of a central location so that the citizens have somewhere to go to instead of running to the Northern District, or Southern District, or Eastern District, or Western District, that's the first thing. Second thing is, of course, my people back up with more officers on the street than John does and that's what you need. You need them to patrol the neighborhoods so that people can see them, feel them, touch them, be able to communicate with them -- that's what my program does. It involves people on the street, brings them into the community and allows a focal point for that community to go and respond to any crime.
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Mr. Gary, in your announcement speech, you said one of your major focuses as county executive would be crime, and that you would begin by 'securing our borders against the criminals who would intend to invade our citizenry and cause us problems.' Could you explain what you mean?
Gary: If you follow up the whole statement you will find that I also made the statement that we were going to try and institute some new technology that's been brought on board. One of those technologies is an intervention type of plan where you can catch drunk or drug-impaired drivers as they cross the borders into your county. I plan to put on the street these mobile units that have the ability, when a police officer stops someone [and] finds that they don't blow [a .10 or higher] on a Breathalyzer for alcohol they may suspect that they have drugs in their system. There's technology available now that you can bring a mobile unit out, test these people with this mobile unit. It's a urine test and it will tell you in 3 minutes if they have drugs in their system. It does two things: One, it allows you to arrest them right on the spot. Secondly, it allows you, it gives you probable cause to search their vehicle for trafficking drugs through your system. So, my idea was that I am going to stop the drug trafficking. I got nailed by your newspaper with that, which was kind of surprising to me because I had been down Annapolis the very day that story broke and found drug trafficking right on Clay Street coming from Washington, D.C. So, I know that it is happening, we can prove that it is happening and it was intended to be an intervention program that I will initiate.
Sophocleus: Basically, at this point, we do drug stops now and alcohol stops, if you will, for cause. At that point they can refuse to take a test, or they can take a test. If they refuse to take it, then they have a certain period of time where the attorneys have to be present, and some other legalese that are involved there. So that is one method. We have that available today. We don't have to put a special unit on the street that's going to do it. They can breathalyze them. They can do the urine analysis, they can do blood testing. Whatever they need to do right now, if in fact they can show cause, if in fact their attorneys agree or they agree. So, that's one part of it. The other part that I believe is that you have to take care of crime from the inside out. Ninety percent of the crime is committed by Anne Arundel County residents, it's not coming from across the borders as well. We got to take care of it from inside the county toward our borders and work in a cooperative effort with our borders.
Gary: We know that the crime is being committed by people within our borders. But we also know that we are not manufacturing the drugs here in our area. So, if we can stop the trafficking of drugs across our borders, we are going to reduce the amount of crime that is here. And while we have the current stopping system we have right now, the city of Memphis reduced their drug trafficking by 40 percent by using these mobile units. If I can reduce the drug trafficking by 40 percent in Anne Arundel County, I will have a major effect in reducing crime.
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Mr. Sophocleus, a report prepared by Carter Goble Associates for the county during your last term on the County Council projected a dire need for a new detention center. You are on record opposing plans to build a $24 million auxiliary jail in Glen Burnie. Please suggest alternative proposals.
Sophocleus: I have offered alternatives before and you can take a look and evaluate other programs that are available from all over the state. One is the [Correctional Adult Rehabilitation Center] in Cecil County, which is in operation. Another is a brace, a home security system if you will, for non-violent offenders only. The other is in terms of a DWI, or alcohol abuse or drug abuse treatment centers. I'm not against incarcerating criminals, they have to be incarcerated. Our detention center is meant to hold non-violent criminals or at least put violent criminals on their way out of the system and as a pre-trial they are held there before they go to court and they move from the courts to the jails if they are convicted not through our detention center. Some are sent there if [the sentence] is 18 months or less. That's who is brought there. A report that was done in 1990 certainly indicated the bracelet program and indicated that some other drug abuse programs and alcohol programs if they were implemented . . . will reduce the impact on the jail itself, on jail population and make available beds for critically necessary, if in fact, our population is going to expand. I happen to feel that, not only is the Ordnance Road not a good site, I also happen to believe the Jennifer Road is not a good site, it should not be expanded there, either. The other problem we looked at in other cases where they put jails in certain areas -- and I haven't even really gotten into the environmental aspects of it, it's a different // issue -- in other areas where there's been a problem with the site, the lawsuits they came back from inmates was certainly incredible. It cost a lot of money. That's something you have to look at down the road. I'm not an EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] specialist, but we had a problem from the standpoint of No. 1, spending this kind of money. There's disagreement right now between the administration and the detention center superintendent. One says they want a dormitory-like atmosphere, the other says 'I want a medium security prison.' So, there are some things I think I have to be allowed the first couple months to evaluate all the information that is available and which direction you want to go in.
Gary: First off, let me tell you the bracelet system that the state's now using was proposed by myself and five other delegates and we had to force it upon [Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services] Bishop Robinson at the time because Mr. Robinson was so set against using this system because of the potential danger of the intake system failing. If the intake system fails, you end up with a potentially dangerous criminal on the bracelet. He really resisted it. We finally forced it into the area where we had a limited use of it. Secondly, without question, we need the detention center. The right site is the Ordnance Road site, it's bound by two highways on one side and by the water on the other. Any other place that you choose to sit that detention center in this county is going to impact homes and residents right immediate to it.
Sophocleus: Again, I happen to disagree with Mr. Gary. I don't believe the Ordnance Road site or any of the North County sites that were selected are certainly appropriate. I also don't believe that we have to jump into -- is it a $20 million situation or is it a $50 million, or $57 million? -- I don't know. Under the commission that was set aside on Mr. Neall, in their program they say that the bracelet program should be implemented and could save space in the detention center and open up the availability of that.
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Mr. Gary, in the late 1970s you were president of Watch, an organization of socially conservative parents and you've sponsored socially conservative legislation, particularly dealing with sex education, in Maryland's General Assembly. Can voters expect that a school board appointed by you would reflect a conservative social agenda?
Gary: I'd have to say they can expect that I am going to look for accountability in the school system. The legislation that you referred to was not legislation that dealt with curriculum, it was legislation that said, 'if you had curriculum in the school system it must be available to the parents so that the parents know what is being taught to the kids.' That was the whole thrust of our legislation. What we have right now is that a parent literally has to go into the school and sit there and look at the materials in the classroom. They can't remove it from the school system, they don't have any access to it so they really don't know what's being put in front of their children. So, that was the legislation that you are talking about. Secondly, I believe that the current system has proven that there is a lack of accountability and it proved in the last budgetary item in which there was a 20 percent growth in administration salaries, and a 3 percent reduction in textbook expenditures. That was published by several newspapers and found to be true. I believe that if you had an accountable system, where they had to account to the people who were voting for the taxpayers money, you would have a different set of circumstances because they would know that kind of misappropriation of money could mean they would be removed from office. Mr. Sophocleus has challenged that and says it becomes political. I think the current system is political and I don't believe that the general public thinks that the current system is working. So, if he wants to stick with the current system, that's fine. I want to try something different. I have no idea if it is going to work, but I think it is worth trying.
Sophocleus: Quite frankly, I believe that the system that Mr. Gary is advocating is a manipulation system. It's the full control of a school board, the school activities and curriculum. I believe that it is not the intent of the mandate submitted by the state. I believe the nominating convention works if you leave it alone, if you don't keep messing around with it. If you want someone to be in that system, have them participate in that system. There's been some great, great people that have come out of that system. If you want to make it political then you give it to politicians to make the appointment in terms of without any input of the citizenry. That just doesn't make any sense to me, it never will. And the explanation that Mr. Gary has just don't carry any water.
Gary: Well, it's interesting that he didn't object to, 'I'm going down to No. 7 in selecting Dottie Chaney [for the school board]' when he was a member of the council, because that was certainly manipulation. It's the year many of you covered the [school board nominating] convention and said that the right wingers had taken control and we managed to get three people nominated and they wouldn't pick any of them because they believed they were too politically to the right. So they wound up manipulating the system to their advantage.
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Mr. Sophocleus, in an attempt to directly address voter dissatisfaction with county schools, Mr. Gary has proposed allowing the county executive to appoint school board members and making him directly responsible for education. He also has suggested allowing the County Council to remove certain board members. You oppose this. Why?
Sophocleus: If you want to make a system a witch hunt, you want to make it a political system that you allow the County Council every time there is an objection with the school board decision to be able to have a recall. Mr. Gary proposes a resolution be passed. Even if a resolution is passed, it's worthless. It doesn't mean a thing. Because a resolution is not binding, it is not binding by anyone, it's a suggestion. I can see you bringing back someone from the Board of Education because they have done something you don't think is correct, sitting them down in front of you and then letting them have it if you don't like them -- in public for a non-paying job that was supposed to be handled by the citizens. You not only will not have anyone participating in the system, you'll have people running away from the system. I don't believe that it is the intent of the school board and I don't believe that it is the intent of the nomination convention. If the politicians stay out of it, if they listen to the nomination convention they go through they system and they have people that run. If you help them with the system in terms of getting a name, the addresses of people they have to call to come into the system. They make their selection, you give that selection to the governor, the system's got to work. It's no different than electing a guy in the House of Delegates, or County Council, or county executive. If you don't like what they do than you have recall. Every two weeks you can have a recall on every elected official in the state of Maryland. I guarantee you would have had a few the last year, the last couple of years. I just don't think that is an effective system. I think it's counterproductive, it polarizes the people in the system, it polarizes the neighbors in the system and I don't think that is the right way to approach it.
Gary: Well, obviously we disagree on that. He had very little confidence in the County Council apparently which he served on. I don't have that lack of faith in the County Council. I believe it would take extraordinary circumstances for the County Council to come forth with a resolution to remove somebody from an appointed position. They know the sensitivity of the issue. They also know how volatile that would be out of the political arena. So, I don't think they're likely to do that. It would take four of them under my proposal to make the resolution. It would take five of them to rescind the person and bring them back. That's not something that happens very often on the County Council, and I think it would be using great reserve and I respect the integrity of elected officials -- the council is our elected body -- and I think they could do a good job.
Sophocleus: The council was elected to represent us and the mandate for the state is clear on the separation between that council and the school board and the school administration. It has nothing to do with the integrity of the council. I know, I have been on the council. Mr. Gary should have served on the council for eight years and seen some of the fights. I've watched some of the fights over these past four years and I have been rather embarrassed by some of it. All you need is one or two incidents to happen and you'll destroy the entire system. You'll lose faith not only in our council but you lose faith in our school board.
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Mr. Gary, despite the adequate facilities law -- the community impact fees paid by developers and comprehensive rezoning instituted during the 1980s to control the county's growth -- residents complain about overcrowded schools and congested roads. What will you do to alleviate those problems and to prevent them from recurring?
Gary: First, let me say that I blame my opponent for the overcrowding in schools and he knows it. They didn't spend the adequate funds, although they had the revenue. They didn't spend it on the educational facilities at the time and I have used the figures several times. Underneath $2 million spent over an eight-year period when they had growth it was so enormous in this county it was out of proportion and they didn't know how to control it. Secondly, the Neall administration spent $121 million in four years and I'm proposing to spend somewhere near $137 million to catch up. That's part of the school construction problem. How do you control the growth? You direct it into certain areas where you have infrastructure. I plan to do that, particularly in the Odenton area in the town center, the Parole town center and the redevelopment of Glen Burnie. I think those three areas would be our main growth hubs over the next few years and I think if we do that, we can control adequate facilities. The last point I'd like to make, if they hadn't adopted the impact fees which we voted against, we wouldn't have had that problem. Because the impact fees allowed them to negotiate growth where they wanted to do it. If the developer had the money he could develop there. All he had to do was comply with the law. Under the old [law], the facilities had to be provided by the taxpayer and by the council and that kept you with some type of comprehensive rezoning that you actually could control. As it is now, he's got the bucks and he can put the facilities in there, he can negotiate it through the impact fees and he can put it there and it's a problem.
Sophocleus: Basically, Mr. Gary was aware of what happened in 1982. When we took over this County Council, it was the single largest disaster happening in this county. The main structures were gone, we were pouring sludge and whatever [in the waterways] every day. The first four years were used to create infrastructure. We also started planning for the schools. They were planned in the Sophocleus' years? Is that what we're calling it now? . . . At the same time we started moving the plans forward according to the areas that we are going to grow in. We took the comprehensive rezoning plan, which we hadn't done because the previous administration hadn't done it in time, we then moved it forward. We also took the planning money and moved ahead with construction and then it happened in the Neall years when they had to finish the construction. All plans and initiatives were created by our [Lighthizer] administration. Under the Neall administration not one new project has been put on board.
Gary: That is the biggest bunch of nonsense I have ever heard. Every time somebody catches him on something where he's done something wrong, he either blames the previous administration or the current administration for the problem. He came in, he had all these problems. He went out, he had all these problems. The fact of the matter is the school boards have consistently put in huge requests for school construction and they [County Council] continuously underfunded it every year.
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Mr. Sophocleus, you propose to eliminate waivers to the adequate facilities ordinance, and Mr. Gary has criticized that. Why are you right and he wrong?
Sophocleus: The system as it works today is not working. There is litigation that needs to be done. There are things that have to be done within a certain area. I would guess that probably 75 percent of the waivers indicate that they were done environmentally, whatever else the case may be, to exist. There are some used that way to circumvent the adequate facilities ordinance and I think that's where I have my problem. I believe you have to get back, take the waiver system out, reconstruct what it does, what it's supposed to do, what its intent was. The intent was never to circumvent any system. The perception among the public today, every community I've been in, every association I've spoken to, every group I've been in, they think that the waiver system is corrupt and that something is happening within that system to allow a builder to go forward. Probably, nothing further from the truth, but that system as we know it today has got to be eliminated and we have to construct a system that the citizens have an involvement in, participate in and understand. Right now, there is no understanding there and I can tell you that the way the waiver system exists today is perceived as a free ride for developers and as again, it's not the case in most cases, but it's got to be reviewed and reconstituted and the way it is today is just wrong.
Gary: Well, we kind of agree to agree on this because while I support the proposal of the waiver system I think it does have to be revamped and you do have to set certain criteria with it because the current criteria is kind of foggy -- which I might add is during his watch again. The criteria that they use for waivers was established during the [planned unit development] period of time in which he allowed 6,000 classroom waivers and now criticizes the Neall administration because they allowed 151 waivers, which amount to 551 classroom waivers. So, there is a substantial difference in the way you deal with it. I think it does have to be reviewed and we do have to set certain criteria for it so that it is used prudently.
Sophocleus: Basically, in our [Lighthizer] administration -- John always points to my administration but always forgets the last four years or points to Lighthizer or someone else -- we took off in the comprehensive rezoning maps over 40,000 residences because the county couldn't afford the services and couldn't afford the infrastructure for it. In the comprehensive rezoning plan, we went into each community and they decided what they wanted in their communities. Not by politicians, not by zoning people, but by citizens' groups.
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Mr. Gary, Mr. Neall has forecast that the county's 2-year-old tax cap could bite deeply into county services if inflation ever rises above the 4.5 percent limit on property tax revenues and state aid is drastically cut back. Would you favor repealing the tax cap if county services began to suffer as a result of a lack of revenue?
Gary: Wow, you put a lot of ifs in there. No. 1, you said if we had inflation, if we had a recession, if we find those situations. Obviously, that's what an executive does. If you face those kinds things, then you have to take the issue back to the public. If I face those kinds of things, I would be willing to take it back to the public for a decision, but I don't foresee that happening under the current economic forecasts that are there. There is a major difference in how we would run the government. I have given you an outline of how I think you can manage the government under a 4 percent or 4 1/2 percent growth in the budget. My opponent has never operated under that manner and now tells you that he can. We have a spending affordability committee that exists in the legislature that we adhere to every year since I have been in the legislature. The current administration hasn't done it any better than the other one did, but they did keep it within the tax cap proposal. His administration or the Sophocleus' years, I won't get into administration, the Sophocleus' years never had a budget that they couldn't find to spend 9 percent or more. And that is the problem. He's now telling you that he can live within a tax cap but he operated under 9 percent growth for the whole time he was in there and then still didn't provide the adequate facilities that we needed throughout the county. So there is a difference in how we would set our priorities. I can clearly state to you that I have my priorities straight.
Sophocleus: Basically, I heard Mr. Gary's priorities and it is a percentage here, a percentage there, 2 percent there, 1 percent here. That's not the way you manage a government. You manage a government by going in and finding out what the problem areas are, how they have to be fixed, where you can cut and where you can add if you have to add. Unfortunately, he doesn't believe in that. He wants to sit down with a structured formula. That means absolutely nothing. Shoot from the hip management again. Could I live within that budget? I said I would live within that budget in 1990, not now. I established the spending affordability commission in the county because we knew we were heading into tougher times. And yes, the money that came in then we did spend. We spent it on things like firehouses, schools, buildings that were collapsing, open space, Quiet Waters [Park in Annapolis], B & A Trail, you pick it. I'd like to know which one of those projects Mr. Gary wouldn't have approved.
Gary: I wouldn't have approved tying a new administration to a brand new building [Heritage office complex on Riva Road, Annapolis] at the time you were trying to downsize the government. Tying them with a million-dollar contract that was either nonrefundable or buy a $10 million building. I wouldn't have stuck them with that. I wouldn't have stuck them with mahogany desk and brass doorknobs and fancy perks for themselves. That's what I wouldn't have stuck them with.
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Mr. Sophocleus, county voters expressed dissatisfaction with their local government midway through Republican County Executive Robert R. Neall's term, by passing the property tax cap, which limits property tax revenues. Why do you feel you would be better than your opponent at managing residents' demands for greater services and lower taxes?
Sophocleus: I think my experience in managing is much broader than my opponent's. I've managed multimillion-dollar corporations. I've managed corner drug stores. I've managed medium-sized corporations. I've been in county government for eight years. I've been in state government for one year. So my management experience is broad. We've saved the corporate world millions and millions of dollars. I've saved in the county government too, through utilities we saved $9 million. We've managed and worked through the systems and knew how the systems work and know what management means. I know what management means to go in and make the tough decisions. My opponent sits there and he wants to talk about doorknobs, and that's simply Bob Neall in 1990. The very significance of knowing how to manage to begin with if he understood what happened with Heritage. The courthouse was supposed to go where the Arundel Center is. Someone decided that was not a very good place to put it so we're spending $58 million for a new courthouse. It's fine, that was what they wanted to do. But that was part of the transaction that happened at Heritage. Mr. Neall, when he was elected, asked me about Heritage and I told him that as far as I was concerned he could have gone with a rent or lease agreement with the developer because times were tough. . . . But that's what it was, instead of spending $14 million, coming back later and trying to sell it, coming back later and try to rent it to other taxpayers in this county, taking them out of the taxes and putting them into our particular buildings. That's not a good management technique and that's where we vary. I think you need a good strong management background but you need to have compassion, you need to have to worry about the quality of life in people and make the tough decisions when you have to. I've done it in the corporate world, I've done it in the public sector and I think that's where my advantages are.
Gary: Well, it's interesting, and there he goes again blaming the next administration. The fact of the matter is they took $5 million of the state's money that we gave them and spent it [to buy] Quiet Water Farms when it was supposed to be used to pay for the courthouse. So we would have had that money if they had not wasted that. Besides that, when you talk about management, he doesn't even know my management background. I started out as a 23-year-old manager. I managed seven employees from Day One when I first stepped out of school, so I have plenty of experience. But all that is kind of silly because the real management experience comes from managing the state budget. I had to put up with a Democratically controlled administration who didn't know anything but tax and spent my entire time and I managed to cut millions of dollars out of the budget, far more than Mr. Sophocleus could have saved the whole world.
Sophocleus: Considering their budget was $11 billion and mine was $500 million I guess you should be able to cut a little bit more. Mr. Gary fell asleep at the switch, someone lost a billion dollars in the state government that we had to make up for. We lost our reputation, if you will, we just couldn't function for a while there. We spent two years, three years just going ahead and trying to find money, make cuts, do something else. One billion dollars and now we're looking at maybe even bigger deficits, while he's set on appropriations by the way.
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Mr. Gary, if you are elected, would you keep your wife, Ruthanne, in her current county job as community service coordinator or in any other county position?
Gary: I'm going to ask for a legal opinion on that because my wife's a merit employee and that creates a double problem for me. When the Neall administration came in they removed the person who was currently there arbitrarily and it ended up costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars because she filed a grievance, sued the county and won. I've got to be careful what I do there. I also have to be careful of the fact that I think I could end up in a situation where there is some kind of discrimination because my wife is related to me and is currently in a job that I now later come in to. My normal response would be, Ruthanne and I will probably be in different endeavors of life, but I can't arbitrarily say that because I don't know if I can legally remove her from the position. I'm sure that Ted probably will if he comes in, but I'm not going to say that arbitrarily because I saw the mistake they made with Rose Church. That was a mistake, I didn't agree with it when they did it and I'm going to be very cautious with that move. My wife took that job to serve Bob Neall. She didn't take it to serve us. We don't live off of the dole of the taxpayer and never have. If she keeps the job or not, probably not that job, she would probably be moved into some other place where she is not under my direct supervision. I believe the charter prevents her from being under my direct supervision so I don't think she could operate under any part of the department that is directly under the county executive and Ted probably knew that, too. But if she challenged it and wanted a merit position, which I don't think she will, she could be moved into another part of the government where she is not under my direct supervision.
Sophocleus: I've never commented on any other county employee and I wouldn't comment on Ruthanne Gary either. I know there will be a re-evaluation of the area where they work and how the work is done and that sort of thing. But I wouldn't make a public statement as to whether Ruthanne Gary would stay or Ruthanne would go. I don't think that is appropriate. I certainly don't believe that you should be making your decision based on who your opponent is in an election. A $65,000 salary is a salary you certainly evaluate each year and make the determination if you're getting your money's worth as I talked about before, looking at every department. That will be just one of them.
Gary: I only answered it because it happens to be my wife. I happen to agree with Ted. We couldn't be looking at other people's positions at this point in time, but because it is my wife it puts me in an unusual situation. The charter actually prohibits you from discussing employment prior to your winning the office to begin with once you've filed for office. So, you just made me break the charter.
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Mr. Sophocleus, you've been severely criticized for your 1989 vote to enhance pensions for appointed and elected officials because it directly benefited you and your wife, who served as your council aide. Did you do anything wrong?
Sophocleus: Did I do anything wrong? In hindsight right now, it being 20/20, yes I would never have voted that way. At the time we did the vote, again I'll repeat what I said over and over and over, everyone came forward to us -- from the pension oversight committee to the actuary to the unions, to the budget office, payroll office -- everyone pointed to this particular impact, this particular portion of the bill as it related to the entire rest of the pension bills came down before the county that day. We asked several relative questions, you know that story too, and who asked the questions and let us all go through that again and made a vote accordingly. During the election of 1990 we found that there were some loopholes that should have been closed and should have never been opened and said at that time, along with our opponent, 'we will close it immediately in 1990.' And it would have been easy to close or eliminate a lot of these problems. Unfortunately, they weren't closed, they continued and it's gotten worse instead of better for many multiple reasons. We can pin it on a lot of different people, we can pin it on the current administration, the past administration, the council. The vote was 7-0 on the council and move forward from there. As I say, once we got into it we saw what could happen, it should have been changed in 1990 and certainly we would have done that immediately. It would have been the first order of business coming down.
Gary: First let me say this, and I've said this to the other newspaper and I'll say it again, I don't believe that Ted voted for that bill to enhance himself, as the accusations have been made throughout the period of time. I do believe it was a political vote. He takes exception with me on that. But the fact of the matter is, there is no reason in the world to increase, even by Ted's admission, $1.2 million to the richest pension system in the United States. I can say that because I know the state pension system is No. 1 and this one is richer than ours. There is no reason, no benefit, to do it other than to keep Lighthizer's people on board, which is the explanation that Ted gave last week. There's no reason to keep Lighthizer's people on board either unless you are going to extract a political favor from it and that's an endorsement when you run for county executive.
Sophocleus: First of all, when the endorsement from the county executive came last time out, Mr. Lighthizer endorsed and supported Bobby Neall. He went out there in the end. You don't do political favors. As far as keeping people in place, you can see what happens when you don't. I think the conditions that exist in the county is the perfect example. And that's what we were told and what we evaluated and what we did. I did. Mr. Gary indicated that he believed this was all a back-room deal that was done by the people. It never came to me and I never participated in any types of those programs.
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Mr. Sophocleus, would you outline your trash disposal and recycling plan?
Sophocleus: There are several aspects of it. No. 1, is certainly doing more with county buildings in terms of what we are doing to recycle. Then we get into the apartments and multi-family complexes. I'd like to use our economic development agency to encourage recycling industry to come to our county so that we don't have to go looking for a market, we can create a market. We were approached by plastic recycling people who wanted to take our plastic and make it into picnic benches, guardrails, gym sets. . . . I'd like to see us encourage that and that would certainly be able to do something with our flow instead of landfilling it, which doesn't make sense to me. Also composting operations similar to what we've seen in surrounding areas and working hand-in-hand with the surrounding jurisdictions to come with either a regional disposition, alternative or some other method instead of just landfilling.
Gary: I have a six-point plan that may end up being a six- or eight-point plan. I think we have to site a new landfill. We have to continue the recycling plan that we're on, which includes getting yard waste. I think we have to use restaurant technology, there's technology aboard ships right now that can be used in restaurants that presses it down into small amounts. And I think we have to enter into a joint venture with Baltimore City to see if we can help their current plans become economically viable. If we can do all those things I think we will be able to control our solid waste. I think if we don't, we're going to have big problems.
Sophocleus: Whatever we look at -- the trash flow, the stream -- is not enough in one county to handle a major disposal unit. That's why you need to do a regional concept. We can't generate, we can't guarantee, enough trash in Anne Arundel County for a major operation.
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Mr. Gary, the Millersville landfill is going to be at capacity by 2007, or sooner. According to the county solid waste plan, within the next year or so a decision has to be made whether to build a 500-acre or more landfill, at $1 million an acre, or go toward an incinerator. What's your position? And what is your feeling about Mr. Sophocleus' plan to recycle 53 percent of our garbage?
Gary: I frankly think we are both at a loss on this issue. It's going to be difficult to deal with. While we would like to get it to 53 percent [recycling], Ted knows that one of the problems with recyclables is finding a market for them. I'm not certain I totally agree with everything you [Ted] said. I think if we can stop dumping rubble in the Millersville landfill, you'll extend the life of it past 2007, which I would like to do. We can do that by putting liners in there and finding other sites. There are commercial rubble landfills around today, plus there are new ways to grind up the rubble and put it into smaller containers and use it in commercial rubble fills. One of the things that we may have to look at is stopping rubble dumping at the Millersville landfill so that we're only taking in solid waste from houses. I have no plan for building an incinerator, that's for sure. But I am very amenable to looking at the Baltimore City plan to bring their's up to modern Clean Air [Act] standards and then enter into an agreement with them to ship some of our waste to them to make their plant work. We don't have enough garbage in our area to maintain an incinerator by ourself. So we need some kind of agreement with the other jurisdictions. I think Baltimore City is already prepared to do that and they're probably the most likely one to do it with.
Sophocleus: Basically we have some problems right now, I don't know where they're coming from, but the cancer problem in this county is certainly significant. Is it due to the [smoke]stack industries? Is it from hazardous waste materials? We don't know. I think you certainly have to not look favorably to an incinerator in this area. I served on the solid waste commission for the county back in the '70s and our job was to spot a landfill, and it becomes a very cumbersome problem, but it can be done. I think a commission has to be sent forth and take a look and see what direction we go in and what areas we're looking at that we can put another landfill in. The regional concept, the composting, that's why I think bringing the recycling industry into this area is essential. I think you've got to go out and get it aggressively.
Gary: I said earlier that we're probably going to have to face siting a new landfill. It's almost as tough as the detention center issue. If he [Sophocleus] can't make a decision on the detention issue, I think he's going to have just as difficult a time when we go to site a landfill. I can make the tough decision, and I will if that's what we have to do.
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Mr. Sophocleus, in your Green Plan 2000, you've proposed planting 1 million trees in the county in the next four years. That means 685 trees would have to be planted every day during your term. Is that a realistic goal?
Sophocleus: California planted a million of them in one year, of course they have a lot more area. It is realistic. It's probably very optimistic. But I'd rather shoot for an optimistic goal than shooting for something that's not working at all. These reforestation monies aren't being used at all. The money is languishing in an account somewhere. There's a program that's national now, it's called Releaf, and they work very strenuously to reach their goals in terms of planting. . . . We've worked with Boy Scouts, we've worked with PTAs that will go out and plant a thousand trees on a weekend without too much problem at all. It's aggressive . . . but it's better than saying I'm going to plant 100,000 trees and only planting 50,000. I think there's plenty of land that certainly can use it -- around our schools and around our parks. Kinder Park is one that comes to mind right away that we can do some things in. A lot of beautification projects that it doesn't cost any money to do it.
Gary: I've joked with Ted about getting a shovel and getting out there and planting trees right away because he'd have to get an awful lot of them planted quickly. It's a laudable goal and I agree in terms of what he's trying to do. One of the ways that we have to do it is we have to change the restrictions right now when we get easements from property owners. Currently when we ask them for easements, so that they can plant trees, it's in perpetuity, it's forever. I think that's ridiculous because most people are not going to give you that easement because they give up the use of their land forever. But you could do it for like a 20-year plan. You could say 'We want the easement for a 20-year period . . . plant the trees, let them grow for 20 years and then if you can sell them or harvest them, that's fine.'
Sophocleus: No rebuttal.
*
Mr. Gary, you talked a little bit earlier about your budget blueprint. I think in that you promised to hire 40 new teachers, about 20 police officers, 10 firefighters, a staff for one new library, senior center or other new facility a year. Is that a realistic goal?
Gary: If it wasn't, I wouldn't have given it to you. The reason I gave it to you is that I believe my opponent and I strongly disagree on how to do budgeting. It's funny that I find him criticizing me when I have fought the tax-and-spending of the Democratic administration for my entire career in the legislature and have been lauded by many of them as being one of the few people who would stand up against taxing and spending. I've given you a budget that's nothing more than a blueprint. It's not written in stone by any stretch of the imagination. That's what an executive does. He sets priorities. The only reason I gave it to you is I wanted to show you, the media and the public, the difficult times we face in the next four years. Four percent growth is tough. If you have 4 percent growth in the budget, you are greatly limited to what you can and can't do. But if you map out a plan with some reasonable goals in it, you can accomplish it. All I was showing you with the blueprint is what can be done and that people shouldn't be so fearful of the tax cap. The tax cap is not Chicken Little. The sky's not falling in because of the tax cap. It simply means you've got to be more frugal with your expenditures.
Sophocleus: Basically the tax cap is a mandatory sentence, not something you have an option on, so you've got to live within that criteria. So to make determinations before going into transition and taking a look at what's happening in our systems and say 'I need 40 teachers' or 'I need 20 police officers' or whatever is difficult. The reason I have the police in there is because I know what I need to implement the program for neighborhood policing. Forty teachers or 50 teachers or maybe even 70 teachers, I don't know if it depends on the flows in some areas and maybe it means you can't hire in some other areas. Maybe you have to take some out of public works. You just don't know what directions you're going to go in. So, yeah, you can do percentages and increases in budgets and where you think you can go, but that's not really a constructive plan . . . but it doesn't really indicate you're going to put money in its proper place.
Gary: Anyone who's followed my career on the [House] Appropriations Committee would say that I have a strong set of priorities and criteria I use -- I've always used it -- it has to be in the best interest of the public or I won't vote for it. That's the same way for striking any budget, and this budget will be no different. Ted knows that I did not write these things in stone. This was nothing more than the layout of how you could do it if you had to do it and you could see something in black and white that makes sense to the public.
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Mr. Sophocleus, Mr. Gary has proposed spending $137 million ** on new school construction over the next four years and has blasted the Lighthizer administration and the County Council you served on for not building enough schools. What do you think of Mr. Gary's proposal?
Sophocleus: You can criticize anyone you want, but you've got to be there and act on things that are occurring at the time. There have been many, many varied capital projects that we had to do. We always kept spending budgets in the school somewhere between $20 and $30 million. Our advisers at the bond market said you should keep it at about 10 percent of your capital programs and should stay about 10 percent a year of your gross budgets. We were running between $500,000 and $600,000, so the monies we were borrowing were between 50 and 60 . . . now the borrowing is up to around $79, $89 million, so of course that would change the ratios of what you would fund and how you would fund them. There were other priorities, certainly, that had to be established early on. That's called management, as well. But to point the fingers and say 'you did this and you did that,' you weren't there to begin with, you weren't there when it ended. You don't know what the needs were and the demands were. Do I think it's reasonable? If he's talking strictly about county dollars, not matched funds from the state, then he's looking at I guess around $35 million per year just in our funds, unless he's figuring forward funding and getting some money back later, no I don't know that that's a reasonable amount or if the bond markets will tolerate it. If he's talking about $20 to $25 million with, of course, more money coming in from the state, that is taking a different approach, a different presentation you make to the bond markets. During the Lighthizer administration, when I served on the council, we went from a AA-minus bond rating to a AA-plus bond rating. They looked at us and said it was one of the best-run counties in the country and they gave us a AA-plus rating. So you've got to put everything into perspective. Is it conceivable we could do that? Yes, it is conceivable you could do that. If it's all county money, it might put a little strain on the other projects and the other infrastructure demands that are going to be within the county system.
Gary: Ted, I don't know where you were, but I was over in your office talking to you on a regular basis about state monies for school construction during that period of time. I'm very familiar with what the local schools had requested, what the needs were and what was funded, and I complained about it the total time I was there. It might be of interest to know that during the period of time was one of my most successful years in the legislature in obtaining money for school construction. What happened was you would send money over to the [County] Council and they would get into little fights over what they were going to do with the money. A good example of that was the Shipley's Choice Elementary School, which my opponent wanted to take the state money and use it for two projects in his district in North County. He opposed it, we survived and we won. I'm very aware of the school construction needs and what they were at the time and we funded them at the state to the maximum that we could possibly get out of the General Assembly.
Sophocleus: Yeah, on Shipley's Choice, it was one of those projects that never appeared on the lists and then all of the sudden it jumped to the top of the list. And we wouldn't accept it until they explained why to us; why we had to build Shipley's Choice? The communities came in, they discussed it with the Board of Education and we funded it. There was never a negative vote on that. It was an explanation of why it should jump from not being on the list at all to being No. 1. The parents, the families, the neighbors, the school board, everyone came in and made their points and we went ahead and funded the school. We worked with the state legislature, of course you have to. That's why I asked him about his $137 million, was it all county funds or were there state funds coming over?
CANDIDATES
JOHN G. GARY (R)
Age: 50.
Home: Millersville.
Education: Glen Burnie Senior High School.
Work: Custom draper, general building contractor, business consultant.
Volunteer: President, Havenwood Community Association, 1966; president, Brightwood Community Association, 1969; Greater Severna Park Council, 1970; president, WATCH, 1978-1981; past member of Severna Park and Pasadena Jaycees and Mountain Road Kiwanis Club.
Political: State delegate since 1982; county liquor board, 1979-1982; delegate to the Republican Party National
Convention, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992.
THEODORE J. SOPHOCLEUS (D)
Age: 55.
Home: Linthicum.
Education: Patterson Park High School (Baltimore); bachelor's degree (pharmacology), University of Maryland.
Work: Pharmacist; store manager, Read's drug stores, 1962-1976; corporate director of professional training and management for 104-store Read's chain, 1976-1977; president, Discount Pharmacy, 1977-1980; owner, Ted's Pharmacy, 1980-1990.
Volunteer: President, Anne Arundel County Optimist; board of directors, American Red Cross, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Community Action Agency; president, Curtis Bay Athletic Club; past president, Crestwood Improvement Association and Overlook Elementary PTA; member, Linthicum Shipley Improvement Association.
Political: State delegate since 1993; County Council, 1982-1990; Anne Arundel County Democratic Campaign Coordinator, 1992.
TTC