At a recent breakfast of community leaders, Donald P. Hutchinson, the former Baltimore County executive who now heads the Greater Baltimore Committee, called C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger's win the most significant outcome of the recent election. Aside from the political hyperbole, Mr. Hutchinson was making an incisive observation.
It is vital for Baltimore city and county to work together, to set a collegial tone not only for the 1.4 million residents who live in the urban core but for all 2.4 million residents who call this region home. The election of Mr. Ruppersberger, a congenial county councilman, could facilitate cooperation.
At his inauguration yesterday, Mr. Ruppersberger, a former prosecutor whose wife is a teacher, stressed public safety, education and economic development as priorities. That is the same agenda espoused by Gov.-elect Parris N. Glendening, and probably the same triad of goals that Roger Hayden, the man Mr. Ruppersberger unseated, would say was his. There is nothing magical in selecting those three obvious areas for improvement; getting the job done is what's important.
Mr. Ruppersberger says the county is at a crossroads. It wears the aged wrinkles of a big city, and the school-crowding, bedroom-sprouting acne of a suburb. Demographics show it's no longer the suburb people escape to, but the one they pass en route to somewhere else.
The new county executive was on the money when he said Baltimore County's problem is a livability issue, not an economic one. It's not that families can't afford to reside in county communities; they choose not to. Mr. Ruppersberger is right to continue the focus begun by Mr. Hayden on revitalizing older neighborhoods -- a job as daunting but as essential as it is for his city counterparts.
Any leader is going to be at the mercy of conditions outside his control -- urban decay, economic trends, the social dysfunction bred by the loss of manufacturing jobs that were for a time this county's bread-and-butter. The one thing any leader shouldn't do, and we suspect Mr. Ruppersberger won't, is create his own dilemmas and division. Dutch Ruppersberger's political career thus far has been noteworthy for the lack of political enemies in its trail. That trait should serve him well as he leads Baltimore County.