Suddenly, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and Baltimore's powerful Sen. Clarence W. Blount say they have seen the light: Legislative scholarships are bad, they now confess, and it's time to do away with them.
Funny, but that's not what the two men said last session, when they blocked all efforts to abolish this lavish patronage plum for legislators.
In the next four-year term, lawmakers will hand out more than $32 million in scholarship aid with few set guidelines on how the money should be distributed. As a result, the legislative scholarship program has been marred by embarrassments of all kinds, including many scholarships being doled out to families of political allies, relatives and even to the politicians' own children.
The flagrant abuses over the years and the growing awareness of taxpayers that their money is being spent to help incumbents win the loyalty of the parents and relatives of these scholarship recipients led to public outrage over the program earlier this year. The House of Delegates voted overwhelmingly to abolish the perk. But Mr. Miller and Mr. Blount refused to budge. They bottled up the legislation. Incumbent senators ended up with a political black eye.
But now the continuing public pressure has persuaded the Senate president and the chairman of the panel that handles college-scholarship legislation to look differently at reform. They are well aware that most of the incoming freshmen legislators are on record favoring abolition of the senatorial scholarship program.
But Mr. Miller, ever the politician, is still trying to hang on to some of the political pork. He is suggesting a four-year phase-out of the program, which would let the group of legislators elected last month control the full $32 million in scholarship perks right up till the next election in 1998. He also wants any future program to continue the unrealistic practice of doling out this money equally to all 47 senatorial districts.
Yet the needs for scholarship money vary from district to district. Some districts have far more college-qualified students lacking the finances to continue their education than others. It is best to let an impartial state scholarship administration use the $32 million to hand out awards to students strictly on the basis of demonstrated need or merit.
Getting the politicians out of the college-scholarship business ought to be a priority in the next session. Any attempt by Mr. Miller or others to play more games with these awards should be thwarted.