When Gov. Martin O'Malley's aides distributed the paper text of his State of the State address Wednesday, one thing that immediately stood out was that includes so many footnotes it looked like an academic paper rather than a political speech.
If footnotes, were applause lines, it would have been one of the most popular State of the State speeches ever.
There were 73 footnotes in all, but press secretary Raquel Guillory said that's not a record for O'Malley. She said press office employees were joking that it was one less than last year, when he had 74.
The governor's web site, which carries his State of the State speeches back to 2008, shows the footnote binge began in 2009 with 35 and kept rising until leveling off this year.
Guillory said the governor likes to pepper his address with footnotes because he expects questions about whether his assertions are grounded in fact. So when the governor states, as he often does, that it now costs more to paint the Bay Bridge than it did to build the first span, you can go to the footnote and see the eastbound span cost $45 million to construct and the recent repainting project cost $72 million.
For a trivia buff, it's the best part of the speech.