Ed Priola for Delegate

Response to Sun Editorials

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:07:00 +0000

Below is a letter I submitted to the Sun staff in response to two recent editorial opinions.

I was stunned by the contradictions between two recent editorials published by your newspaper. In the first (“Term limits are back,” Sept. 2), you bemoaned new calls for legislative term limits in Maryland. You stated that term limits would suck the experience out of the legislature and transfer more power to the governor, staff, lobbyists and political parties. You called it a “formula for machine politics.” You then declared that frustrated voters could overcome the lock entrenched politicians have on their offices by simply voting them out.

In a subsequent editorial about redrawing political districts (“Drawing a line,” Sept. 5), you affirmed that entrenched incumbent legislators have completely rigged the system from top to bottom. You commented that incumbents enjoy the “huge advantages” of taxpayer financed staffs and generous communications budgets, becoming “magnets for cash contributions from special interests once they are elected.”

Excuse me, but isn’t this the machine politics you assert would result from imposing term limits? Our current system is more like old Soviet-style elections than what our founding fathers had in mind.

Count me as one of the nearly 8 out of 10 Americans, including Democrats, Republicans and Independents, in recent opinion polls who support term limits as one tool of restoring meaningful and truly “representative” democracy. Your editorial against term limits completely avoids the irrefutable fact that term limits guarantee voters new choices for representatives.

My Top Three Priorities

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:51:00 +0000

I was recently asked what will be my top three priorities once elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. Here’s a snapshot of what I think we need to focus on first:

1. Enact term limits on the Maryland General Assembly—to replace entrenched career politicians with citizen legislators.

The first piece of legislation I will introduce will be term limits. Our state government, designed for a long gone agrarian society, has become dysfunctional. It has been monopolized by entrenched career politicians who have never worked elsewhere. It needs complete retooling. We need periodic turnover of legislators, so that new ideas and fresh approaches might be applied to governing. My proposed legislation will require that legislators sit out one term after two consecutive terms in the same office. They may return to run for public office again only after living under the laws they pass for everyone else.

2. Restore Maryland to a business friendly state where private enterprises create jobs and attract investment.

I will fight to reduce the excessive tax and regulatory burdens on businesses. Under my proposed legislation, small businesses in particular will be given substantial support. Start-up companies will be given an incubation period during which they will be encouraged to internally invest, innovate and hire staff. My legislation will facilitate their growth with a flat tax. That way, entrepreneurs will be able to focus on building their business as opposed to managing mountains of paperwork.

3. End the Legislature’s “tax and spend” mantra.

“Doing more with less” must be the motto for Maryland government. We need to implement management practices that measure the performance of government employees based upon their productivity and not how many hours they sat at their desks. This means zero-based budgeting, which requires each governmental unit to justify the existence of every budget line item, every budget cycle. It means adopting innovations like the four-day work week for civil servants. Working ten hours for four days a week is popular with government workers in Nebraska. Employees now have more quality time with their families, while citizens have access to government offices like the Motor Vehicle Administration during extended hours. Moreover, public servants use less transportation fuel commuting and the roads are less congested as a result.

Ten Questions

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Visit Red Maryland today to read my answers to ten questions asked by Mark Newgent.

Term Limits Are Needed to Repair Our Dysfunctional Government

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:36:00 +0000

It’s official! Last Thursday, I drove to Annapolis and placed my name on the ballot for the November 2010 election.

I had to do it on Thursday because on Friday, May 28, the Maryland State Board of Elections was closed. Governor O’Malley gave state employees a generous, extended Memorial Day “vacation.” Of course, I am talking about the furloughs used to balance the books on what can best be described as a decades-long wasteful spending binge at the employees’ expense…

Just the week before, the Governor signed an executive order authorizing furloughs and pay cuts for state employees for the 2011 fiscal year too… except this time he granted furloughed workers paid administrative leave in 2012 for the same amounts. You got it right: those vacations will be at our (taxpayers) expense…

For myself, I have decided that the government in Annapolis is thoroughly dysfunctional and that the people running the show there are dinosaurs. They have lost touch with the reality of Maryland’s working people and families. So many of them have been in the Legislature for 20, 30 or 40 years… they need to be retired.

District 13 in Howard County has its own share of political dinosaurs. The three incumbent delegates have spent 50+ years in elected office!

We need to put an end to Jurassic government. We need elected officials who will serve for a limited period of time in Annapolis, then come back to live under the laws they pass for everyone else.

This is why I am now, more than ever, convinced that we need term limits imposed upon all state elected officials. Term limits will retire the “dinosaurs” that roam the halls of the State Capitol and bring back a “citizen legislature.”

Solving Maryland's Chronic Spending Crisis

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:27:00 +0000

By Reforming Our Jurassic Era Government and Its Wasteful Philosophy of "Tax and Spend"

We have a structural problem in Maryland, but it isn’t limited to a structural deficit.

Our government was designed for an agrarian age that has long since vanished. We have a weak Legislature that meets for only three months at the beginning of each year, and a Board of Public Works that spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in a non-transparent manner the rest of the time. As a result, we have ill informed, part-time legislators more focused on reelection and retirement benefits than on managing government efficiently.

Administratively, we are locked into a labyrinth of: 1) spending mandates; 2) compartmentalized programs; 3) dedicated funding sources; and, 4) an all too evident lack of flexibility in management options.

I say it is time to begin reforming our Jurassic era government and its wasteful philosophy of “tax and spend”!

This philosophy evokes the old adage that “when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” In the Annapolis context of taxes and spending, when politicians think that all they have to solve problems with is spending, every taxpayer looks like an ATM.

We must reorder the way we govern our state and right-size our government, orienting decision makers toward a more flexible, 21st century management model.

I support a two-pronged approach to retooling the Jurassic government structure in Annapolis.

First, we must redirect the focus of legislators toward their constituents’ needs and away from their own reelection.

Once elected, I will push to incorporate disincentives for career politicians to remain in office for decades (by eliminating their retirement benefits) and to curb their ability to doll out pork to interest groups.

The first piece of legislation I will sponsor will impose term limits. That is one check on political power that should have been passed decades ago.

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine argued that elected officials should “return and mix again with the general body of electors.” Thomas Paine believed in a system of citizen legislators and so do I.

Term limits guarantee a turnover of legislators, an interruption in the old-boy networks; they also bring in new, energized people with different skill sets and new ideas into government.

Most of all, term limits cut short the ambitions of politicians obsessed with their own careers. Let them sit out at least one term every eight years and live under the laws they pass for the rest of us!

Second, we need to implement more efficient and flexible forms of management in our government administration.

To begin, we have to restore the trust our civil servants have in government by guarantying that they will never again be used as pawns to balance the budget through furloughs and layoffs after a decades-long spending binge.

Then, we need to implement the best practices of performance based management in government. I advocate for the creation of results-oriented work environments (ROWE) in our administrative structures, where practicable.

ROWE allows managers and employees to create flexible work schemes, four-day work weeks, job sharing schedules, etc. The four-day work week was implemented last year in Nebraska with excellent productivity results; 80% of the workforce approves of it.

Our old model of management assumes that physical presence equals results. This new management model lets employees determine where and how they accomplish goals.

The results include a much better balance between work and family life; a reduction in expenditures for office overhead; less time wasted on commuting; and, less fuel being consumed. Our transportation system would have reduced demands upon it and we would put fewer pollutants into the air. Managers could spend more time coaching employees and less time disciplining them.

Conversely, some poor performing employees would no longer explain away low performance on the grounds of illness or a personal crisis. I have experienced this kind of work environment for a number of years myself and I can testify that it really works.

It’s not a question of “if,” but “when” we will shift from Jurassic government toward oversight by citizen legislators and 21st century management. I simply want to accelerate this process.

Why I Opposed Combined Reporting

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:39:00 +0000

Last Wednesday, I testified in the Maryland Senate Budget and Taxation Committee in opposition to Senate Bill 354, legislation calling for implementation of "combined reporting" in the state beginning January 1, 2011.

Combined reporting is a legal requirement that a multi-state corporation must (1) report all of its income to the state, even that which was earned outside of the state's borders, and then (2) pay taxes based on how much business the state thinks actually occurred within the state.

I am primarily opposed to implementing combined reporting at this time because it represents an enormous rush to judgment by the Maryland Assembly that will drive businesses out of Maryland.

Proponents of combined reporting, such as Delegate Frank Turner (D- Howard County), like to point out that it has been adopted in 23 other states. What he and others leave out is that the results from its implementation are at best a mixed bag. A number of studies conducted by state governments and economists call into question the claim of any certain increases in tax revenues. Rather, these studies show that combined reporting produces unpredictable revenue results and, over the long run, may actually reduce corporate tax revenues. At least two states, New York and Vermont, ultimately lost income under combined reporting ($680 million and $2.7 million, respectively).

The Maryland General Assembly does not yet know or understand the full impact combined reporting will have on Maryland's businesses and tax revenues. That is why they set up a Commission to study it for at least another year. What we do know is that combined reporting is not only a tax, but also a significant regulatory burden. Implementation requirements fall most heavily upon smaller businesses and more fragile business sectors.

According to the October 1, 2009 report of the Maryland Business Tax Reform Commission, the estimated effect of combined reporting varies wildly between different business sectors, with multimillion dollar swings canceling out to a net gain of $109-$170 million for the state (using 2006 data). 2,418 businesses would be paying more in taxes and 1,906 businesses would be paying less, causing massive shifts in tax liability, rather than closing tax loopholes.

Delegate Turner said the "winners and losers" aspect is merely a function of combined reporting instilling fairness in the tax structure. He also stated that "combined reporting levels the playing field, and makes it a lot more fair." I say that implementing an unproven tax system in the middle of a recession is unfair, irresponsible and threatens Maryland's business stability. It will cause more suffering for working families.

It should be remembered that corporate income tax is only a fraction of the total taxes companies pay to state and local governments each year. Companies also pay sales taxes, property taxes, etc., all of which add up to millions or billions of dollars each year. Encouraging companies to leave Maryland could have a larger negative effect on the state's revenues than the potential increase in corporate income tax.

The bottom line is that corporations do not pay taxes; individuals do. Increases in corporate tax rates will be passed on to consumers and will only serve to increase prices, reduce employment and lower the overall amount of our state's wealth.

For all these reasons, I urged the General Assembly to resist the impulse to increase business taxes in the depth of a recession and to let the Commission they set up complete its study.

Speaking Against Pay Raises for Politicians

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Here is a excerpt from a recent article published in The Baltimore Sun entitled Affordable Housing Remains a Dispute in Columbia Rezoning:

[...] The Tuesday night hearing also dealt with a citizens' commission's recommendations for modest pay increases for the county executive and council members elected in November. The commission, required by county charter, suggested raising council members' pay $500 plus annual inflation adjustments, with the chairman's differential increasing from $1,000 to $2,500 more per year. The new executive would get $2,500 more per year plus inflation. That would mean the executive who takes office in December would start at $162,698, and council members would get $53,900, though current members have donated a portion of their pay due to the recession. The council can accept or reduce the recommendations, but not add to them.

Only one person, Republican candidate for the House of Delegates Ed Priola, spoke on the bill, opposing any pay increases. Questioned by Chairwoman Courtney Watson, Priola said he'd like to see council salaries cut in half, to about $26,000.

"This is a position many people would serve in for $1 a year," he said. [...]

Click here to read the full story

I Pledge Never to Raise Taxes

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:19:00 +0000

On January 8, 2010, during Delegate Warren Miller's annual Legislative Breakfast, I signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge of "Americans for Tax Reform," committing to "oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes."

To read more about the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, visit http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge-a2882.

Why Maryland Needs More Sunlight

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:50:00 +0000

In a democracy, information about the process, not just the end results of policy decisions that impact our jobs and families, is critical. So why is it that so many politicians try to keep us in the dark? It’s simple: knowledge and power are entwined and they want to monopolize both.

A case in point was last week’s U.S. Senate Finance Committee decision to reject a proposal that would have made health care legislation, along with its cost, public on the Internet 72 hours before it is voted on. The single-party ruling political elites rejected the proposal despite a recent Rasmussen poll showing that 83% of the public supports the idea. By the time most citizens heard about it, it was too late to do something about it.

Undeniably, sunlight is still the best antiseptic for government arrogance. The more citizens see politicians’ behavior in real time, the more they can take action to blunt it.

Let’s start shining more sunlight in Maryland to end the one-party stranglehold on information coming form our state legislature. Let’s start with a common sense plan of broadcasting unfiltered television and Internet coverage of all state legislative activities, just like C-SPAN does for Congress. Let’s call it “MD-SPAN” (Maryland Sunlight Public Affairs Network).

MD-SPAN will bring government decisions closer to citizens for their scrutiny. We will hear and see exactly what our representatives are doing with our tax dollars, in real time, so we can act if necessary. We will also likely increase the amount of hours legislators work on the legislative floor. According to one study, since C-SPAN began covering Congress in 1979, the U.S. House of Representatives sessions have increased by about two minutes per bill and the Senate sessions by about four minutes.

With 43 states and many localities having adopted the C-SPAN model of broadcasting the activities of elected officials, why hasn’t Maryland? New York voters have had access to televised proceedings of their legislature for several years. The Florida Channel offers television coverage of all three branches of Florida's government. Oregon offers unedited cable coverage and live streaming video.

Maryland’s local jurisdictions are increasing their government coverage. The Howard County Council began live-streaming its sessions this month. Prince George’s County Council sessions are videotaped and broadcast on the county cable system on the same day. Baltimore City Council meetings are televised live and re-broadcast.

Despite the widespread availability of technology, the majority party in the Maryland General Assembly has not loosened its grip on the public’s access to its decision making process. According to its website, “Maryland General Assembly's legislative information is updated each night during the 90-day session.” But, to receive more frequent “up-to-the-minute” updates you must pay $800 for an annual subscription.

MD-SPAN is a step into the 21st century and an idea that’s long overdue.

Columbia Flier

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:58:00 +0000

Here is a excerpt from recent article published in the Columbia Flier entitled Two GOP Candidates Name Tax Hikes in Top Concerns:

[...] Edward Priola, a Columbia Republican, is running for a seat representing District 13 in the Maryland House of Delegates. [...]

He said he is concerned about tax rates in Maryland and Howard County.

"It's not fair to pass the poor management on the backs of civil service employees," he said. "Furloughs are just the wrong way to balance the budget."

Priola called Maryland state government an "effectively dysfunctional system" and said he believes more common sense is needed within the legislature.

"I think the real problem is that, for the most part, lawmakers are not doing their homework, not reading the laws they pass at any levels," he said. [...]

Click here to read the full story