Ed Priola for Delegate

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.”