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Delegation meeting turns personal
Beitzel criticizes Kelly’s referendum bill proposal
CUMBERLAND — Three of the four members of the District 1 legislative delegation to Annapolis indicated the controversy surrounding the Allegany County Board of Commissioners’ decision to create its Bureau of Police and later expand it to include taking over road patrol duties from the elected sheriff was a local issue.
And by that margin, Sen. George Edwards and Delegates LeRoy Myers and Wendell Beitzel voted against supporting Delegate Kevin Kelly’s proposed legislation that would have put the issue in the hands of the voters in the November general election.
Nearly half of Thursday’s more than three-hour public meeting at the delegation’s office in downtown Cumberland focused on the police referendum bill. Beitzel, Myers and Edwards each said they would not support the bill as drafted.
Edwards stressed the issue should be considered without “personality,” but the referendum bill discussion started off on a personal note when Beitzel, reading from a lengthy prepared statement, fired the first salvo — a personal one — toward Kelly.
“I will not support the Delegate Kelly referendum (proposal) and will seek to defeat it” if Kelly follows through on a previous pledge to file the bill in the General Assembly without the support of his delegation colleagues.
Beitzel said he believed Kelly had “no interest in letting the people decide.”
Kelly, Beitzel said, sought “personal or political gain” from his position and expressed dismay at what he called “disrespectful, offensive and intimidating e-mails” from Kelly to the delegation and copied to more than four dozen others, including the Times-News, in recent months.
Substantively, Beitzel said Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Rowe confirmed, in writing, that Kelly’s second, modified referendum bill — the delegation also voted against supporting Kelly’s referendum a year ago — would have far-reaching consequences. Beitzel said he was “troubled” by a provision of the bill that, if approved by voters, would prevent the hiring of a single additional staff member or officer without a vote of the public unless it was to fill a vacancy.
Both Beitzel and Myers expressed concern about the officers — formerly sheriff’s deputies — that could be adversely impacted if a return was sought through referendum. The officers would be unemployed, Beitzel said, and “nothing would require the sheriff to employ them.”
“What happens to the 15 individuals who were caught up in this whole mess?” Myers asked. “What happens to their families? I have a very deep concern. Do we not care about them?”
After the meeting, Kelly called the officers’ employment “a little issue” and said he was willing to work with his colleagues and Rowe to modify the bill and eliminate references to the detention center — one of the far-reaching effects of Kelly’s proposed legislation that Edwards and Myers said never was discussed as a delegation.
For his part, Kelly said it was “embarrassing” that a member of the General Assembly had to read such a document — Kelly spoke off the cuff, as did Myers, and Edwards had only notes in front of him. Kelly said Beitzel’s approach was “childish” and that his statement contained “bold-faced lies.”
“Wendell, I am very, very ashamed of you,” Kelly said.
Kelly said Beitzel “cheap-shotted” him by getting Rowe’s opinion, over which Beitzel expressed concern on several elements of Kelly’s draft bill, without coming to him prior to the meeting.
Like Kelly, Edwards said he also disagreed “with how the commissioners have done this, how they handled it. I probably would have done it different.”
Still, Kelly’s bill includes elements “totally different than what we’d talked about previously. It goes way beyond just the road patrol.”
“There isn’t any ‘right’ on this,” Edwards said. “Whatever’s done, people are going to be mad one way or another. Is the election of (new) commissioners really a referendum? Yes, it is.”
Roughly two dozen members of the public packed in the delegation’s district office at 113 Baltimore St., including Sheriff David Goad. Goad, by a court agreement, remains barred from speaking on the referendum issue. But 11 people spoke in support of the sheriff’s office again taking over road patrol duties.
“You’re the only people who can help,” said Bel Air resident Owen Dorsey. “You’re our last hope and you just shot us down.”
Cumberland resident Herb Broll said his taxes now support multiple police agencies, including Cumberland, Maryland State, the sheriff’s office and the Bureau of Police.
“I can’t afford it anymore,” Broll said.
Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.
