The Democratic Establishment has Failed Howard County

Howard County needs real change and that change needs to start with replacing the Democratic establishment, which has been focused more on protecting a power structure that serves the interests of just a handful of entrenched interests, than the voter.

For years, the Democratic establishment has leveraged the existence of racism, anti-immigrant sentiments, and other social ills to ascend to power and maintain a supermajority. The terrible zoning and land-use policies of this supermajority created poor communities in the east and wealthy communities in the west.

Now, this establishment would have the public believe that our schools are underperforming due to some racist motives of residents or that somehow the Republican Party all the way from Washington DC contributed to our problems. This explanation might pass muster in other jurisdiction, but not in Howard County.

This is a county with a two-to-one Democratic-to-Republican registration ratio. In one form or another, the county has had majority Democratic council and/or County Executive since at least 1986. It turns out, that the party of schools and education, the party of racial and economic integration, the party of immigrants, the party of equity has been in charge for over three decades.

Three decades of Democratic establishment rule and what have we got to show for it? Overcrowded schools, segregated communities, and an utterly dysfunctional party apparatus that spends more time protecting terrible politicians.

Overcrowded schools did not appear overnight. It took years and years of terrible land-use and zoning decisions. These decisions were made on a bipartisan basis. The Democratic County Executives from 2002 to 2014 and 2018 to present day were as terrible as the Republican County Executive from 1990 to 1998 and 2014 to 2018.

Every single one of them was focused on facilitating developer handouts.

Every. Single. Action. Do you know that developers have only been required to cover just less than 2% of our capital infrastructure. This is why we have staggering levels of debt. This is why our roads are congested. This is why we have a $2 billion in school deferred maintenance.

After George Floyd’s murder, the County Executive could not even set aside $3.8 million (less than 0.1% of the budget) to implement police body worn cameras, like he promised at his press-conference.

Republicans and Democrats have one key difference. When the GOP promises to take away your rights, it will keep that promise. It will even break all kinds of norms and precedent to do so.

When a Democrat promises to restore your rights, don’t hold your breath.

Just look at what County Executive Calvin Ball did to get elected. He introduced CB9-2017 to make Howard County a Sanctuary County. The bill failed, but he won his election. So what did he do after he got elected? He spent three years resisting calls to cancel the Detention Center’s ICE contract.

Instead of keeping his promise, he criminalized the undocumented immigrants using identical rhetoric as the GOP and justified maintaining the contract. Instead of meaningful actions, he has renamed the Office of Human Rights to the Office of Human Rights and Equity.

And the establishment covered for him at every turn, because the power structure has benefited from favorable and highly lucrative zoning and land-use laws and herein lies the key similarity between the Democratic and Republican establishment.

When it comes to the money issue, both parties are on the same page. Howard County’s politicians of both parties have been implementing bipartisan developer giveaways for decades.

Here are just some of the developer giveaways in just the past few months courtesy of County Executive Calvin Ball, Councilmembers Opel Jones, Christiana Rigby, and David Yungmann.

• Over $3 million in profit subsidy to a single developer;

• $6 million to a developer for a piece of land that was valued for much less;

• A highly lucrative zoning and land-use deal to descendents of slave owners;

• $55 million to another developer for a boondoggle project dubbed the “cultural center”, and this is just in 2020.

The list goes on.

And yet, every election year, the establishment riles up the voters with some rhetoric about immigration or criminal justice. The rhetoric would describe how the “Republicans are anti-immigrant” or “Republicans do not think black lives matter.”

We know who the Republicans are. They are anti-immigrants and they would take away rights.

But what did the Democratic County Executive do when given a chance? He criminalized undocumented immigrants to justify maintaining a detention center with ICE.

Look at the actions of former County Executive Ken Ulman and former Candidate for County Executive Courtney Watson, who also served on the county council for years. Both were comfortable while campaigning alongside a racist sheriff for three election cycles.

Ulman was a County Executive for eight years and helped facilitate some of the largest developer giveaways in the county’s history including the creation of the Inner Arbor Trust and the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission.

In 2021 he ran a dark-money group called The Rouse Project, funded by Howard Hughes Corporation to facilitate the takeover of the Columbia Association’s open space and perhaps siphon more taxpayer dollars for private gain in the name of diversity and inclusion.

Howard County needs change. The power structure has failed. The county is as segregated as ever. The schools are as overcrowded as ever, and the County Executive is too busy putting the word “equity” on everything to distract from his inequitable policies.