General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Martin O'Malley clearly enjoys meeting people & the press. Joyful and smart on the trail [View all]bigtree
(86,360 posts)...I get all of my information from a fictional television show and it's producer/writer.
from David Freedlander at Daily Beast:
You Have Martin O'Malley All Wrong
From 2000 to 2010, the incidence of crime in Baltimore dropped 43 percent, outpacing by a stretch the 11 percent drop that the nation saw during that period. The crime rate dropped by 40 percent. Graduation rates rose. Median home prices doubled. A new biotech park was built on the citys east side. A new performing arts center was built on the west side. OMalley was obsessed with numbers and metrics, and set up a 311 call center to track citizen complaints. A program called Project 5000 enlisted volunteer attorneys to help deal with the citys massive vacant home problem as titles to those homes was eventually transferred to individuals and nonprofits for redevelopment. The school system was pulled back from the fiscal brink. CitiStat, designed to track crime, helped bring the crime rate down and created a budget surplus of $54 million that was then reinvested in schools and programs for children. At last, the population stabilized. It was no longer necessary to flee, if you could. The number of college-educated 25-to-34-year-olds living within three miles of downtown Baltimore increased 92 percent in the 10 years after OMalley became mayor, fourth among the nations 51st-largest metro areas.
Time magazine named OMalley one of the five best big-city mayors in America. Esquire named him the best young mayor in America. CitiStat won Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government Innovations in American Government Award.
To be sure, change was both too fast and too slow. The blight and poverty remained. And although crime dropped, OMalleys zero tolerance policing policy created a backlash in the very communities it was designed to protect. But those policies were not as unpopular as the rioting now in the streets of Baltimore would suggest.
I dont recall OMalley stating that he would do something about black crime, just crime, wrote liberal Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodericks toward the end of OMalleys time in City Hall. Coming out of the long, dreary Schmoke years, Baltimoreans appreciated OMalleys almost singular focus, along with millions in increased funding dedicated to drug treatment for the citys thousands of addicts who contribute, directly and indirectly, to 80 percent of crime.
He was trying to stop the crime on the streets. People were getting killed daily on Old York Road and in Park Heights, Robert Nowlin, a Baltimore community activist, told The Daily Beast. He did something a lot of these mayors dont do: He walked with the small people. A lot of these mayors stay in the affluent areas. He walked the streets...
...Tying OMalley to Baltimore is an old political saw. When he tried to run for governor of Maryland, Republicans ran ads with flashing police lights, talked about how OMalley would do for Baltimore what he did for Maryland. OMalley won statewide twice though, boosted by those same Baltimore neighborhoods that he is now blamed for turning into powder kegs...
read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/06/you-have-martin-o-malley-all-wrong.html