Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller wants the public to believe that Senator Ulysses S. Currie “made an absent-minded mistake..lobb[ying] the government on behalf of a private entity for personal profit.”

Right.

Whom does he think he is kidding?

The Baltimore Sun reports that the

FBI’s public corruption squad is investigating whether Lanham-based Shoppers Food and Pharmacy paid Currie to use the prestige of his office to secure favorable legislation and action by state agencies.

Currie, chairman of the Budget and Taxation Committee, did not disclose his employment with Shoppers in ethics filings with the state as required…and engaged in dozens of meetings and conversations with state officials in an effort to help the grocery chain in its dealings with several agencies.

According to the Maryland Daily Record,

Currie began working for Shoppers in early 2003 and was paid more than $207,000 from that time until 2007, court documents indicate. His activities included prodding state transportation officials on installing traffic signals and approving a parking lot entrance.

“On the surface, it appears clearly an ethics law has not been adhered to,” Miller said. “Regardless of what the federal government does, this will be an issue taken up by the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics.”

The General Assembly’s ethics committee can recommend sanctions, including censure or expulsion. However, there are no civil or criminal penalties associated with violating the state ethics law at issue.

(more…)

Martin O’Malley has taken a trick from the book of attorney John P. Coale, O’Malley’s latest political appointee to the board of the University of Maryland Medical System. Coale spoke to the New York Times (”Cash Collectors For Kerry Race Run the Gamut” August 15, 2004) about how he did his job as a fundraiser for the failed John Kerry presidential bid.  According to the Times,

Whatever their motives or backgrounds, most fund-raisers [like Coale] have had extraordinary success in tapping into their own circles, opening their Rolodexes to call on business associates, friends and relatives and asking them to contribute or become fund-raisers themselves.

”We had a whole network of attorneys from the tobacco wars that I got money from,” said John P. Coale, a trial lawyer who began raising money for the campaign in 2002 and eventually recruited others to help out. ”You get to the point where you’re managing other people.”

It would seem that O’Malley knows how to do this.

Just look at what has happened to the UMMS board in the last month.  The Washington Times reported on Thursday that O’Malley has appointed seven new members, including Coale, appointed on August 11th, and Alan Fleishmann, who ran former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s failed gubernatorial bid in 2002, appointed on July 28th.

O’Malley also tagged Stephen A. Burch, former president of Comcast Cable, who has been under public scrutiny for hiring politically connected people, like the two sons of imprisoned former Senator Thomas L. Bromwell.

Additional new board appointees include: Orlan Johnson; Dr. Georges Benjamin; Louise Gonzales; and Joseph Tydings, who currently sits on the Maryland State Legislature.

And that doesn’t even include Mike Busch, Catherine Pugh, Ulysses Currie, all current members of the Maryland State Legislature.

An O’Malley spokeswoman was quoted with the following:

The governor has made appointments that he believes will serve the long-term interests of the medical system, and the doctors, researchers, students and support staff that have made the University of Maryland’s Medical System what it is today.

With O’Malley’s approval rating hovering in the 30 percent range, appointing political supporters and wealthy political patrons to high visibility positions not only can be construed as paybacks for contributions in the past, but insurance for the future, providing O’Malley both political leverage and fundraising capacity at his fingertips: cronyism at its finest.

(more…)

FYI: PoilitickerMD.com just added their Power List for 2008. Just too depressing to comment on right now. (h/t to Justine Lam at politicker)