I want to know who approached who about Ms. Rolley's theft

Is this a pre-election trick by the Mayor to bury the tax story about the Columbia house. Or did the Rolley’s, who seem to subsist on government jobs leak this to make Rawlings-Blake look bad?

Grand Prix, Trees, and Court Discretion

A permit question: Dave Troy went to court under the section of City Code that requires notice be given for trees to come down*, but the City code (Article 7, 53-12) also states that no one may cut or trim any street tree other than under the direction of Public Works and with a permit issued by the Department of Public Works. 

So I get that notice wasn’t given, but was a permit issued? I thinks that’s the question I’d ask next. Especially since the City Code also says the court has the discretion to issue fines for violating the permit sections of the code - but not the section regarding notice.

*It doesn’t look like there are any penalties for violating the section of City Code that requires notice because it’s not one of the sections listed under the penalty article.

Results from Baltimore's Budget (December 2010)

This link is a blog post that was linked to from this article which appeared in my Google reader feed today. Good to know that someone is taking lessons away from Baltimore’s budget process. The article makes it sound like outcome based budgeting magically closed a $121M budget gap. What about all those new taxes? This article should not just be about the creative cuts made, especially when we’re all dropping a few more pennies in the city’s coffer every time we cross the street (hyperbole, I know, but not so untrue with the bottle tax).  I also have a hard time believing in the improvements author Jim Chrisinger describes; I have to re-put in 311 requests for housings inspections for housing code enforcement issues with too much frequency to believe there’s been some kind of innovation that has streamlined the enforcement processes.  

On the other hand, the idea of transferring the utility costs to the individual departments seems brilliant. I would assume it’s the same amount of money, so if the agency doesn’t lower costs, no skin of their back; but if they do have save that money, I’d hope they could transfer it to another area where they need some extra dollars. That I may have to try and find more information about.

Two sun articles on Police Response...

The title links to Michael Dresser’s post on one woman’s tribulations in trying to get a response from police after a car accident. And this article by Rebekah Brown is about City Councilman Curran advising communities to tell 911 operators a gun is involved to speed police response.

Maybe Brown just needs to advise Dresser’s blog subject to tell the police a gun was involved? 

“If you want to know the truth,” Welch says now, “I really don’t remember the incident.”

Welch has a lot of competition to not have a pat answer for the “so, you fired that gun why again” question.