Council must resist self-dealing

Baltimore County residents should be thankful that their County Council has gone sane. Or perhaps it is just a case of temporary sanity. The council will soon – perhaps too soon – arrive at a decision about an interim replacement for late County Executive Kevin Kamenetz.

Council Chairman Julian Jones had originally stated that there was no need to hold public hearings on the decision but fortunately, he has had a change of heart. The council will hold hearings on Tuesday and invites public comment on the naming of an interim executive ("In reversal, Baltimore County Council will seek public input in replacing Kamenetz as county executive," May 17). But the decision is still pregnant with peril.

One member of the council, Vicki Almond, appears ready to participate in the decision even though she is a candidate for county executive herself. Should her colleagues choose her as the interim executive, she would be able to bolster her campaign with the authority and financial resources of the office and reward the colleagues who put her there. One hopes that she can anticipate the outrage likely to be ignited by such a maneuver. The same is true for other members of the council who might seek political or finacial profit from a tour as temporary county executive. But election tainted by such self-dealing would leave behind fetid aroma likely to cast a pall over anyone winning office on these terms.

There is a politically odorless and administratively efficient alternative to self-dealing. County Administrator Fred Homan is already performing as executive. He or Chief of Staff Don Mohler could serve out the remaining months of Kevin Kamenetz’s tragically foreshortened term. Both have long experience in the administration. Electing either of them to continue until the end of the year would seem to be a sane solution for the political puzzles now facing the county. One hopes that the council will choose this option or something like it. One hopes.

Matthew A. Crenson, Baltimore