Editor’s Notebook: Olive branches may have thorns; also remembering Bruce Michalec

We appreciate the olive branch extended to Democrats by Dirk Haire, head of the Maryland Republican Party.

“As chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, I am publicly taking the lead right now on ending this destructive game of tit-for-tat,” he said Tuesday. “It has gone on for too many years in politics, and someone needs to break this unproductive cycle.”

There’s a lot of truth in the statement. We just happen to disagree because of the timing. Once a complaint is filed, it should be resolved by the proper authorities.

And we can’t help but notice that Haire’s olive branch came with a few thorns attached.

Even as he was calling for a truce among the parties, Haire revealed that someone — no one seems to know who — filed a complaint last month against the Democratic candidate for county executive, Steuart Pittman. The apparent violation was failing to include an authority line on certain campaign materials.

The call for peace came just days after Pittman filed a complaint Monday with the county Ethics Commission against County Executive Steve Schuh, a Republican. This complaint was whether Schuh crossed the line into improper use of taxpayer resources for political purposes by blasting Pittman in an email from his office to constituents.

Both are legitimate concerns.

As far as well can tell, neither side is withdrawing.

Voters deserve to know if the rules have been broken.

Many reporters, photographers

and editors at The Capital had the opportunity to talk with Bruce Michalec over the years.

We can attest to the veracity of praise heaped upon him this week, marking the death of the first director the Anne Arundel County Food and Resource Bank. He died Saturday at age 79 after a long battle with diabetes.

The food bank’s mission, according to its website, is to work with other organizations “to provide food for the hungry and essential basic necessities to those in need and to help families and individuals get out of crisis and become self-sufficient.”

For more than 30 years, nobody embodied that statement more than Michalec. There are thousands of people in Anne Arundel County who simply would have gone hungry without him.

He was a gentle persuader, and we will miss his calls politely reminding us that it was time to write about hunger in the community again, or to help replenish his larder in time for the holidays, or for summer, or whenever more help was needed.

We were always happy to help, and happy to have called Michalec a friend.