Hogan knocks plan for squeegee workers. What else is new?
Leave it to Larry Hogan, Maryland’s lame duck governor, to do what he always does when the opportunity appears tantalizingly before him — trash Baltimore’s political leadership with disingenuous zing.
“Completely absurd and ridiculous” is how Hogan described Mayor Brandon Scott’s plan for dealing with the squeegee guys. “We need crackdowns, not handouts,” Hogan told TV reporters, striking a two-bit tough-guy pose while making the recommendations of the Squeegee Collaborative sound like welfare for criminals.
Apparently Hogan did not have the benefit of the collaborative’s full 27-page report. Had he spoken to Scott or one of his deputies before shooting from the lip, the Republican governor might have learned that the specific recommendation he trashed is not a “handout” but an incentive to get squeegee workers, most of them boys and young men, off the streets and into jobs.
And isn’t that what we all want?
Here’s what the recommendation says: “Incentivize squeegee workers to participate in workforce, education and entrepreneurship training by providing additional financial support for up to one year. Squeegee workers would be required to commit to no longer participating in squeegee activity and participating in service offerings.”
So, if the city can find the money, it might be able to provide some cash — perhaps a modest $250 a month — while a squeegee worker makes a transition to work that does not require washing windshields at busy intersections.
Had Hogan been interested in something other than bashing the city’s Democratic leadership again, he might have learned that this idea of paying squeegee workers to get off the corners came from an experiment Scott’s staff ran a year ago. The idea was to learn what’s up with squeegee workers — why they do what they do — and what can be done to move them to safer, more sustainable jobs.
And, excuse me for asking again, isn’t that what we all want?
In November 2021, the mayor rolled out a “90-day squeegee action plan” that put 42 young people to work. Two hotels, the Canopy Hilton at Harbor Point and Hotel Revival Baltimore in Mount Vernon, employed some squeegee guys. Others went to work for the city, in public works and recreation and parks.
When the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association’s basketball tournament came to the Baltimore Arena, 24 young people put down their squeegees to work on trash patrols with the Downtown Partnership. They were offered one day’s work for one day’s pay.
“And every day for the seven days of the tournament, they consistently showed up,” Faith Leach, a deputy mayor, told me. “They made $75 per day.” The city paid cash because, Leach said, that’s what squeegee workers wanted and were used to; they could not wait two weeks for a paycheck. “They needed money for food for their families,” Leach said, “and, in some cases, diapers for their children.”
During the 90 days of the action plan, Leach said, the city experienced a decrease in squeegeeing that was “substantial” while those who reached out to squeegee workers learned more about them.
“It highlighted how disconnected [squeegee workers] are from the things they need to be the best version of themselves,” Scott said, meaning a disconnect from programs that could train them for good jobs or help them finish high school.
The action plan and the public uproar that followed the deadly confrontation between a motorist and some squeegee guys in July led Scott’s administration to the Squeegee Collaborative.
The idea was to actually study the issue comprehensively with representatives from Baltimore’s businesses, nonprofits and government as well as the squeegee workers themselves. This made some people groan. Like Hogan, they wanted a crackdown.
I asked Scott about that. Why not just get them off the corners?
“If moving them off the corner was a solution, then [squeegeeing] wouldn’t have existed for 40 years,” he said, noting the long history of this issue, going back to the early 1980s, before Scott, 38, was born. “One thing Baltimore [police] did very well in my childhood was get people off the corners. And how did that work for us? The city didn’t become safer. Thousands of peoples’ lives were ruined simply because they were Black and they were outside, and then they weren’t able to get jobs and provide for their families and they ended up in prison for small things and guess what happened? Their children ended up not having the support they needed. … What we’re saying is, we’re not going back to that.”
He added this: “Not everybody who looks like me and stands on the corner is doing something wrong. Not every young person holding a squeegee is doing something wrong. We have to think about what led them there in the first place.”
Scott and the collaborative acknowledge the need to curtail squeegeeing in the streets. In a couple of months, the city will start enforcing anti-panhandling ordinances at several busy intersections. If that happens, motorists who complain about squeegee workers should see less of them. Hopefully more of them will take advantage of the services the collaborative wants the city to offer.
Joe Jones, the CEO of the Center for Urban Families and co-chair of the collaborative, notes that most squeegee workers see what they do as a legitimate way to make money; they’ve made a conscious choice to clean windshields and not sell drugs. “They want to be good citizens,” Jones says.
And isn’t that what we all want?