Maryland, My Maryland

Balmer Sun, Annapolis Police say Maryland State House is all clear after bomb threat

Law enforcement officers say the Maryland State House is all clear after a bomb threat was reported late Tuesday afternoon, according to Annapolis Police Chief Ed Jackson.

The Annapolis Police Department received a call shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday from a woman who claimed to have planted a bomb at the historic gathering place of the Maryland General Assembly, which ended its session in April.

“We are going to go and invoke all of the protocols to make sure the buildings are safe,” Jackson said earlier. “We’ll do everything we can to mitigate the threat to make sure if there is a device, we find it and properly dispose of it to prevent serious emergency.”

As of 4:20 p.m. members of the Anne Arundel County and Annapolis Police Departments had blocked off traffic at the intersection of Bladen and Calvert streets. Cars and pedestrians also were blocked from entering College Avenue from Church Circle.

Multiple K-9 units arrived at the State House as state employees left their buildings across the Capitol Complex. David Schuhlein, a spokesperson for Senate President Bill Ferguson, said capitol police were the first to alert building occupants of the threat. At the time, Schuhlein said the threat was “credible” but it’s unclear where or who it’s from, and that the building was immediately evacuated “out of an abundance of caution.”

Without saying anything about its occupants, the building certainly is iconic.

The beautiful Maryland State House is the oldest state capitol still in continuous legislative use. It is the oldest and largest wooden dome of its kind in the United States. The Maryland State House was the first peacetime capitol of the United States and is the only state house ever to have served as the nation's capitol.

It would be a shame for something to happen to it. 

Forget it Jake, It's Baltimore - tanj

 At Maryland Matters, an Opinion: Time for fairness when it comes to cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay

By Capt. Rob Newberry

The writer is the chair of the Delmarva Fisheries Association.

Two guiding principles in our society are equal treatment under the law and justice delayed is justice denied.

Ongoing Chesapeake Bay clean water efforts show a great disparity on the application of those principles.

Recently a consent decree was reached between the state of Maryland and Valley Proteins, operators of a private waste treatment plant in Linkwood. Elements of the decree include:

• Valley Proteins’ payment of $540,000 in fines as well as additional penalties for water quality discharge violations
• Additional fines if Valley Proteins fails to meet compliance deadlines going forward
• Valley Proteins will pay legal fees and related expenses incurred by those joined in the state legal action

Contrast that with almost no action by regulators on decades-long discharges of untreated wastewater from treatment plants on the Back River and Patapsco River. These discharges have severely impacted water quality in the upper Chesapeake Bay for decades. While the state recently began providing assistance to the City of Baltimore for operating the Back River plant, the timing for long overdue improved operations is still to be determined.

Now more than ever, the Bay is at a tipping point. Steps need to be taken NOW to address the pollution from the Back River and Patapsco wastewater treatment plants.

It's true. There Ain't No Justice. The Baltimore sewage treatment system, which seems to be in congenital state of failure, faces no financial penalties for continuously breaking the water quality laws, while a much smaller polluter, Valley Proteins, faces fairly harsh penalties. The difference, of course, is that the Baltimore waste treatment is run by the Baltimore government while Valley Proteins is a private company. Baltimore could choose to upgrade, but they don't because they choose not to take the money out of other programs, or raise taxes. And governments are very reluctant to penalize other government agencies. Who know where that could lead!

Meet the New Boss . . .

Same as the old boss? I guess we'll see: EPA Names Dana Aunkst Director of Chesapeake Bay Program

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the selection of Dana Aunkst as the new Director of EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program.

“Dana has the leadership skills, experience and commitment we need to lead the Chesapeake Bay Office,” said EPA Regional Administrator Cosmo Servidio. “He has tremendous skill at building partnerships and creating a shared vision among geographically diverse stakeholders. His experience and relationships with multiple agencies will serve us and our partners well as we accelerate efforts to safeguard the Chesapeake Bay and its living resources.”

“This is a tremendous opportunity to build upon the accomplishments to date by EPA and its partners,” said Dana Aunkst. “I look forward to working collaboratively with our stakeholders in protecting our nation’s largest estuary and the local waterways throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed.”

Aunkst has extensive environmental and regulatory experience working 33 years in private industry and local and state government. During his tenure at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) which began in 2002, Aunkst served in executive level positions as Deputy Secretary and Acting Secretary. As the Deputy Secretary for Field Operations, he directed the operations of six regional offices in implementing the full array of state and federal environmental regulations.

As Executive Deputy Secretary for Programs, Aunkst directed the activities of more than 2,000 professional and technical staff engaged in all aspects of environmental protection. While serving as Deputy Secretary for Water, he oversaw programs for surface and groundwater quality, soil and water conservation, public water supply withdrawals, sewage facilities planning, point source sewage and industrial discharges, flood protection and stream improvements. In this position, Aunkst led the change to resuscitate Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay restoration effort by authoring the 2016 Pennsylvania Chesapeake Bay Reboot Strategy.

Aunkst holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Penn State University and is a licensed professional engineer in Pennsylvania. His appointment will be effective December 23, 2018.

I like the fact that he's been in both government and private positions, but I reserve judgement. I've never noticed much change for better or worse when the Bay Program has changed leaders in the past.

Reason #5936 That Trump Was Elected

Trump takes aim at federal bureaucracy with new executive orders rolling back civil-service protections

President Trump moved Friday to roll back civil-service protections that federal employees have enjoyed for a generation, making it easier to fire poor performers, curtailing time employees can be paid for union work and directing agencies to negotiate tougher union contracts.

In three executive orders the president signed before the holiday weekend, Trump took his first significant steps toward fulfilling a campaign promise he made to overhaul a federal bureaucracy he told voters was awash in “waste, fraud and abuse.”

It is not "awash." It underwater, and rapidly submerging.

The changes have been championed by Republicans who have sought to rein in the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy of 2 million, which under Trump has been gradually shrinking through hiring freezes and unfilled vacancies.

The trio of executive orders — which can be undone by the next president — could have a much more dramatic impact. They immediately drew polarized reactions, with public employee unions casting them as an attack on civil servants and conservatives praising the overhaul as a win for accountability.

Of course, they can and will be undone ASAP by any incoming Democrat administration, as a bribe to their constituency. Another reason not to vote Democrat.

The orders limit federal employees to spending no more than a quarter of their workday on “official time” — paid time to do union business, a benefit Congress approved for federal unions four decades ago. Administration officials said the change could save $100 million a year.

Is that 25% of a given workday, or 25% of their total time? In any event, there were federal employees who were spending up to 100% of their total time on union matters.

They require agencies to negotiate union contracts in less than a year. And they direct managers to move more aggressively to fire poor performers or employees involved in misconduct, limiting to one month a last-chance grace period for improvement that now can last up to 120 days. Agencies must also disclose details about an employee’s record to other federal offices considering hiring someone who has been fired or disciplined.

The changes also upend a long tradition of basing layoffs on seniority. Agencies can now take performance into consideration, as well.

Oh my goodness, actually basing layoff on performance! The fiend!

The orders also require agencies to begin charging unions for space in federal buildings they now use for free.

White House officials said their goal is to make the federal workforce more efficient and responsive to the public and to improve morale for employees who play by the rules.

Prepare for WaPo Federal Page to unleash a blistering attack.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links.

Reason #5651 That Trump Was Elected

Federal Managers Have Some Bad News For Government Workers

The Office of Personnel Management has been fielding some unusual and uncomfortable questions from federal departmental managers this summer according to Government Executive. It seems that a terrible bit of reality is dawning on them at last and they need some professional assistance in figuring out how to perform a management function which most of them have never experienced before.

They’re going to have to start laying some people off, and for much of Washington, DC, that’s a completely foreign concept.

Federal agency managers are privately telling members of the Trump administration they will soon lay off employees, according to Office of Personnel Management officials, and are seeking advice for how to do so in the most effective manner.
Agencies are “pretty certain” they will need to institute reductions in force as they aim to satisfy an executive order from President Trump and ensuing guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, said Leslie Pollack, deputy associate director of OPM’s HR Strategy and Evaluation Solutions, on WJLA’s “Government Matters” program. Those documents required executive branch agencies to reorganize themselves and, in the process, cut the size of their workforces. Pollack’s office, which provides human resources consulting to federal agencies, has assisted officials across government looking at “closing down or realigning functions.”

On the one hand it’s rather tough to have too much sympathy for them. They’ve been getting warnings about this since the day President Trump was sworn in. (Did they think he was kidding?) Orders went out to begin planning for consolidation of redundancies and generally shrinking the federal behemoth. At first there was a lot of dancing around and alternative options being explored. Early retirement packages and generous golden parachutes were in the works. Some people were finagling for transfers to other departments before their positions were eliminated.

But the cuts are coming and eventually the harsh light of inspection falls on everyone. The stated goals will not be reached by simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. A smaller federal government means fewer workers. And that means some people will have to go.

Time to join the real world, folks.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and linkfest.

Reason #5513 That Trump Was Elected

Mulvaney Set To Tell Agencies To Prep For Substantial Cuts

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is reportedly slated to send a letter to federal agencies later this week warning them to prep for substantial budget cuts.

The guidance letter falls in line with President Donald Trump’s March 13 executive order aimed at making the government leaner and more efficient, Axios first reported.

The order called on Mulvaney, a staunch fiscal conservative and former member of the House Freedom Caucus, to “propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies (as defined in section 551(1) of title 5, United States Code), components of agencies, and agency programs.”

Trump’s budget called for historic cuts to a number of agencies — including a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, a 28 percent cut to the State Department and a 17.9 percent cut to the Department of Health and Human Services. While a number of the departments’ budgets would be slashed, the Department of Defense would see a 10 percent boost in spending. . . 

Trump Team Moves Closer to Gutting Some Federal Agencies

. . . Under a series of executive actions Trump has signed, agencies must develop plans by the end of June to maximize employee performance. By the end of the following quarter, agencies have to submit plans describing how they intend to reform their operations.

And at a higher level, Mulvaney's office will map out how to restructure the executive branch so that it's directed by its functions. As an example, he cited 43 workforce training programs across 13 agencies that could be centralized. He added that multiple offices across multiple agencies handle trade, and pressed that it should be more centralized, as well.

The broader suggestion to structure around functions and issues came from a meeting of CEOs at the White House on Tuesday morning; Mulvaney said the administration is seeking input from business leaders, academics, and civilians alike.

I'll believe it when I see it, but I have some hope.

Brits Plot California Schism

Get ready for Calexit! Now Nigel Farage and the 'Bad Boys of Brexit' set their sights on splitting California in two

The 'Bad Boys of Brexit' who led the campaign to break Britain away from the European Union have taken on a new exit challenge: splitting California into two states.

Former UKip leader Nigel Farage and Leave backer Arron Banks have just returned from the United States, where they helped raise $1million (£800,000) for a 'Calexit' campaign, which would split California into two eastern and western regions.

There are several 'Calexit' campaigns competing for a referendum in the United States, with one aiming to remove the state from America entirely as a response to President Donald Trump being elected last year.

Farage and Banks, who led the 'Leave.EU' campaign, appear to be pitting the eastern, more rural side of California against the western 'coastal elite' liberals in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Let's take a look at the map of the propose split:

I'm curious why "East California" contains Orange County and San Diego. While Orange County in the past was a bastion of conservatism, I think those days are long gone. Putting San Diego in the east side, however, does at least secure the border. Let's compare with the results of the 2016 election of Donald Trump by counties:

You see the big chunk in Southern California, which is, no doubt driven by the coastal populations, so if you split the big counties, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino by precinct, you might get something like their map. And hey, we get get Crescent City? (Now what do we do with it?). It looks like they get Fresno, though. Lucky them.

There is some precedent for such a split. At the start of the Civil War in 1861, the mountain counties of Virginia voted to become West Virginia, which stuck when the North won.

If broken apart, the eastern part of California would more likely vote Republican, giving the party two more senators and electoral college votes for a 2020 presidential election.

The Western side of the state would likely continue to vote Democrat in elections.

Farage and Banks' goal is to hold a referendum during the US midterm elections in 2018, according to The Sunday Times.

This strikes me as pretty unlikely, but not as unlikely as California declaring independence from the US.

Shockingly, They Might Be More Flexible

Robot civil servants could help save taxpayer's cash by replacing 250,000 jobs  and that's just in the United Kingdom:

Robots should be brought in to replace thousands of civil servants and save the taxpayer billions of pounds, according to a new report.

Reform, a public-services think tank, suggests that 90 per cent of Whitehall’s 137,000 administrative staff could be replaced with "artificially intelligent chatbots" by 2030, saving £2.6 billion a year.

The 'Work in progress' report also calls for smart machines and autonomous robots to do the job of 250,000 public-sector workers.

It says 90,000 NHS administrators and 24,000 GP receptionists could be let go under the "radical" change to public services.

The report quotes evidence that estimates 30 per cent of nurses’ activities could be automated, and a similar proportion for doctors in some specialities.

It comes after the NHS announced that patients will be assessed by robots under a controversial 111 scheme to use “artificial intelligence” to ease pressures on Accident & Emergency units.

More than one million people will be given access to a free app which means they can consult with a “chatbot” instead of a human being.

She already has a better personality and is more helpful than most bureaucrats. This makes too much sense. Expect public employee unions to start resisting.

I almost forgot Wombat-socho with "Rule 5 Sunday: Standing In The Shadow Of The Master."

I Think Some Firings are in Order

Weepy bureaucrats deal with Trump victory by abusing sick leave

The political climate has changed and many of the poor bureaucrats at the EPA are in denial. After eight years in the ideologically simpatico Obama administration, they are struggling to deal with the angst created by the election of Donald Trump. Panic and depression have set in with some people taking sick leave to manage their grief and others breaking down in tears. From E&E News:

U.S. EPA employees were in tears. Worried Energy Department staffers were offered counseling. Some federal employees were so depressed, they took time off. Others might retire early.
And some employees are in downright panic mode in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory.
“People are upset. Some people took the day off because they were depressed,” said John O’Grady, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents thousands of EPA employees. After Election Day, “people were crying,” added O’Grady, who works in EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago. “They were recommending that people take sick leave and go home.”

According to this Office of Personnel Management fact sheet, sick leave is supposed to be used for “personal medical needs,” “family care or bereavement,” caring for a “family member with a serious health condition” or “adoption-related purposes.” There’s nothing in there about feeling bad about the outcome of an election which means, technically, this is abuse of sick leave. But pampered government workers, the very people who make sure everyone else sticks to the rules, are notorious for taking “mental health days” and thus turning their sick leave into just another big bucket of paid hours off. In this case, it’s not just employees abusing their leave, it’s the managers at the EPA telling people to take a sick day.

When I retired from my quasi-federal job at the Smithsonian, I abandoned some three months worth of unused sick leave. Nobody told me to take a day off when Obama was elected, either time.

One career EPA employee tells E&E News, “If you look at the seven stages of grief, I’m still in denial. I will not look at the news.” It sounds like there are a lot of deniers at the EPA this week. Apparently the irony of this is lost on them.

The article goes on to suggest that many distraught employees may decide to retire rather than deal with the change. “If [Trump] starts doing rotten things, then people will say, ‘Enough of this crap,'” Union president John O’Grady tells E&E News.

In fact, in surveys, up to 35% of Federal workers said they thought about quitting if Trump were elected President. I assume that a large number of them are about as sincere as Amy Schumer, some of them may be inspired to retire (or quit prematurely). To which I say "Good Riddance." It would present the incoming President with an excellent opportunity clean some dead weight out of the federal bureaucracy, and even if some, or many of the the positions would need to be refilled by promoting people of lower rank, thus saving billions of dollars. One might also hope that such selective "self-deportation" of the most partisan workers might decrease the politicization of the Federal government. Win-win!

Post recognized by William Teach as Blog of the Day in "If All You See…" at Pirates Cove.  Thanks, Teach!

IG Says EPA Late to Flint Rescue

EPA should have intervened in Flint water crisis months earlier, watchdog says

The inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that the agency should have issued an emergency order to protect residents of Flint, Mich., from lead-tainted water seven months before it actually did.

The watchdog found that the EPA had “the authority and sufficient information” to force state officials to fix the city’s escalating water problems in June 2015. But the EPA did not issue its emergency order until Jan. 21, long after it became clear that those state officials’ failure to properly treat the water had left the entire city — including thousands of children — exposed to elevated levels of lead.

“These situations should generate a greater sense of urgency,” Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins said in a statement Thursday. “Federal law provides the EPA with the emergency authority to intervene when the safety of drinking water is compromised. Employees must be knowledgeable, trained and ready to act when such a public health threat looms.”

Thursday’s findings come amid a broader inquiry into the federal agency’s actions in Flint. Elkins recommended the EPA update its 25-year-old internal guidance on the use of that emergency authority and require drinking-water staff to attend training on when to use it.

That's interesting because EPA isn't usually shy about exerting its authority.

In a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill this year, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy conceded that the agency was too slow to intervene in Flint’s water-contamination crisis. But she insisted that under the law, it had done all it could to protect Flint’s 95,000 residents. She refused to accept blame for the catastrophe, instead laying the responsibility on Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

She was lucky there was one Republican in the command chain so she could pin it on him.

It must be great to be employed by an agency for which you can do no wrong. EPA employee won’t be charged in Animas River mine spill

The U.S. Attorney’s Office won’t prosecute an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency over the massive mine wastewater spill that turned the Animas River a shade of yellow.

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General said it found evidence the employee might have violated the Clean Water Act and given false statements.

But prosecutors declined to pursue the case and instead will be sent to senior EPA management for its review.

A cleanup led by the EPA at the Gold King mine above Silverton triggered the spill on Aug. 5, 2015.  The 3 million-gallon blowout sent water laced with toxic heavy metals through southwest Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Wonder Girls And Indians" up in time and under budget at The Other McCain.

No! Not Fishing Licenses!

The latest government data breach came from (wait for it…) fishing licenses

While it’s painful to admit, incidents of data hacking which expose personal data entrusted to the government are so common these days as to barely merit a headline. There’s been yet another breach this year and it’s not one which is likely to make a big splash in the media unless you happen to be an avid fisherman. In three northwestern states, the issuing of new fishing licenses had to be suspended recently because hackers attempted to access the database of information on anglers. How much – if any – data they obtained is not yet known, but there’s enough information in those files to have consumers worried. (AT&T Live News)

A breach in a vendor’s system that processes online sales of hunting and fishing licenses in Idaho, Oregon and Washington state exposed several million records containing buyers’ personal information, officials said Friday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI are investigating the hack into Dallas-based Active Network, the Washington State Office of Cyber Security said in a statement. Washington halted all sales earlier this week, allowing anglers to fish license-free, while Idaho and Oregon have stopped only online sales…
Active Network, whose event and activity management software is used by tens of thousands of event organizers nationwide, including marathons and other races, said the potential threat was isolated to fishing and hunting licensing systems in the three states.

The data which was potentially exposed might not be as serious for consumers as a credit card or tax database being breached, but it was nothing to sneeze at either. The system included the names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth and the last four digits of Social Security numbers of license holders. For any clever identity thieves, that’s a very solid starting point (particularly when combined with other discoveries) to build up a profile and hack into somebody’s accounts. When you consider the inclusion of home addresses tied to real names it’s also a treasure trove for stalkers.

It's not my home state (yet), so I'm not in danger, as far as I know. However, I assume the only reason anyone's "personal data" have not been hacked is that no one is trying. Our's was certainly hacked in the gigantic OPM hack where the federal government was "extremely careless" with the personal data of millions of government workers, or, as in our case, people who had a peripheral relationship with the government.

Don't Like Government? They Don't Like You Either

I found this little nugget tucked into the second page of the Washington Post when I finally got a round tuit:

Americans don’t care for Washington. New research suggests the feeling is mutual.

When asked about the most vexing problem facing the country at the moment, Americans are most likely to say the government itself. Official Washington is increasingly seen as out of touch with the rest of the country. But is it really?

That's what researchers Jennifer Bachner and Benjamin Ginsberg wanted to find out. They surveyed upwards of 850 Federal employees, Hill staffers, contractors, consultants, lobbyists and think tankers. While we know plenty about our elected lawmakers, we know much less about this group of Beltway insiders, who you can think of as the "policymaking community." As a group they play an active and direct role in crafting legislation and setting the tone of national policy debates, but as unelected officials they're largely insulated from the ire of voters.
. . .
"The most disturbing finding was that members of Washington policy community have a jaundiced view of ordinary Americans, and they didn’t know very much about ordinary Americans either," Ginsberg said.

When asked how much they thought the average American knew about a variety of policy debates, like raising taxes on the rich, warrantless wiretapping, and government's role in healthcare, policymakers most frequently said "very little."

Of course, being the house organ of the federal government, the Post's writers have to defend the governing class (their customers):

Policymakers aren't wholly unjustified in these assumptions - a 2010 Pew survey, for instance, found that the public knew basic facts about politics and economics, but was murky on the specifics. But a certain degree of responsibility for informing the public on these issues falls to these very policymakers. If the public is uninformed or misinformed, that's at least partly an indictment of Washington's own efforts to educate its constituents.

In my experience, what's not being said here is how ignorant the policy makers are of how things really operate out beyond the beltway. In science and environmental management, you can be pretty sure that the managers didn't end up there because they were the top students in the field. We're mostly governed by the ideologically committed C+ students.

And what they resent most of all is that people are reluctant to pay them what they think they are worth, and to hire all the flunkies they would need to totally govern our lives.