Can we recall council members? I thought initiative that didn’t make it to the ballot. We voters have to petition our own council representatives to recall Council President Mosby. The councilwoman for my area is Phylicia Porter, she voted for Mr. Mosby’s bill in the first round of voting and didn’t vote at all in the next round. From what I’m learning from neighborhood meetings Councilwoman Porter moved to this part of Baltimore only a year before the election, so she moved here to run for the office. I don’t think she would listen any petition from residents, especially not a petition to recall Mr. Mosby over a bill she voted for.

According to this article, it would only take a petition signed by 20% of Baltimore city’s qualified voters to have him removed.

https://foxbaltimore.com/amp/news/city-in-crisis/after-pension-bill-vetoed-what-does-nick-mosbys-future-in-office-look-like

Of course the other city council members won’t do anything, that’s why I feel like it’s time for voters to put their foot down and send a message to all of our elected officials that if you’re blatantly participating in shady bull shit like Nick Mosby then you’ll be removed.

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while I hate both Mosbys, if we're going to try to undertake such an effort, I would rather push for ranked-choice open primaries (or at least ranked-choice partisan primaries) for mayor and city council. in theory, we can do both, but I think in practice it's hard to motivate people. in the long term I think we would be better off with ranked-choice.

my preference aside, I think you would need some kind of controversy to get signatures, otherwise people will be like "meh, no thanks"

Why would you recall someone that is being (successfully) checked by other parts of the government? Like just don't vote for his ass next time. If a recall costs tax dollars, seems like a waste of tax dollars.

> it would only take a petition signed by 20% of Baltimore city’s qualified voters to have him removed. > >

Only?????

I would love to do both. I’m just so tired of watching the city rot as these elected officials are blatantly robbing it of its resources. Nothing will get better with this kind of leadership.

I didn’t realize that initiative passed. 20% of the qualified voters is a very high number. I wonder if we could someone achieve this, that would take a large budget to reach that many voters.

I know that would be really hard but honestly, what redeeming qualities does Nick Mosby have? What would the argument be to keep him? I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that less than 20% of voters would agree that Mosby is bad for Baltimore and we don’t need two more years of bad. Maybe that’s just because I’m so fed up.

I honestly don't know. But also, how are you going to get that number of people to sign a petition? That's huge!

He solicited funds via gofundme from donors to cover legal fees for his wife’s mortgage fraud case, got caught and promised to return the funds, didn’t return the funds, and now we’re paying for an ethics trial he’s continuously delaying. He spent $10K of tax dollars sending one of his aids to England for a training conference. He tried to lower the pension requirements for the city without looking at financial impact. In my mind it’s protecting our tax dollars to get him out.

San Francisco recently managed to recall their DA and multiple school board members via petitions. It’s definitely possible but sadly it does feel like it would be pretty impossible in Baltimore.

There's a huge difference between SF and Baltimore.

San Francisco managed to do it this year to multiple elected officials and it was a pretty grassroots movement. But it did require a lot of citizens running around the city working to collect signatures and I think it would be hard to find people willing to do that here.

Baltimore barely gets 20% turnout of its eligible voters lol

I’m also in favor of pushing for ranked choice voting. We actually have several solid council members, so the broad brush here is some fox45 nonsense that isn’t very helpful to say the least.

What differences do you think are salient?

I believe the CA signature thresholds are much lower though.

Baltimore has a strong no snitching, no speaking out culture. Petitions and surveys that require a name and address are concerning, at least in my area. I’d want to sign such a petition, I would be wary of potential consequences.

What % of qualified voters even voted in this year's election?

Mobsy is a horse's ass but he also has had virtually zero impact on city governance. Its time to coalesce around a better candidate. Of course, who is that. Leon Pinkett was a good option but flopped. Shannon Snead is on two straight losing campaigns. Not sure any freshmen have the suction, maybe Ramos. Costello has $$ but is the wrong color. Burnett is too fringe. Bullock maybe if he can nut up and stop playing nice.

Only 10% of registered voter signatures needed to recall a city official is a pretty huge difference from 20%

Literally half as many signatures needed. 10% of registered voters v. 20% of whatever “qualified” voters means

If you have a source, I'd welcome it. My recollection was that CA required a percentage of signatures that was based on voters in the previous election and a threshold below 20%, but that might be for statewide recalls.

Can we get a running numbered thread on his actions/crimes? I'm sure the list is much longer than we realize if we combine our fact knowledge.

https://sfelections.sfgov.org/sites/default/files/Documents/candidates/20200427_RecallGuide.pdf

Page 6, second paragraph, 10% for city-wide officials

What about Cohen?

I’m no Mosby fan but Fox 45 is being completely unethical. Finance charter amendments. Push them on the news as if they’re being unbiased and now stoke the flames of recalls. I’m sure Sinclair will fund that petition, too.

You are dead on about the controversy. His wife sucked at her job for years and managed to get re-elected. If it wasn’t for her fraud charges I’m fairly confident she would still have the job. The voters in this country are low information/high salient. They only pay attention to big events where someone fucks up and then they’ll vote that person out. It’s sad but that’s the world we live in.

I feel like maybe the other members have just become desensitized to scandals surrounding him and no voters seems to be that outraged so why rock the boat? But that’s the entire issue, think of how many scandals Baltimore has had where elected officials were blatantly stealing. It shouldn’t feel normal but it kind of does.

The article I read says it’s in the Baltimore city charter. Porter sounds like someone who’s probably very happy with Mosbys idea to make it easier for her to qualify for a pension we all get to pay for.

Yea but they also did that to like four people. I’m only thinking we recall the one person. So maybe it’s feasible.

Someone needs to run on the sole promise they’ll hire an external auditor to figure out where all the city’s money is going and purge any employees committing fraud. If you want to see something infuriating, please look up the salaries for everyone from Baltimore city public schools in 2021. A janitor was being paid almost $100K. The “CEO” of Baltimore city schools makes like $450K despite graduation rates being abysmal. Some of these schools don’t have heat or AC!

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I can’t imagine how much additional stuff he’s done that we’re just not aware of…

The voters should be able to recall you if you’re not doing your job and you’re blatantly doing unethical shit. Nick Mosby tried to screw over the taxpayer and make it easier to qualify for cushy government pensions. He’s solicited donations via a gofundme for his wife’s mortgage fraud case and then lied and said he would return the funds, now he’s dragging out an ethics trial. He’s bad at his job and he’s not looking out for the interests of the voters so the voters should be able to fire him. Facts are facts even if they’re coming from Fox45.

Why is it infuriating that we pay the schools CEO a reasonable if not uncompetitive salary for a position of extraordinary challenge and responsibility? Do you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay that position less?

We have audits and we have an independent OIG. I swear to god the folks that complain the most about our fucked government know the least about it.

> it was a pretty grassroots movement

about that...

> In an interview with Chronicle reporters on Monday, Jenkins said she was paid $153,000 for her consulting work with the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Neighbors for a Better San Francisco. [...]

> The nonprofit is connected to the similarly named 501(c)(4) organization Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy, a political organization that spent millions on the effort to unseat Boudin in June. The two groups share the same address and a board member, William Oberndorf, a right-of-center San Francisco billionaire who helped bankroll the recall.

This idea come's from FOX45 >'According to the Baltimore City charter, the mayor, city council president and comptroller could be removed by a verified petition signed by at least 20% of the qualified voters in Baltimore City.'"

IT'S A TRAP!

I've felt for a while that the city basically needs to be placed into receivership, which immediately forces the question of who should administer it. And apparently our entire system of government says it should be federal prosecutors, by the least efficient mechanism imaginable. So rolling that into their life satisfaction strategy should probably go in op's todo pile.

Oh, true. That is a huge difference! It’s double the people

It was nationally reported on last year that over 65% of the kids in Baltimore city public schools were failing at least one class. Some of these schools don’t have heat. How can you justify paying a CEO who hasn’t improved schools during her tenure almost half a million dollars while simultaneously saying we have no money to get heat in the schools? And that 65% figure isn’t from Fox or sinclair, that was on CNN and they reported it in WaPo. I’d be happy to pay the school CEO that much if she had results to prove she was worth the money.

The signature petitions for the three school board members that got recalled were organized by parents in that district who were pissed. That’s the difference though, I don’t think most people in Baltimore even care. It just is what it is.

>Do you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay that position less?

Well currently we're not even trying to attract talent, we're just paying someone who isn't delivering. I definitely don't think we attract the right talent by having a reputation of not holding people accountable for their job performance.

Preach!

Almost like it is by design...just saying things happen for a reason. Look the patterns nobody wants to admit.

Hi

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/31/baltimore_city_public_schools_spent_14_billion_budget_and_promoted_straight-f_student_769886.html

What's up with that?

I think your asking the wrong questions bud and not exactly being open to the true dialogue here.

The moot points your making seem to be part of the issue.

You hit it spot on.

The entire Baltimoron government is filled with a bunch of incompetents who could care less. Though it's hard to find talent in a city with this kind of reputation.

It's been this way for a while. It's just a big power grab and the state and city constantly butt heads. they'd rather see their own city burn instead of make things better. So long as they are in charge. #conspiracy

I mean I’m in… We get 10-15 people together to hit the phones for a few weeks….

Take out the trash

Because, Baltimore

Watch him run for Mayor. Both of the Mosbys’ need to stop taking from Baltimore.

Hey - how about using an online petition site?

I would have much preferred if the recall and term limit amendments was a grassroots campaign and not from corporate interests that use their media platform to constantly rile citizens up. Then go “see this is why we need these reforms.” Does Sinclair Broadcasting really care about Baltimore city or its own interests and biases?

Again, not a fan of Mosby but I didn’t care about the pension issue. With term limits, it seemed inevitable. They’re going to have to tackle the issue of future members not receiving a pension at some time.

city agencies already get audited.

Ok but I'm curious:

>Do you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay that position less?

The true dialogue? Is this some weird code word? I asked a simple question that you both seem a bit hesitant to answer.

No, no they won't. They can do 8 years on city council and move into other places in the government to finish their 2 to get vested...or 22 more to retire. Fuck them. Serve the public for your pension, same as the rest of us.

To be fair, Sneed is only coming off one City Council Pres vote, the other one was Lt Gov.

I still feel like she could be a great option for Council Pres if she were to run again.

I wonder if that’s allowed or if there’s no way to vet “qualified voters” on a petition site. I wonder what the requirements are to be a “qualified” voter.

I'm curious what his approval rating is.

Most of us don’t even have access to pensions. It’s a huge government benefit and they’re expensive to fund. Making a comprehensive plan concerning the pensions including a financial impact analysis would’ve been one thing, but to try to shove this through without even looking at the impact on the taxpayer shows that Nick isn’t even looking out for us anymore. And that’s the whole job.

>Why is it infuriating that we pay the schools CEO

Because the CEO of said school system overlooked a system so blatantly mismanaged they graduated multiple classes that shouldn't have been, year after year?

Because they're the CEO of a system that, for some reason, has an insanely top heavy teacher-administrator ratio?

How about the fact the Baltimore City CEOs haven't done a good job for a couple decades. Is that good enough of a reason?

Have we not been increasing the salary of the position in the hopes of attracting stronger talent this whole time? Maybe it's time to try something other than throwing money at a problem? Especially when we're essentially lighting the money on fire at this point.

He's a ex dope boy who married our current states attorney!? What did you expect in Baltimore? He's been a crook and has always over stepped his boundaries, all he's ever wanted to do is make his life better he doesn't care about the city or it's residents.

>The
>
>true dialogue
>
>? Is this some weird code word?

Sure why, good luck interpreting it...

Alaska System would be my preferred: open primary, top x proceed to ranked choice general.

Because Baltimore doesn’t have a recall process. This is like when Fox45 put out a poll about recalling Brandon Scott despite it not being a thing.

yeah, that would work much better than what we have

At this point I feel like a state-lead or even federal-lead initiative to restructure Baltimore’s government is necessary. There’s too many cockroaches engrained in the system for any meaningful change to happen by just electing one or two actually well-meaning people every few years

So you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay less for the position?

Do you think we'll attract stronger talent if we pay that position less?

I'd argue we need to distribute the money to actually fixing the school buildings and hiring more teachers first, before we can even begin thinking about paying administrators at the same rate or more.

Do you think the administrators have earned their pay? I don't.

I am not talking about the performance of an individual. You keep talking about if they have earned their pay. I would argue they in fact have not. But you seem to think getting rid of them and offering to pay a new person less is something that will improve our ability to hire more competent leadership, which I find fascinating.

Isn't this all about how term limits don't allow you to qualify for the pension anymore, or something like that?

You'd attract stronger talent if it was a more attractive place for people to work. You have to look at factors other than money, otherwise you'll just get people who show up and do the bare minimum for a couple of years.

Money is a pretty major factor in a on call 24/7 executive role overseeing a massive budget.

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I think we could do it between reddit and a few neighborhood community councils.

Costello is the right color but he ignored his black constituents. I used to live in the black part of his district and saw it live.

well someone should tell his constituents since he's by far the most popular member of the city council.

If that was the case he should be able to win the council presidency

that's a non sequitur probably motivated by your personal grievances.

Not a personal grievance. I literally watched how certain communities very rarely got his attention and others would see him there get frequently.

If he was extremely popular in his district, he should easily be able to convert that popularity into a successful city council president run. That popularity would have a positive spillover. His Whiteness has nothing to do with his inability to win. White candidates can win citywide races in Baltimore. It's his lack of attention to the entirety of his district

its not a personal grievance, its just anger motivated by an experience limited to myself.

white candidates face substantial ingrained disadvantages which have only been overcome in my lifetime by either historically bad opponents, mosby is approaching that status but probably needs another 1-2 terms before his uselessness can no longer be made up for by his race, or by having more money and popularity than even costello has.

Before I respond, let me ask this question. Do you believe Mosby is in power because he is Black?

only in the respect that as a black candidate he is not immediately disqualified by a large enough portion of the electorate that he can't win.