Works laid off 43 employees this summer, a well-paid worker began in a newly
created position.
June Smith took the helm of the communications office of the state
Department of Juvenile Services, where she will earn $79,771 a year, according
to state records.
Her hiring surprised some department employees, who were unaware that a new
job was being created at a time when the governor was ordering agencies to
scour their budgets, target programs for elimination and reduce spending by up
to 12 percent.
Smith is the wife of Ron Smith, the WBAL radio talk-show personality who
hosts a bi-monthly show with Ehrlich. The governor’s staff installed special
equipment on the second floor of the State House allowing Ehrlich to engage in
banter with Smith and field generally friendly questions from him and callers.
Ehrlich frequently says he prefers to communicate with the public on talk
radio, rather than through interviews with reporters or editorial writers at
the state’s largest newspapers.
Under orders from the governor’s communications office, June Smith did not
respond to a request to discuss her new job. But Paul E. Schurick, a top
Ehrlich aide, said she was hired for her skills, not her connections.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with who she is married to,” he said. “It
has everything to do with her experience.”
Schurick would not provide a copy of Smith’s resume, but in a written
e-mail message sent to the governor’s staff last week, which was reviewed by
The Sun, she said she spent 10 years as an assistant director of news and
public affairs at Towson University, and worked another 10 years with a
communications consulting firm.
The Juvenile Services job brought her out of retirement, she said.
Regular listeners of the Ron Smith show may have heard June Smith on the
air. The host calls her “Mrs. Reason,” and she sometimes calls to share
insights with her husband.
Smith is the second Ehrlich appointee who reflects the governor’s
relationship with talk-radio personalities. He previously named Tom Marr, a
morning host on conservative-leaning WCBM radio, to an unpaid position on the
Maryland Aviation Commission.
Ehrlich adviser takes leave to help Kerry campaign
A longtime Ehrlich adviser has given up his desk on the second floor of the
State House – at least temporarily.
Nick Schloeder, who coached and taught the governor when he was a student
at Gilman School, has taken a leave of absence from his position as special
assistant to the governor – a mantle that has caused some discomfort to those
around him.
Schloeder, 73, says he and the governor have agreed that he should not work
for Ehrlich, a Republican, during the presidential election season.
“I’m a national Democrat, and I want to get involved” in helping the
Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, get elected,
Schloeder said last week.
In a 1997 interview with The Sun upon his retirement from Gilman, Schloeder
called himself an “unreconstructed Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrat.”
There aren’t many FDR Dems at the State House these days. Most of the
governor’s staff accompanied him from Capitol Hill, where they were schooled
in the politics of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay.
More Top Picks Returning To School After A Concussion Vision Accommodations
14 Green Party candidates to appear on ballot in Md.
The Maryland Green Party is fielding the most comprehensive slate of
candidates in its history this year, with Greens running for U.S. Senate and
five of the state’s eight seats in the House of Representatives.
Running for Senate against Democratic incumbent Barbara A. Mikulski is
Baltimore resident Maria Allwine, a staunch opponent of the Iraq war who has
been arrested several times for civil disobedience, including once in
Mikulski’s office.
Corporate video and documentary producer Keith Salkowski, a Lutherville
native, is running in the 2nd District, where Democrat C.A. Dutch
Ruppersberger is the incumbent; and Patsy Allen, a Maryland Department of the
Environment employee, is a candidate in the 3rd District against incumbent
Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin.
The Greens enlisted Theresa Mitchell Dudley, a Landover civic activist, to
run in the 4th District against incumbent Democrat Albert R. Wynn, and Bob S.
Auerbach, a former state Green Party co-chairman, in the 5th District to
challenge incumbent Steny H. Hoyer.
Gregory J. Hemingway, an accountant and Baltimore County homeowner, is
running in the 6th District against Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett.
In all, 14 Greens will appear on Maryland ballots in November, including
candidates for president and Baltimore City Council, said Daniel Waldman, the
state party spokesman.
“All of our candidates are truly ordinary citizens who feel it is their
civic duty to run for Congress,” Waldman said. “This is in stark contrast to
career politicians who essentially make a business out of being public
servants.”