Sen. Pinsky and "Pandering"

Dear Sen. Pinsky:

According to the April 7 Laurel Leader

Pinksy said he personally sees problems with both an appointed school board and an elected board with nine single-member districts.

While he supports an elected board, a school board voted in by "very narrow districts ... lends itself to parochialism and ... pandering," he said.

He said he prefers five school board members each representing larger districts and four at-large seats.

Five districts give community members "someone they can call," he said, but also offer voters a chance to elect school board members with "a county vision" of how that school system should function.

Let's look at this statement.

Each of the nine school board districts provided by the Parker bill would be very close in size to the district you purport to represent.--so you must also represent what you call a "very narrow district."

You argue that such districts lend themselves to parochialism and pandering. If that is the case, then it would seem that either:

• You are possibly guilty of parochialism and pandering, or
• You should favor doing away with very narrow senate districts and having half of the senate elected state-wide.
  

Which is it? Or are you just one of our hypocritical politicians who says "do as I say, not as I do?"

A comment:

From: electedboard@aol.com
Date: Fri Apr 8, 2005 10:17 am
Subject: Re: [pgpubliced] Pandering???

Ms. Russell:

THANKS for your support of HB 1117. Your recent e-mail to Senator Pinsky clearly outlines Citizens for an Elected Board's arguments about the Senator's proposal - some districts/some at-large seats, or what's call a "hybrid" board. There are so many negatives, including the fact that county residents rejected the concept of at-large seats by voting down Question H last fall. Did you know that voters in only 12 precincts supported Question H? Voters in the remaining 87 precincts defeated it overwhelmingly! Why is Senator Pinsky disregarding the facts and disrespecting the will of the voters?

I attended the April 6th hearing of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Matters Committee. Both Senators Pinsky and Britt (District 47) are members of that Committee. Representatives from the NAACP, Kettering Civic Federation, League of Women Voters, Prince George's County Educators and Citizens for an Elected Board testified on behalf of HB 1117. There were no opponents. The Committee will not vote on the bill, however, until they receive a letter re: any action taken by the Prince George's Senators. As you might know, our Senators have not met to act on HB 1117 or 14 other bills awaiting action. Only 2 of the bills passed by the House and sent over to the Senate on March 25 have been considered and voted on by our Senators. I will certainly let you know about meetings scheduled by our Senators over the next FEW days and provide reports. Please keep calling the Senators' offices to let them know that at-large board seats are not acceptable.

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Filed in: PG.Education PG.School.Follies Sen.Pinsky