(December 2003) Accountability is a rare bird in politics, much less Annapolis. On the next page you will learn about gun control that has yet to do what proponents claimed in order to enact it, yet bait and switch isn't only for gun laws. A gap can separate rhetoric from reality whenever legislation derives from someone's special agenda. In the name of halting rampant urban sprawl, for example, Parris Glendening rammed through his 'Smartgrowth' plan for controlling development, delighting his enviro-buddies by putting them in the driver's seat. Okay, accountability check: did it work? Nope, not according to the latest studies, which report developers now gobble up pristine rural areas faster than before since land in suburban areas can't be used as easily by its owners.

Another classic is red light cameras. People who thrill at Big Brother watching their every move got this claiming it would reduce accidents due to red light running. They spent a lot of taxes on cameras and cheerfully toddled off in search of other ways to micromanage our lives. Were they right? Did it work? No. Last summer we learned that the proportion of accidents attributed to red light running remains unchanged at intersections with cameras. (And it went up at marked intersections due to rear-end incidents where ticket-wary motorists jammed on brakes.)

Then there is tobacco. A couple years ago tobacco companies settled lawsuits by agreeing to pony up annual cash payments for government to invest in efforts to lower smoking rates. Now activists complain that Maryland isn't spending fast enough its share of the settlement. Read that closely: they aren't complaining about smoking rates, only that cash isn't burned fast enough. (Here's a real disconnect: a big share of anti-smoking cash is spent in Montgomery County which is well on its way to eliminating lawful tobacco use. Someone should propose a restriction on use of tobacco settlement cash in localities that presumably have already solved the problem by banning the evil weed. Then you'll quickly see who is in it for public health and who is in it for the money …)

Sometimes there isn't even a pretext of accountability. One of the weightiest burdens on taxpayers presently is the Thornton law - so-called from the name of the education commission that launched the school initiative 'for the children.' But look past the multi-billion price tag and you find very different details: Thornton isn't an education plan, it is a spending plan. There isn't any requirement that our kids' education actually improve after we pour payola into the hands of local government officials and union leaders. Its proponents measure success by how many monuments to school boards are built, not by successful outcomes for our next generation.

Our point is that we have a doubly difficult task before us. We need failed public policy (like gun control!) to spell the end of a proponent's career least he survive to inflict more injury to our community, yet Annapolis is already a culture where few people expect officials' success to be tied with the objective quality of their initiatives. Add to that the fact that our issue involves guns - that makes many public officials even less likely to look into the facts, giving a new construction to the term 'gun shy.' Politically they want to talk about almost anything else.

Gun grabbers who have never accounted for failed policies of yesteryear will bring a grab bag full of new gun control to the coming legislative session. We will start the session without administrative top cover. It would be nice to fight our upcoming battle over assault weapon bans by wielding the state's own authoritative analysis of how little such firearms have to do with crime, yet the administration has stoked antigun fervor by taking no pro-active steps in anticipation of the fight. They ignored our community's call for authoritative studies.

Then too there is ballistic fingerprinting. Bob Ehrlich made a clear campaign promise to look at gun programs and do away with those that don't work. So far, no objective studies. MSP's just-issued ballistic fingerprinting report - that the administration resisted, and was only written after pro-gun legislators added its mandate to a budget bill - hardly counts. It hid expenditures to make the program's cost appear low, it showcased speculative articles cheering gun control and it omitted real research that pans such programs. Asking MSP to report on its own gun control program is like sheep asking the wolf pack to study whether having mutton on the menu is a good idea.