A BREW VIEW
By DOUG DONOVAN

The Zenith luxury apartment building, downtown Baltimore.

Before Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso gets all of the blame for favoring Brian D. Morris, let no one forget the considerable favoritism once heaped upon the outgoing school board chairman by Gov. Martin O’Malley. It was the type of special treatment that enabled Morris to claim the financial expertise that allowed then-mayor O’Malley to appoint him to the school board.

It’s a worthwhile bit of history to recall, as the dust settles on Alonso’s biggest misstep yet: Tuesday’s hiring of Morris, a real estate developer and political ally, to fill a newly-created, unadvertised six-figure administrative position. That move had tongues wagging but once The Baltimore Sun published a story chronicling Morris’ embarassing history of unpaid taxes, lawsuits, bad debt claims, garnisheed wages and other financial problems, the jig was up: on Saturday Morris resigned.

A tangible reminder of O’Malley’s role in Morris’ rise can be seen downtown, across from the new Hilton Hotel and right next to Camden Yards: the Zenith condo/apartment tower, Morris’ main development claim to fame.

When O’Malley was mayor, his City Hall administration sold the 23,015-square-foot property at the southwest corner of Pratt and Paca streets to Morris’ development team in December 2003 for $750,000.

    The property, however, had been appraised by the city for $1.96 million, as I reported in 2005 while at The Baltimore Sun. O’ Malley essentially orchestrated a deal to sell off prime downtown real estate for approximately $1.25 million less than what it was worth. (That’s nearly four years worth of the $175,000 salary Alonso was willing to pay Morris.)

    So, here’s Morris now, losing his shot at a more lucrative high-profile job, just because of a history of some poor financial decisions. O’Malley’s bad financial decisions, with taxpayers’ money, didn’t prevent him from going on to a bigger and better job in Annapolis.

Don’t, however, mistake this point as an endorsement of City Council Vice President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s analysis of Morris’ downfall.

Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore’s second-highest ranking elected official, claimed that the criticism surrounding Morris’ hiring became an issue because he is African American.  

    According to The Sun, Rawlings-Blake said on the Anthony McCarthy Show on radio station WEAA:

“(Morris) is a professional. … Many of the top-level positions were created for individuals and not advertised. But we are living in a city where a brown person can’t get that treatment. If a job is created for one of us, your credentials are questioned, your background is questioned, the process is questioned,” she said.

For nearly two decades, Mayor Sheila Dixon has been dogged by people who have criticized her for waving her shoe at white City Council members during a 1991 redistricting meeting and saying, “You’ve been running things for the last 20 years. Now the shoe is on the other foot.” The redistricting of council districts eventually led to the elected body’s first African American majority, as was the purpose of redrawing the lines.

And while many saw the shoe incident as distasteful, at least Dixon bluntly spoke the truth about racial politics on the council and did so in the heat of a debate on the floor of the council.

Rawlings-Blake, on the other hand, was simply pandering to the lowest common denominator and had plenty of time to consider what she wanted to say on air about the Morris affair.

There’s no reason Rawlings-Blake, at a minimum, shouldn’t suffer the same criticism Dixon endured as she aspires to higher office. It’s been clear over the past week that Morris’ hiring was not a racial issue, considering that many of the critics have also been black.

Are we to assume that under a Rawlings-Blake administration high-paying executive jobs paid for by taxpayers will go to people whose credentials, backgrounds and qualifications must never be questioned? Or is that only for positions given to allies of her political benefactor, Gov. O’Malley?