At last night’s Baltimore mayor’s race forum at Coppin State University, the audience learned almost as much about the feisty panelists as they did about the mayoral candidates.

They discovered that Shernay Williams won’t put up with candidates mouthing platitudes about fixing city schools, Lester K. Spence is highly skeptical of plans to slash taxes and Charles F. Robinson III is so enamored of the idea of a new $900 million Baltimore Convention Center and Arena that his main question for candidates was “how do you sell this to a city that has so much development already, but really needs the jobs it could bring?”

Candidate Otis Rolley III wasn’t having it. When his turn came he made clear his distaste for that plan and skepticism about its chief proponent, the Greater Baltimore Committee.

“I will work with the Greater Baltimore Committee, I won’t work for them,” Rolley began. (Robinson interrupted to ask if Rolley wasn’t saying something “nuanced” and Rolley shot back, “No, I’m being very clear.”)

“I don’t believe Baltimore is one large-scale development away from a renaissance,” Rolley said. “They’ve been playing that song for years and it doesn’t work anymore.”

Instead of spending to attract tourists and conventioneers to Baltimore, he said, “we need to pay attention to the people who are here.”

“We have to put more emphasis on the neighborhoods,” Pugh said, hammering on the theme as well, as several candidates did.

Opinions may differ on the questioners’ provocative, sometimes pugnacious style – there was some cheering and hissing from the crowd – but they clearly stirred up some news-making statements from the candidates.

3 Panelists, 6 Candidates, No Incumbent

The sharp exchange over the new arena and convention center expansion idea was just one of several raw moments at the mayoral forum, organized by the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, the Greater Baltimore Urban League and the Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and attended by about 150 people in the school athletic center.

Another of those tense moments came when Robinson chided Rolley, a former city planning director, and Carl Stokes, a Baltimore City Councilman, for showing up late to the event.

“Let me remind you, this forum started at 6, not 7. Please be on time,” Robinson said. (Never mind that the event, scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., actually got under way at about 6:30 p.m.) Stokes and Rolley, faced flushed, sat silently for the dressing-down.

Attending the forum, along with Rolley and Stokes, were most, but not all, of the other candidates vying to win the Sept. 13 Democratic mayoral primary: former Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors Vice President Joseph T. “Jody” Landers III (he recently stepped down to focus on the campaign), State Sen. Catherine E. Pugh, Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway Sr., and Wilton Wilson, a home care nurse.

The no-show was incumbent Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake who reportedly said she had a prior engagement. “Enjoyed speaking at AFYA’s first eighth grade graduation,” @MayorSRB tweeted last night. “Good work kids.”

Rolley called attention to Rawlings-Blake’s absence at one point, making a reference to “the current mayor” and looking left and right as if to see if she were there.

“Oh. I thought she would be here because it’s, well, the NAACP debate and, you know, the city,” he said, to audience chuckles.

The candidates were questioned by two panelists, Johns Hopkins University Assistant Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies Lester K. Spence and Afro-American newspaper staff writer and multi-media journalist Shernay Williams. Moderator Robinson is a longtime Baltimore print and radio journalist.

Taxing Talk

Addressing the candidates pushing the idea of cutting Baltimore’s property tax rate, Spence tried to pin them down on “who would be hurt” by the service cuts necessitated by slashing revenue. “How is this different from the trickle-down economics of the 80s?” he asked

With the city’s tax rate more than twice that of surrounding counties, taxes have emerged as a major issue in the 2011 mayoral race and Pugh, Landers, Stokes and Rolley have proposed them.

“We pay twice what other jurisdictions pay and we get half the services,” Stokes said. He said the extra revenue could be made up by ending subsidies to developers with big waterfront and downtown projects and from new residents who would, via “the law of diminishing returns,” come to the city, attracted by lower taxes.

“When you lower your prices, or your tax burden, people will buy your product – that is, move to the city,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Rawlings-Blake administration produced a report saying that, for the tax-slashing to work, half a million new residents would have to come into the currently shrinking city.

Landers said the tax slash would be feasible if it were tiered, with vacant and derelict properties taxed at a higher rate. “We’ve got to stop penalizing people for fixing up their homes and adding to our tax base,” he said. He advocated limiting developer tax breaks with a “sunset provision” kicking in once the development was profitable.

How else to make a drastic tax cut work? Pugh spoke of giving away some of the estimated 30,000 vacant houses in the city via a return to the dollar homes program from the 1970s. “We have to grow the population,” she said. “Let’s focus on growing the tax base.”

What they were all proposing was, essentially, “ the Laffer Curve,” Spence remarked. “It hasn’t worked for the country, why would it work here?”

A Mayor Who Will “Think Black?”

Conaway opened by reciting his standard poem about “a wise old owl,” then went on to make some jaw-dropping remarks.

“The reason I want to be mayor is I want to be chauffeured around the city. I want to give away $150,000 jobs,” he said. Some in the audience smiled, others gasped, and still others listened placidly as the 77-year-old Conaway moved on to other less ambiguous material. Presumably, what he said was meant as a joke.

Later, moderator Robinson raised the race issue, pointing out that Landers is “the only white candidate” and asking Wilson, who he noted has a Caribbean accent, to address how “some have suggested that new immigrants are taking away from the tried and traditional communities.”

The race topic on the table, Conaway took it up and unleashed two more jaw-droppers.

“You can be black on the outside and white on the inside,” he said. “You want a mayor who is going to think black.”

On education, Conaway said, “It was a mistake to desegregate schools.”

“Are you saying we should go back to segregation?” panelist Williams asked him.

“Oh, they’re segregated now anyway,” Conaway said, with a sigh.

No one brought up the recent state audit, first reported Monday by the Maryland Daily Record, that found “significant deficiencies” in Conaway’s office, including a failure to collect nearly $8 milion in criminal fees and to verify that more than $34 million in civil fees had been paid.

On Youth and Education

Several of the candidates hammered Rawlings-Blake for spending cuts to summer youth programs, with Rolley’s remarks arguably the most withering.

“If you can raise $800,000 in one night for your campaign, it means you have some strong fund-raising capability. You should be able to raise more money for summer jobs,” said Rolley. “But if your priorities are out of whack, you can’t do that for the youth of Baltimore City.”

Landers said he likes the accountability emphasis in the contract teachers approved this year, which ties pay to performance, but he said he said moves to “get rid of veteran teachers” are “a real mistake.”

Rolley, who has advocated private school vouchers for students zoned to attend failing middle schools, also emphasized accountability. He has said he would lobby to restore mayoral control to the city school system.

Pugh, meanwhile, stressed her contributions to education as a state lawmaker. She noted that she was a sponsor of legislation that created special schools aimed at lowering the drop-out rate and that she is the leading force behind a city public high school themed to architecture and fashion and graphic design.

Pugh said she’s against plans to build a new juvenile prison, a remark that brought cheers from the audience.

“We need to put some money into educating young people,” she said. “Let’s not be so quick to throw our young people away.”

Panelist Williams repeatedly pressed candidates for specifics on fixing education: “What are you actually proposing to do?” she asked. “How are you going to pay for it?”

Wilson, a relatively unknown candidate, had a clear answer on one way to redirect funds to make more money available to directly benefit students. He condemned the school system’s recent proposal to hire 15 new administrators as part of a $1.75 million central office reorganization.

“I think it’s fraud,” Wilson said. “We don’t need all those deputies, all that money, for administration.”