By the end of the day today, Gov.-elect Martin O?Malley?s name will be posted on each of the state?s 23 welcome signs that greet motorists on the interstates and other roads.
Removing outgoing Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s name from all of those signs will cost the state an estimated $10,000 to $12,000, but the signs are also recyclable, according to Valerie Edgar, spokeswoman for the state highway administration.
Edgar said all the state?s highway signs can be reused either by peeling off letters and numbers or by actually recycling the material to make new signs.
In the next few months, O?Malley?s mug will also be printed on all the state-published tourism brochures printed by the Department of Business and Economic Development. The budget for tourism brochures is about $625,000.
“We?ve been through this before, so we?ve been able to plan in terms of how many we needed,” said Karen Hood, Business and Economic Development spokeswoman. “We ran out of some of the brochures, so we?ll be ordering new ones.”
Hood said the department?s annual calendar of events was originally distributed in December with Ehrlich?s photo, but she said a larger shipment with O?Malley?s face has been ordered to stock the state?s visitors centers. She could not say how much reordering the publications cost the state, but said smaller shipments typically cost slightlymore per item than larger ones.
