MontCo Council wastes more money on petition challenge Re: “Montgomery County sues Board of Elections over police referendum,” Nov. 29
As one who was collecting signatures throughout the summer for montgomerypetitions.com at the same time the “police” were collecting signatures to let county residents vote on a County Council bill scaling back the police union’s collective bargaining rights, I have a few comments.
Almost all of the signatures were collected by a signature-gathering firm that charged the police union $4 a signature to collect. Any person who claims they were induced to sign because they were deceived by the collection firm can file the proper paperwork to have their name removed from the petition or file a lawsuit at their own expense, not yours and mine
Why is the Council using large amounts of taxpayer money to challenge the determination that the county’s Board of Elections spent large amounts of taxpayer money to make sure that signatures on the petition were valid? The council could have just called the board while it was checking the signatures to make sure they were being checked correctly.
Robin Ficker
Boyds, Md.
Barry should abandon his succession plan
Re: “Marion Barry files for Ward 8 re-election,” Nov. 29
Marion Barry has never done anything for Washington except ruin it.
Barry’s bid to be re-elected to the his 8th Ward D.C. Council seat and then “pass on” his remaining term to his son as if he were some kind of monarch shows just how egotistical and self-centered the former mayor is.
Why doesn’t Barry’s son get a job so he won’t need the council seat stipend?
Marion, do D.C. a favor and just “go gentle into that good night.”
Jeff Underwood
Columbia, Md.
Public overwhelmingly rejects school vouchers
Re: “Why 2011 is the Year of the School Voucher,” Nov. 17
Marcus Winters is wrong about 2011 being the “Year of the School Voucher.” This year’s Gallup poll on education, released in August, registered opposition to school vouchers nationally at 65 to 34 percent. That is almost exactly the average percentage by which vouchers or their variants have been voted down by millions of Americans in over two dozen statewide referenda from conservative Utah to liberal Massachusetts.
Voucher plans exist only in those states – such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana – where taxpayers were not given the chance to vote on them. Just this year, the Wisconsin Department of Education found that kids in Milwaukee, the oldest voucher plan in existence, are not doing as well as kids in the city’s public schools.
Simply put, most Americans think that tax aid to sectarian private schools violates their religious freedom and harms their public schools.
Edd Doerr
President, Americans for Religious Liberty
Silver Spring
