Maryland?s highest court Friday rendered futile four years of efforts to change Carroll County?s leadership from three commissioners elected at-large to five by district.
“At the end of four years, we are right back where we started,” said Dana Dembrow, whose settlement with the Carroll Circuit Court on which map would delineate five voting districts was rejected by the Court of Appeals following a hearing Thursday in Annapolis.
Voters called for five commissioners elected by district in a 2004 referendum, but a map delineating five districts failed to pass through the General Assembly this last legislative session.
Friday?s decision, which the court said it will explain later in an opinion, said only the legislature can determine voting districts, so voters will have to elect three commissioners in a countywide election in November.
“It?s unfortunate that those who opposed the bill in the General Assembly upon the belief that it would fare better in the courts have thwarted the will of the people in Carroll County,” said Joseph Getty, a policy director for Gov. Robert Ehrlich, former districting committee member and one of two men who appealed Circuit Court Judge Michael Galloway?s April 19 order that chose a district map recommended by the districting committee.
In addition to incumbents Commissioners Dean Minnich and Perry Jones, seven Republican candidates have filed to run using the district map Galloway ordered.
Now they will have to run directly against the incumbents and raise more contributions to run countywide.
“The news is terrible,” candidate Doug Howard, of Sykesville, said Friday.
Howard, who plans to continue campaigning, said it not only will cost more to get elected, but the court?s decision also voids a 2004 referendum when 39,000 Carroll residents voted for five commissioners elected by district and 32,000 voted against it.
As a result of the decision, some are again calling for a change from commissioner to code home rule form of government.
“This fiasco just shows the downside of having a very weak, dysfunctional government,” Dembrow said.
Code home rule would allow commissioners to pass local legislation without the state legislature?s approval.
“I think this is going to cause a [huge] uproar,” said James Harris, a retired landscape contractor from Westminster who also appealed the Circuit Court?s decision.
“People will be angry, because they took the effort and the time to go to the polls.”
