Ellicott City resident Penny Boughn isn?t in Gov. Martin O?Malley?s inner circle. She?s not a huge contributor or a vocal supporter.
But last week, she found herself sitting at her kitchen table, face to face with the governor as he rolled out pieces of his tax plan.
“I?m not even in his outer circle,” said Boughn, a retired sales manager for AT&T. “It could have been anyone.”
Boughn recently was shopping at Kohl?s when she ran into an acquaintance she knew from sign-waving during last year?s campaign. The governor was looking for residents to host his “kitchen table talks,” her friend said, asking whether she would be willing to consider it.
“I was excited,” Boughn said.
For about 20 minutes, O?Malley chatted with the Boughns, a couple of their friends, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman and County Council Chairman Calvin Ball, D-District 2.
O?Malley presented parts of his plan to address the state?s $1.7 billion structural deficit, and the residents raised issues of importance to them.
“Around all of this, we have to find a consensus,” O?Malley told the group.
Meanwhile, a slew of television cameras, photographers and reporters filed into the home, squeezing in next to the toaster oven and leaning on countertops.
Save for cleaning the bathroom, Boughn did little to prepare. Her granddaughter, Melanie, 8, did research O?Malley on the Internet.
O?Malley?s camp prepped the families to let them know what to expect: Their house will be on the evening news, but setup starts at 8 a.m., O?Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said. But there were no interviews with neighbors or background checks, he said.
The administration had an idea of what counties and neighborhoods it wanted to visit, Abbruzzese said, which were Ellicott City and Towson?s Anneslie neighborhood in Baltimore County earlier in the week.
The events “bring a sense of how the issues we are dealing with really affect the lives of families across the state,” he said.
