Monthly Archives: August 2010

If campaign finace irregularities on my recent postings have failed to arouse concerns, perhaps the following will.   Senator Conway has received campaign contributions from contractors, construction companies, architects, demolition companies and the like totaling over $71,000.  The majority of these entities are based outside of Senator Conway’s district and many of them are not even Maryland-based companies.   So why are these donations being made?

All of these donors benefit from government contracts.   Although information regarding which companies receive government contracts of over $25,000 is only available for the years or 2008 and 2009, there are lots of examples in just these two years of entities which donated to Senator Conway beforehand and later received sizable contracts.    The conclusions are left for you to make.

If you focused on Senator Conway’s LLC contributions after visiting the Maryland Board of Elections website on campaign finance, you my have missed another pattern.  Go back and check out the donations made to the Senator by the liquor industry.  Add up the contributions made by the Maryland Beer Wholesalers Association, corner liquor stores, bars, and lobbyists and you will see donations exceeding $40,000.  (I know this is time consuming because of the Senator’s long list of contributors – 62 pages)

When you couple these extraordinary donation amounts with liquor issues involving Senator Conway, you are bound to raise your eyebrows.  For instance, check out the Baltimore Sun story detailing the Senator’s lead sponsored bill to limit police oversight of liquor stores, bars, clubs and other establishments with liquor licenses.  According to the article, the Senator believed the police were ‘usurping the authority of the city liquor board’  See the entire story here.

And then there is the story of the Chief Liquor Inspector’s suspension after he claimed that several members of the Board of Liquor License Commissioners were ‘engaging in political collusion and corruption to protect some bar owners on The Block from sanctions’.   The Chief, Samuel Daniels, Jr. also asserted that Senator Conway colluded with the board members to remove him from office and aimed to have her husband assume his position.  Read the entire story here.

What’s the true impact of the liquor industry in our district???

The York Road Partnership, an umbrella group of neighborhoods and institutions along the York Road corridor, will host tonight’s candidate’s forum and focus attention on education issues and the liquor problems that have plagued the York Road coridor.  The discussion should be lively.

The forum will be held at St. Mary’s Church Halll, 5502 York Rd (enter from rear parking lot) from 7:15-8:45 pm.   Hope to see you  then.

In Maryland, any individual or corporation is limited in donation to $4,000 per candidate but a loophole in the law allows wealthy contributors to bypass this. For a small fee, an individual or business can establish a limited liability corporation (LLC) or partnership (LLP). This LLC can then donate another $4,000. Create another one and you can donate another $4,000. To add to this deception, you can even obscure your name when you create the LLC, making it difficult to find out who you are.  Its a loophole that many ethical politicians have tried to close. Delegate Bobo has said, “candidates bear some responsibility for whom they choose to accept contributions from”.

Go the the Maryland Board of Elections website on campaign finance to find out how much Senator Conway has received in LLC donations with completely mysterious origins.  Try to track down Marco Concepts LLC, KSP LLC, Team Ground Control LLC, CNI LLC, R&L Fulton LLC, Lowry LLC- my math says about $18,700 comes from these suspect donors- far more than I’ve spent on my entire campaign.  One has to wonder, if so much money is coming from such questionable sources, who is Joan Carter Conway really representing?

Check out a complete list of donors at this official Maryland Board of Elections website.

And check out this article on LLC contributions

If you’ve missed the debate at the Lauraville Improvement Association or NECO’s candidate forum, you get a third chance this Wednesday.  I hope you can join us to hear about the issues that are so important to the citizens of the 43 Legislative District and the State of Maryland.  The York Road Partnership, an umbrella group of neighborhoods and institutions along the York Road corridor, will host the candidate’s forum and focus attention on education issues and the liquor problems that have plagued the coridor.  The discussion should be lively.

The debate will be held at St. Mary’s Church Halll, 5502 York Rd (enter from rear parking lot) from 7:15-8:45 pm.