Note: This comment wasn’t published in a timely way in the Capital because the Capital turned off commenting on this article for the first several days after the article was posted.

Capital News Article

Huang, Cindy, Lawsuit: Interviews for school board seats illegal, May 17, 2016.

Snider Comment

“The 11-member school board nominating commission is made up of five Hogan appointees, one representative from County Executive Steve Schuh’s office and four representatives from local organizations, such as the teachers’ union and school administrators’ union.”

Not quite. There are five, not four, stakeholder representatives.

On a more important issue concerning the identification of individual SBNC commissioners, I would recommend that the Capital identify commissioners by not only their formal role on the SBNC but also their primary political role. For example, Bob Burdon should have been identified not only as the Chamber of Commerce representative but also a Maryland General Assembly lobbyist. Pam Bukowski should have been identified not only as the PTA representative but also the VP of TAAAC (the largest AACPS union). And Kory Blake not only as a gubernatorial appointee but also the chief negotiator for AFSCME (the 2nd largest AACPS union).

The lack of such designations is odd because it is standard practice in the media to identify expert sources by political affiliation when an organizational affiliation is ambiguous or misleading because it masks an undisclosed dual loyalty.

Note: The Capital allowed no comments on this article for the first several days after it was published. The comment option continued to appear but was non-functional during this interval. The Capital provided no explanation for the deactivation of its commenting feature. This was not the first time this deactivation has happened on an article with a blatant factual error.