Practically every delegate and state senator from the county itself backed the bill, which would have established a voluntary system of public financing for qualifying candidates for county executive and the nine seats on the County Council. No lawmaker in either chamber of the Maryland General Assembly publicly opposed it. In the House of Delegates, the measure sailed to passage by a vote of 137 to 0.

In the Senate, where the bill was assigned to the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, a single witness testified on the bill (council member Phil Andrews), explaining its merits and encountering nothing but favorable reactions from the senators who were present. And then, mysteriously, the bill never came up for a vote. Call it death by silence. (A similar bill to establish a statewide system of public financing for elections also died in the legislature, for at least the sixth time in the last decade.)

It's unclear who administered the coup de grace to the Montgomery bill. Some suspect Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), an opponent of campaign finance reform at the state level -- but he denies it. Perhaps it was the committee chair, Sen. Joan Carter Conway (D-Baltimore), who didn't return our phone call. If so, she didn't tip her hand to other members of her committee.