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.

The solution is not - as some legislative leaders have suggested - to simply ban fundraising during the occasional special session. That would be helpful, but it's little more than a minor patch on the major problem of influence-peddling.

After all, if depositing money in a legislator's campaign account immediately before or after a vote is unethical, why is depositing the money a few weeks later perfectly fine? A political payoff (or the appearance of one) is still a payoff.

The real answer is to make legislators less dependent on large political donations by creating a system where incumbents and challengers alike could qualify to have their campaigns publicly financed.

The drive to remove big money from campaigns and elections has also been picking up steam across the country. Last year, Connecticut adopted public campaign financing, joining Arizona and Maine, which have run "clean," publicly financed campaigns successfully through four election cycles.

The time appeared ripe for Maryland to follow suit, particularly after the surfacing of a secret FBI tape that revealed a former Maryland state senator, now under indictment, declaring himself a "whore" for the racetrack industry who "saved Comcast $75 million" as a legislative committee chairman.

In 2006, the House did pass a "clean money" campaign finance bill. The legislation only needed a nod from the Maryland Senate. But Senate leaders opposed the move, and the governor's office stayed silent. Despite these obstacles, the campaign reform legislation finally reached the Senate floor - with just two days left in the session. The bill lost, 23-24.

Much more should be happening than the General Assembly was able to deliver.

"This is obviously a ploy to kill any hope of getting it done in time for an election," said Del. Sheila E. Hixson, the Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored a House version of the bill. The measure mandated that the paper records be kept at polling places at a cost of $17 million to the state for fiscal year 2008 and $1.5 million for fiscal year 2009.

Indicted former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. freely boasted of wielding his political power to influence some of Maryland's most prominent institutions in order to benefit himself and his friends, according to hundreds of pages of transcribed secret recordings made public yesterday.

[Bromwell] spoke privately about the influence he felt he had with Comcast as a result of his efforts. Bromwell, who is expected to face trial on public corruption charges this year, is quoted as telling two associates over dinner at a Ruth's Chris Steak House that the cable TV company was indebted to him."I saved Comcast $75 million," Bromwell is quoted as saying.
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"Well, let me say this," Bromwell is quoted as saying. "If I run for county executive and lose, I've got a job with Comcast cable."