Maryland Attorney and Lawyers

MARYLAND STATE Sen. Katherine A. Klausmeier, a Democratic lawmaker from suburban Baltimore, has a long and committed record of public service: She’s been active in parent-teacher associations and on issues as varied as nursing homes, children’s health, economic development and the environment. She also engages in a form of legally sanctioned corruption common in the Third World but practiced in this country only in Maryland. To put it simply: Mrs. Klausmeier thinks it’s just fine to take taxpayers’ money and give it to her relatives.

She is able to do this because of an unethical anachronism known as legislative scholarships, which allow Maryland state senators to dole out $138,000 a year to college-bound children of constituents (or relatives) pretty much any way they like. Members of the House of Delegates, too, control state scholarship funds, but in smaller amounts — about $31,000 a year — than are available to senators. This disgraceful system has given rise to precisely the sort of abuse to which Mrs. Klausmeier admits. Of her niece, a recent nursing student on whom the senator bestowed $1,000 in state cash, Mrs. Klausmeier declared, “There’s nothing saying that she can’t” receive the money. Nothing, that is, except a sense of right and wrong.

As we said not long ago, Maryland’s legislative scholarships, a perk enjoyed by lawmakers since the Civil War, are a twisted exercise in pork barrel spending that have no higher public purpose than to protect incumbents. They have been prohibited in every other state in the nation for at least 25 years. Yet they have been so long and widely in use in Annapolis that only a minority of members of the General Assembly even recognize (or admit) their ethical bankruptcy. As The Post’s David Snyder reported last week, there is ample reason to believe that many recipients of the scholarships — dispensed by Democrats and Republicans alike — are the sons and daughters of contributors, personal friends, campaign workers and others with cozy ties to their elected state senators and delegates. What’s more, plenty of them don’t even need the money: Nearly 30 percent of the recipients last year were students from households earning more than $80,000.

The common, laughable defense from lawmakers is that they understand their constituents’ needs better than state bureaucrats would if bureaucrats controlled the scholarships using fixed criteria based, for instance, on financial need. What is particularly sad is that Maryland’s need-based financial aid available for college students is paltry compared with that of many other states. Even as in-state college tuitions have soared, students lacking the right connections to their local senator or delegate stand a diminished chance of getting help.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) wants to end this outrageous state of affairs by transferring the $11.3 million used annually for legislative scholarships to the state’s main need-based financial aid program. Several legislators of conscience have submitted legislation to that effect. Two such bills are stalled in the Senate’s Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Democratic Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, another suburban Baltimore lawmaker. Mrs. Hollinger, a nurse, is reluctant to give up such a juicy perk, which she uses to channel scholarship money to nursing students.