Tuesday • July 7, 2020

“Save Our Sun” or “Help Special Interests Own & Leverage Our Sun”?

By Steven Keller

Have you heard about the ‘Save Our Sun’ campaign? Local ownership…reinvesting profit….sounds like a noble cause, right? At face value, this sounds fantastic.

However, as the parties involved in this prospective deal become clearer, serious red flags have appeared that call into question the benevolence of this movement and whether there is a much more self-serving “long game” being played here by select parties that may be harmful to both HCPSS as well as Howard County as a whole.

The ‘Save Our Sun’ committee recently announced the selection of a local Howard County land-use attorney to serve as General Counsel for the ‘Save Our Sun’ campaign. This counsel will likely attempt to negotiate a potential deal to buy the Baltimore Sun from Tribune Publishing.

Still seem innocuous? Here are a few more details:

One vocal member of the ‘Save Our Sun’ committee also leads KO Public Affairs (detailed & critiqued in this Baltimore Sun article) & Center Maryland (an online news & social media company with strong ties to local HoCo developers & partisan political entities, among other special interests) and is a lobbyist for one of Howard County’s largest developers, The Howard Hughes Corporation (THHC).
The person hired as General Counsel to negotiate this ‘Save the Sun’ purchase is a land-use attorney with ties to THHC as well as many other housing & zoning initiatives across the county, is a lobbyist to the Howard County government for three separate entities, and was a member of County Executive Calvin Ball’s election transition team.
Another member of the ‘Save Our Sun’ committee is both a founding partner of KO Public Affairs and was also formerly a senior aide to Martin O’Malley
Yet another member of the ‘Save Our Sun’ committee is both a founding partner of KO Public Affairs and was also formerly a senior aide to Martin O’Malley

How might handing local control of the Baltimore Sun to these parties negatively affect HCPSS and Howard County in general?

Here’s some suggested summer reading and starting points for your own independent research:

With the above in mind, the parallels to this scene from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life become clearer. In this scene, a self-serving, ruthless banker seizes the opportunity of a crisis to “save” local banks & businesses and effectively obtain ownership control of them:

All (or at least most) of the members of the ‘Save Our Sun’ committee may indeed just truly love Maryland, love Baltimore, love Howard County, and love the Baltimore Sun so much that they want to ‘save’ it and hand benevolent, non-partisan, non-special interest influenced control of the media outlet over to local philanthropists and ethical journalists who have no other professional interests or financial incentives in mind.

However, past is prologue, and based on both the recent and historical words & actions of certain members of the ‘Save Our Sun’ committee, one must wonder just how this deal, if successful, may affect the future media coverage provided by the Baltimore Sun on various issues & policies (e.g. housing & zoning, HCPSS redistricting, local elections, taxes etc.) that are most relevant to the parties involved in this ‘Save the Sun’ deal and to those political & special interest entities that are directly and strongly tied to them.

Is being saved by this particular highly political and special interest driven committee the only possible way to save the Baltimore Sun?

Is it worth the long-term price that all in Howard County and surrounding Baltimore Counties will ultimately pay?

Want to discuss this topic with other Howard County residents?