This very day, Bethany Rodgers [the reporter that got the order from Kirby Delauter not to use his name while journalizing, without his express permission] tweets:
Why is this interesting, you ask? Well because back before Dec. 1, 2014 when the former form of government for Frederick County was a board of 5 County Commissioners, Blaine Young was the President of said Board. Having lost the election for County Executive to Jan Gardner in a very contentious contest, Blaine Young had some strategies. Or at least we think he did. None of them panned out. The first posited theory was that due to his preternatural support of Ellen Bartlett for the District 1 County Council seat, Blaine was hedging his bets. Ellen Bartlett is the wife of former US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett for Maryland's 6th District. Let's just say that Ellen likes goats and she has been the President of various homemakers clubs over the years in the County. Those were the main takeaways from various debates that I attended. It was generally assumed that if Ellen were to have won, she would bow out and the Republican Central Committee would install Blaine in her seat. We can't prove it and Blaine would have had to move to District 1, which isn't too much of a stretch really, but that was the accepted scenario among most skeptics around here.
Anyway, the District 1 race was a nail biter, because very close to half of District 1 voted for her. It took some time for a recount and then the absentee ballots were necessary to put Jerry Donald over top by like 24 votes or so. Many of us are still in shock that it was so close, as goats can't vote......
Meanwhile Blaine made noises after his loss to Gardner that he was going to recede and we wouldn't hear from him for awhile. A lot of us thought that would be peachy.
Two days before the inauguration of the new County Council and County Executive, the last official meeting of the soon to be defunct Board of County Commissioners met. Lo and behold, Kirby Delauter, Billy Shreve and Paul Smith [then also Commissioners] brought forth a nomination for Blaine Young to become a citizen member of the Frederick County Planning Commission. It passed.
Needless to say, this caused quite an uproar. County Executive Jan Gardner sent Blaine a memorandum to the effect that the appointment to the Planning Commission was quite possibly invalid and she would seek an opinion from Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler regarding same and requested that Blaine not show up for the next meeting. Of course he did. Show up.
The Attorney General issued an opinion contrary to the appointment. Quelle Surprise! County Executive Jan Gardner dutifully relayed the opinion to Blaine and the County and again told Blaine to not show up. This was like two weeks ago. The Kirby Delauter brouhaha seems to make time dilate. The upshot though was that the next move, should there be one, was for Blaine to sue to dispute the AG's opinion.
So he resigned. But he was dismissed a while ago. You can't fire me, I quit!
As background, the main displeasure with Blaine was his management of land use issues and over development, mainly in District 2. The Planning Commission such as it is, is Blaine's own creation, purely picked to further his own machinations with respect to developers and, in not a few people's perceptions, bald faced crony capitalism. Blaine was Ex-Officio on the Planning Commission as President of the Board of County Commissioners. It is rather obvious to the casual observer that he micro-managed the whole operation and the Board of Commissioners as well. Kirby Delauter made it through to become a County Council Member for District 5, as did Billy Shreve for an at large seat. They are without their dear leader now and mistakes are being made. Billy lost his Winchester Hall keys and made a stink about having to pay a ten dollar replacement fee, like anyone else would have to do. Then there is the parking spaces rhubarb right outside of Winchester Hall. [There is a nice modern parking deck right across from Winchester Hall and Council Members would get free parking and have to walk a few more feet.] And of course there is the Kirby Delauter First Amendment debacle which will no doubt change the American lexicon forever.