When Northwest Baltimore Councilwoman Rochelle “Rikki” Spector was removed from all but one of her committee assignments last month, the official message from City Council was that Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young wanted to get some fresh blood into the city’s committees. This week, that message changed.
“What Rikki did, she crossed a line of decorum with the Council,” said Young in a Jan. 15 phone interview. “Rikki has been disrespectful to me as council president.”
Young went on to say that he would not be reinstating her onto any of the committees for the remainder of the current council term, which expires in 2016.
“As long as I am president Rikki will never get those committees back. No way,” he said. “You can’t disrespect me…No, because if she was in Annapolis and she’d done what she’d done she would have been stripped of everything and put in the corner.”
Spector, the longest-serving councilmember and only Jewish representative, gained notoriety late last year when she was the only member to vote against body cameras for all members of Baltimore’s police force and a ban on plastic bags at city stores. The bills were both fiercely advocated for by Young and eventually vetoed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. In his interview with the Jewish Times, Young accused Spector of having a history of not supporting him and being a mouthpiece for the Rawlings-Blake administration.
For the full story, see next week’s issue of the Jewish Times.
I agree with Young. Spector has always done what every mayor in the past has told her to do. She does not care what the Jewish communities needs are. We have voted her in for far to long and she does not have enough respect to us either by living outside of our district. She lives down town with her boyfriend and hardly ever travels back to make sure we are all A OK.