The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page B6

Maryland Page 6b Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 The Sun in Howard 'He is entitled to put up a Civil War statue on a Civil War battlefield. Md. school buildings are found lacking Private statue of Gen. Lee spurs debate By Lynn Anderson SUN STAFF But survey by state draws quick criticism By Tanika White SUN STAFF AMY DAVIS SUN STAFF PHOTOS Leo Caradori manages the Newcomer House museum and bookstore.

He says most of the visitors go to the Confederate side of the museum before going to the Union side. mmm parties erecting monuments on private lands that were part of the battlefield. Most of the land around the national park is protected by development easements, but owners have the right to build statues. "It was one thing for the men who fought on the fields to erect monuments," said Gary W. Gallagher, a professor of history at the University of Virginia in a letter to the Washington County Board of Zoning Appeals.

"It is quite another for modern groups or individuals to do so." But D. Bruce Poole, a lawyer and former state delegate from Hagerstown who represents Chaney, said the spat about the statue has surprised some residents because the Lee monument fits in well with other statues at the battlefield. "It's not as though it is a very gaudy statue," he said. "I have to remind people that Mr. Chaney owns that land.

He is entitled to put up a Civil War statue on a Civil War battlefield." The battle at Antietam was one of the bloodiest of the Civil War, resulting in the deaths of more than 5,000 Union and Confederate soldiers. Today, the battlefield looks much as it did in the 1860s, with cozy farmhouses and rambling barns. The statue of Lee who is depicted astride his favorite mount, Traveller is easily visible amid the rural tableau. "It's fanciful," said Tom Clemens, president of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation and a professor of history at Hagerstown Community College, of the representation of Lee and his horse. Clemens said Lee did not ride on horseback much while in the Sharpsburg area because he had recently broken one wrist and sprained the other.

SHARPSBURG The bronze statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee has stood on a grassy knoll above the Antietam battlefield for several months now. But furor over the statue which some say is historically inaccurate has yet to fade, despite support from the National Park Service, which manages the nearby Civil War site. The statue erected by Anne Arundel County millionaire William F.

Chaney, who says he is a descendant of the Confederate leader, is at the center of a court battle pitting Washington County locals against the outsider with different views on historic preservation and interpretation. "I would say it is one of the best statues up there," said Chaney, a Lothian resident who bought a chunk of the Antietam battlefield, outbidding the National Park Service, in 1999. Since then, he has turned an old farmhouse on the property into a museum. The Lee statue stands nearby. "I have had not a negative comment from anyone except for that little group." That "little group" is the 700 or so members of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation, which has retained an attorney and filed an appeal in Circuit Court to bring down the 24-foot statue.

Members say Lee never stood on the hill, although he might have passed through the area before the battle Sept. 17, 1862. They are appealing on technical grounds but have a larger point to make. Opponents, including several well-known Civil War historians, worry that the Lee statue will set a precedent of private Clemens takes issue with Chaney a proud Confederate son who helped develop the Old South Country Club in Anne Arundel County and erected a statue of Confederate soldier Benjamin Welch Owens in Lothian in 1999. The professor said Chaney is trying to recast history by placing the statue in an area of the battlefield that was controlled by the Union during the clash.

"Clearly there is an agenda here," Clemens said. A tour of Chaney's Newcomer House Civil War Museum makes it clear where his sympathies lie. The museum is divided into two rooms, one for each army the Confederate side includes a lock of Lee's hair and a letter he wrote to the people of Maryland before his troops crossed into the state and the bookstore includes Confederate flag key chains and T-shirts. Leo Caradori, a self-described Yankee from New York state whom Chaney hired to manage the museum and bookstore for him, said most of those who visit the Newcomer House go to the Confederate side first. He reminds visitors that the Union side is also interesting, espe- The Newcomer House was bought and restored by Anne Arundel County millionaire William F.

Chaney, who outbid the National Park service for the site. State education officials reported results of a survey yesterday that indicated many of the public school buildings in Maryland are failing to meet local, state or national standards in areas ranging from air quality to building accessibility to student capacity. No sooner were the results made public than many school system leaders in the Baltimore region took issue with the conclusions reached in the survey, calling into question its methodology much of the information was self-reported and contending the data were not only unreliable, but unhelpful. The survey, completed last month by the Task Force to Study Public School Facilities, detailed the results of a 10-month audit of nearly every public school building in the state. School officials said this is the first time the state has undertaken such a large-scale facilities assessment.

Each school district rated its needs and submitted data to the task force's advisory panel, headed by State Schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick. The state spot-checked the data reported by the schools. Although the task force won't come up with the potential price tag of meeting the long list of needs until next month, Grasmick said, the state plans to use the survey to set priorities and wants school districts to do the same. "We're saying to school systems, 'Please use this data, look at it and implement it into your she said.

The survey evaluated building conditions and capacity in 1,342 schools, as well as each building's ability to support educational programs and services. Statewide, more than 30 percent of schools were rated inadequate in six of the 31 areas measured: student capacity, accessibility, existing pre-kinder-garten and kindergarten classrooms, secondary science, fine arts and health services. Some school systems, such as Howard and Montgomery counties, reported few areas of need. But districts such as Baltimore, Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County indicated that their schools met the survey's standards in only a handful of areas. Efficiency panel to draft ideas for Ehrlich cially because it contains one of a small batch of verified original copies of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Most Washington County locals acknowledge that Chaney has done a good job of restoring the 1790s farmhouse. Chaney said he spent $500,000 to renovate the structure, which he bought several years ago for $300,000. A partner in the venture is David M. Sheehan, a Baltimore lawyer and the husband of Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens, who grew up with Chaney.

John W. Howard, superintendent of the Antietam National Battlefield said, "We would not have gotten to it as quickly as he did if we had bought it. It would not have been high on our to-do list. We have other buildings that are more significant to the core of the battlefield." One of those buildings is a barn that Chaney purchased as part of the 101-acre Newcomer farm. Recently, Chaney sold the barn and 50 acres to the park service, which is stabilizing the wooden structure and surveying it.

Howard said the barn was used as a hospital for Union soldiers after the battle. "The Newcomer farm represents a big part of the landscape of the battlefield," said Howard, who expects renovation of the barn to cost about $800,000. "Once we get the barn back up, and with the work that Mr. Chaney has done on the house, we will have a great entrance to the national battlefield." The court will take up the case Dec. 19, almost a year to the date that Chaney's statue proposal was rejected by the Washington County Historic District Commission in a 3-2 vote.

Chaney won permission to erect the statue from the Board of Zoning Appeals, which found that county officials had not responded to his permit application request within 45 days, as prescribed under state law. The court appeal will focus on where Chaney should have filed his application to erect the statue with the planning and zoning office or the historic district commission and when the clock started ticking on the 45-day requirement. Chaney filed a site plan with the county planning and zoning office Oct. 17 last year. The historic district commission received the plan Nov.

8 and voted Dec. 4. By David Nitkin SUN STAFF tions to Ehrlich early next month. The governor could accept or reject any of the ideas, and those he favors may need legislation to implement, said Shareese N. DeLeaver, a spokeswoman for the governor.

Yesterday's meeting was unadvertised, and committee members read their recommendations from binders. Paper copies were not available later in the day, continuing the fog of secrecy under which the panel has operated for weeks. "This is just a draft report, subject to the will of this commission," Mandel said. Ehrlich created the commission in August, fulfilling a campaign pledge to seek ways to make government more efficient. Before and shortly after his election, the governor said that a leaner government would cost less and help eliminate a gap between spending and revenues projected at more than $700 million next year.

But when he created the panel, Ehrlich altered his mes- An overhaul of Maryland government should result in a high-level officer to coordinate Chesapeake Bay restoration programs and the unification of small and scattered police departments into statewide units, according to preliminary recommendations discussed yesterday by an efficiency commission. State operations also could be improved if the functions of the Maryland Stadium Authority were expanded to include the construction of public schools, said members of the Commission on the Structure and Efficiency of State Government, appointed by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Those ideas and others were raised yesterday during one of the last meetings of the commission, headed by former Gov.

Marvin Mandel. The commission is due to release a draft report Monday, followed by a public hearing later in the week, before making final recommenda sage, and said cost savings were not a goal. There was no estimate available yesterday for how much if anything the alterations under consideration might save. The commission's environmental subgroup has recommended the appointment of a bay coordinator to oversee agencies that work on the Chesapeake, making up a Bay Cabinet. Such a structure existed under then-Gov.

William Donald Schaefer, but faded under former Gov. Parris N. Glendening. A subgroup looking at independent agencies has suggested expanding the scope of the Stadium Authority to include school construction, the purview of local governments. "The idea has just kind of evolved: Why couldn't they take on more, to standardize construction and design to save the state money," said Louise L.

Hayman, a committee member and aide to Comptroller William Donald Schaefer. A law enforcement group headed by Harford County Executive James M. Harkins wants to consolidate several state law enforcement agencies. Under its plan, police from the Maryland Department of Transportation, the Maryland Transit Administration and the Motor Vehicle Administration would be combined into a single 570 member department. For major incidents such as a plane crash, "you could draw from one group, and everybody would be on the same page," said MTA police Chief Douglas DeLeaver, whose daughter is a spokeswoman for Ehrlich.

Ehrlich could well look favorably at many of the recommendations, given his respect for Man-del, who, despite serving time in prison on federal corruption charges that were later overturned, is considered at expert on government operations. Capital News Service contributed to this article. Source: NASA Why are these people smiling? Because they will Maryland may see total lunar eclipse tomorrow 0 By Frank D. Roylance SUN STAFF AM MID-ATLANTIC, INC. LIQUID SIDING 410-737-2022 877-737-2220 tnt983897405 Cheated by geography and bad weather, Marylanders have missed out on every lunar eclipse since January 2000.

But if the forecast for clear skies holds tomorrow, Mary-landers will get another chance to watch a total lunar eclipse as the moon plunges through Earth's shadow. This time, the northeastern United States will have a ringside seat. "It's one of those experiences we share with the many people who have lived over the centuries, and the millennia," said Jim O'Leary, director of the Maryland Science Center's Davis Planetarium. "It sort of turns your attention to things beyond the daily routine and gets you thinking about things cosmic for a short period of time." The celestial show will begin at dinnertime tomorrow, making it convenient to watch. But skywatchers will have to be punctual this eclipse is shorter than most, with 24 minutes and 32 seconds of totality.

At 6:32 p.m. EST about 90 minutes after the full "frost moon" rises in the east it will begin to cross into the Earth's umbra, the dark core of the circular shadow the planet casts almost a million miles into space. The moon will dim gradually from the left as it moves from direct sunlight into shade. The eclipse will become total at 8:06 p.m., when the moon is fully engulfed in shadow. Look for a much-subdued, amber disk glowing above the southeastern horizon.

Then, at 8:30 p.m., the lower edge of the moon will begin moving back into direct sunlight. The whole face of the moon will be fully illuminated again by 10:04 p.m. Tomorrow's event will be visible in its entirety from Europe and West Africa to Brazil, eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. It's the second lunar eclipse of the year, but clouds in Maryland obscured the first one May 15. If you miss this one, the next total eclipse of the moon visible here will be Oct.

27, when totality will last for one hour and 21 minutes. Lunar eclipses are safe to observe with the naked eye and easy to see anywhere skies are clear, even in urban locations. Binoculars and small telescopes can enhance the view. The Maryland Science Center will open its Crosby Ramsey Memorial Observatory at 5:30 p.m., weather permitting. It is free.

Call 410-545-2999 after 5 p.m. tomorrow for information. Baltimore's "street corner astronomers" also plan to be on duty. Herman Heyn will offer views of the eclipse from the 3100 block of St. Paul St.

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