The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page B5

THE SUN MARYLAND SATURDAY 05.13.2006 5B DIGEST Police await autopsy in Calvert Co. death Police were awaiting autopsy results yesterday in the death of an elderly Calvert County man who was attacked this week by three pit bulls. Raymond Tomco, 78, was found on the floor of his Lusby home Wednesday with "numerous" bites on his hands and arms, said Cpl. Darron Makrokanis of the county sheriffs office. One of the pit bulls severed at least one of Tomco's arteries, possibly causing him to bleed to death, Makrokanis said.

Tomco had been taking a prescription drug to prevent blood clots potentially worsening the bleeding. The three pit pulls in the home and two chained outside belonged to Tomco's daughter, Christina. One of the animals was shot and killed Wednesday by an animal control officer. The other four were taken to an animal shelter, where they will be euthanized. The county had cited Christina Tomco nine times between June 2004 and March 2005 for having unlicensed and unrestrained dogs.

BBEducatioS.a tug-of -war 1 BetweenO'Malley Ehrlich" Poultry sign campaign begins If beef is what's for dinner and pork is the other white meat, what's chicken? A group of poultry and soybean producers have made 1,000 yard signs that say "Eat chicken tonight!" The signs are popping up outside farms and houses around Salisbury. They're produced by Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. and the Delaware and Maryland Soybean Boards, which represent the interests of soybean growers whose main customers are chicken producers. Connie Parvis, who is coordinating the campaign for the Delmarva Poultry Industry, said the signs are to help head off anxiety about the safety of chicken. She said the public is "bombarded" by news about avian influenza.

A frame is shown from one of Douglas M. Duncan's new television ads that the gubernatorial candidate is running in the Baltimore market. Duncan brings out two new TV ads He reuses O'Malley, Ehrlich cutouts to criticize his rivals on crime, education nztxn iiiib VOTES 2006 Slave monument considered A monument to the contribution of slave labor to Queen Anne's County is being considered as part of the county's 300th birthday. A proposal to create a monument was given to county commissioners this week by resident Mary Margaret Revell Goodwin. Along with a monument, Goodwin has proposed a reburial ground for any possible slave graves discovered in the future.

ASSOCIATED PRESS ashamed," said Brady, whose husband, James, was wounded in the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. "Bob Ehrlich, as a member of Congress, voted to repeal the federal ban on assault weapons in 1996. There is no ambiguity about that whatsoever. It is fact. In addition, Governor Ehrlich has indicated repeatedly for years that he would veto a state ban if one was sent to him for signature." The Duncan ads can be seen on WMAR-TV, WBAL-TV, WJZ-TV and WBFF-TV.

Jody Couser, a spokeswoman for the campaign, would not comment on cost or duration. Couser said the campaign hopes the ads increase Duncan's name recognition in Baltimore and disputed that the campaign had gone negative. She characterized the ads as "looking at the candidates' records." The Duncan campaign also received a few endorsements yesterday, including from the Cumberland and Hagerstown branches of the International Association of Fire Fighters; the Montgomery County Federation of Teachers; and three local unions of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. jennifer.skalkabaltsun.com Sun reporter John Fritze contributed to this article. and defended their candidates.

"With many of Baltimore's schools failing, these guys have spent all their time fighting for political advantage," Duncan says in the education ad. "I've spent my time putting together a real plan to improve schools." Jonathan Epstein, O'Malley's campaign manager, said voters deserve more from candidates. "Mr. Duncan had the opportunity in this ad to present a positive vision for Maryland, but because he has no positive vision he is instead continuing his negative, attack-style politics," he said. In the crime ad, viewers see the smiling cutout of O'Malley and hear Duncan say: "This guy says crime's dropped by 40 percent but he's got a problem with numbers." Duncan is referring to a Sun report that showed an audit of city crime statistics ordered by O'Malley early in his tenure changed the way the numbers were crunched.

Audit results gave O'Malley ammunition to say that there's been a nearly 40 percent reduction in violent crime in the city between 1999 and 2004, but the preaudit numbers reveal a more modest reduction of 23.5 percent. After O'Malley, Duncan turns his attention to a grinning cardboard Ehrlich. "This guy thinks we need more assault weapons on the street, like that's going to help us," Duncan says, urging viewers to take a look at the crime plan available on his Web site. Ehrlich campaign manager Bo Harmon sent an e-mail to reporters yesterday chiding Duncan for "blatantly lying" about the governor's record on guns and asking that Duncan, the Montgomery County executive, take his ad off the air. "Doug Duncan's 'Think Bigger' slogan should also apply to the level of truthfulness in advertising," Harmon said, adding that Ehrlich has never supported a repeal of the assault weapons ban.

"In the second ad of his campaign, the seemingly kind-hearted lion has finally shed his guise and joined his primary opponent in the use of lies and scare tactics." However, Ehrlich's beliefs about assault weapons are more complicated. Though an Ehrlich spokeswoman told The Sun in February that the governor had no public position on a proposed Maryland assault weapons ban, he received an rating from the National Rifle Association when he was a member of Congress. He also voted in 1996 as a member of Congress to repeal the federal assault weapons ban. Sarah Brady, honorary chairwoman of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, issued a statement yesterday criticizing Harmon for misleading voters about Ehrlich's record on guns. "The Ehrlich campaign should be BY JENNIFER SKALKA SUN REPORTER Democratic gubernatorial candidate Douglas M.

Duncan uses what are fast becoming his favorite props life-size cardboard cutouts of Mayor Martin O'Malley and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to knock his rivals in two new 15-second television ads that started airing yesterday in the Baltimore media market. The cardboard candidates made their debut in Duncan's first TV ad, a 30-second biographical spot that launched last week in the Baltimore area.

The new ads have a sharper edge. One new ad criticizes O'Malley, Duncan's Democratic primary rival, and Ehrlich, the first-term Republican governor, for not doing enough to fix the Baltimore City school system. The other accuses O'Malley of cooking the city's crime statistics to show significant progress on his watch while criticizing Ehrlich's opposition to the assault weapons ban. Campaign officials for O'Malley and Ehrlich said the spots constitute negative and misleading advertising PSC files court appeal of judge's BGE ruling 27 pupils hurt in bus crash near Bowie Longtime St. John's tutor offers insight into the classics and life From Page IB den of a 72 percent rate increase," said Mayor Martin O'Malley in a statement.

"The PSC has repeatedly demonstrated no interest in determining if such a drastic increase is warranted and continues to protect the interests of big business and not the ratepayers." The city wants new commission hearings on the rate increase, a review of a pending merger between BGE's parent company, Constellation Energy, and Florida-based FLP Group Inc. and scrutiny of executive profits from the merger if it goes through. The looming rate increase has monopolized political discourse for months and has become the fuel for partisan barbs between Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich who is seeking re-election, and O'Malley, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

The city sued the PSC this month to stop implementation of BGE's rate deferral program and force the utility to end its publicity campaign. The PSC voted in private last month to approve the plan, which was the result of negotiations between Ehrlich and officials from Constellation Energy. The agreement, which offers customers an option to phase in the plan over two years, came after the General Assembly failed to legislate a mitigation plan for ratepayers. BGE's customers are slated to get the full increase July when rate caps expire as a result of Maryland's 1999 plan to deregulate the electricity industry. On Tuesday, Baltimore won a first-round victory, when a Circuit Court judge granted the city's request to halt BGE's publicizing of the plan.

It was a blow to the PSC and to its embattled chairman, Schisler, whom O'Malley has called on to resign. Yesterday, the Court of Ap- PSC Chairman Kenneth D. Schisler says a city lawsuit offers "no relief from rate increases" by BGE. ALGERINA PERNA SUN PHOTOGRAPHER peals gave Baltimore officials until 10:30 a.m. Thursday to file a response to the motion, said City Solicitor Ralph Tyler.

A hearing on the city's lawsuit is scheduled for May 30. Tyler said he would continue to argue that BGE's plan has only confused customers and that no further information should be distributed to the public until the lawsuit is settled. "This is a bad deal for BGE customers and the PSC did not do a good job," he said. "The idea that there is no choice but to accept 72 percent is the idea that we reject." But BGE spokesman Robert L. Gould complained that the city's actions are further confusing customers.

Gould said that the drawn-out court proceedings are politically motivated and distracting. "It is extremely unfortunate, particularly for our customers, that we find our-selves in this position, where politicians, in this case the mayor, with clearly nothing more to gain than political brownie points, continues to engage in reckless rhetoric," he said. kelly.brewington baltsun.com. From Page IB The most visible career highlight was her visit to the White House last fall, where President Bush presented her with the National Humanities Medal. Her busy but serene life divided between Annapolis and Santa Fe, N.M., home to the other St.

John's campus where she teaches in the summer is a long way from where she began. Brann was born between the world wars in Berlin, where her family members were considered assimilated Jews before Hitler and the Holocaust. "It was a prosperous time. My father was a doctor, my mother was a nurse, and I had a wonderful childhood," Brann said. Her father fled Nazi Germany in 1939, followed by the rest of the family two years later.

"How much I became at home as an American," she said in an interview this week. "In an apartment in Brooklyn, we were a family again." Brann came to Annapolis in 1957, after a period spent excavating Greek pottery from the Homeric period in Athens, and said she never looked back. St. John's was a natural for her, and vice versa. Her Yale doctorate in archaeology fits with the college's required program grounded in classics and great books of Western thought a structure that does not allow students to major, or faculty to specialize, in any one field.

BY ANNIE LINSKEY SUN REPORTER Two school buses transporting students to an amusement park collided in Prince George's County yesterday morning, resulting in 27 middle-schoolers being treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital. The vehicles were part of a six-bus convoy from Lindale Middle School in Linthicum heading to Six Flags America theme park at Largo when one bus rear-ended the other about 10 a.m. at Route 301 and Annapolis Road, near Bowie. The 67 children on the two buses were taken to Anne Arundel Medical Center where they were evaluated, and 27 of them were treated for minor bumps, bruises and headaches, said Margot Mohsberg, a hospital spokeswoman. Two pupils were transported by ambulance, but their injuries were also minor, Mohsberg said.

State police identified the driver of the rear bus as Lee M. Evans, 75, of Baltimore. He was charged with failure to reduce speed to avoid a collision and negligent driving, according to a news release. At Anne Arundel Medical Center yesterday, beds were set up in the lobby of the emergency room while the medical staff evaluated students. "I just want to see her," said Marina Kostelec, 43, waiting outside the hospital's meditation room while her daughter Danika, 13, was examined.

Kostelec complimented the hospital's staff. annie.linskeybaltsun.com Being one of a handful of women teaching at the college then did not seem an insurmountable obstacle to someone who had survived far worse. While co-teaching her last class of the semester Thursday night, Brann smiled as about 20 undergraduates around a square table puzzled through pages of Plato. "Say it again in a different way," Brann told a student struggling to express an ethereal notion. Then she stepped into the pool herself to draw a difference between two ancient Greek thinkers: "Aristotle talks to the reader.

Plato talks with the reader." She calls herself "a universal grandmother" to the countless students she has nurtured and seen graduate. In a student body numbering about 400, Brann makes it her business to reach out to those she does not teach or grade directly after all, "Johnnies" live in a self-conscious community they term a "polity." She sings with the college chorus sometimes and gets to know freshmen and other students who come to the East Coast for the first time from as far away as Kansas or California. "She has a lot of children," said Sam Kutler, an emeritus tutor who worked with Brann for 40 years. "Students like to learn in her presence." Erica Naone, 24, who graduated last year and now works in the campus bookshop, said she received a surprising call from Brann, who never instructed her. "She's got a big reputation, and she called me up to tell me she enjoyed reading my senior essay," Naone said.

Nelson, who accompanied Brann to the White House in November, acknowledges that she has been a mentor to him as well. They had forged a close working rapport in 1991, when he became president while she was the college dean. "She helped me get my bearings and had a little patience while I grew up," Nelson said. Brann is a colleague others depend on for more than book learning, but for sparks of insight and practical sense, too. Kutler said Brann's scholarship and several eclectic books are held in such esteem that more than 20 academics are writing essays for a published collection about her works in the form of a Festschrift.

In a tidy and modest book-lined house, Brann lives a short walk from the centuries-old college whose long line of graduates include Francis Scott Key. On those shelves is a book of her short sayings and reflections, Open SecretsInward Prospects, in which Brann shares a paradox that she has lived: "Lives interesting to tell must be very distracting to live; lives satisfying to live are boring as hell to read about it." jamie.steihmbaltsun.com.