Goucher College will celebrate national Constitution Day on Tuesday, September 18, with a talk by Maryland Comptroller Peter V. R. Franchot titled “The Constitution, Our Founding, and Why Maryland Matters.” The presentation will be held at 12 p.m. in Buchner Hall of the college’s Alumnae/i House.
Goucher students, faculty, staff, and alumnae/i can make reservations for the event by contacting Lillian Johnson in the Goucher College President’s Office at lillian.johnson@goucher.edu or 410-337-6040.
Franchot was elected Maryland’s 33rd comptroller in November 2006. As comptroller—the chief financial officer for Maryland—Franchot collects revenue for state programs; provides information technology services for state agencies; regulates the state’s alcohol, tobacco, and motor fuel industries; and serves on state boards and commissions, including as a member of the Board of Public Works and as vice chair of the State Retirement and Pension System of Maryland. In 2010, he won re-election in a landslide victory.
During his tenure as comptroller, Franchot has railed against using slot machine gambling to mitigate a looming budget crisis, led the successful charge against a Kent Island development that environmentalists argued would harm the Chesapeake Bay, upgraded tax collection technology to catch evaders, pushed for state contracts to go to qualified minority- and women-owned businesses on the Board of Public Works, and he has cast himself as a chief advocate for expanding Maryland’s profitable biotechnology industry.
He has been presented with the William R. Snodgrass Distinguished Leadership Award, the Association of Government Accountants’ highest honor, and was named “The Most Distinguished Person in Minority Business Enterprise” by the Maryland Washington Minority Contractors’ Association.
Prior to his election to statewide office as comptroller, Franchot served 20 years in the Maryland House of Delegates, representing the residents of Montgomery County and serving as a member of the Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the Transportation & the Environment Subcommittee.
He served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1970 and earned a bachelor of arts degree from Amherst College in 1973 and a juris doctorate from Northeastern School of Law in 1978.
Franchot’s presentation at Goucher helps the college abide by legislation passed by Congress in 2004 that requires every federally aided educational institution in the United States to hold an annual program marking the anniversary of the approval of the Constitution in 1787.
Speakers at Goucher’s previous Constitution Day programs have been David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States; U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin; State Senator Jamie Raskin; former U.S. Senator Paul S. Sarbanes; former Maryland Secretary of State Mary D. Kane; State Senator Richard S. Madaleno Jr.; and William J. Murphy, a lawyer with the Baltimore firm Murphy & Shaffer LLC who represented one of the detainees held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba