By Amanda Burdette
ANNAPOLIS – The Board of Public Works is expected Wednesday to transfer $30,100 in state funds to the University of Maryland at College Park for a library dedicated in memory of Lucille Maurer, the late state treasurer.
The 2,800-square-foot library, scheduled to open in the spring of 1998 as part of the Academy for Political Leadership, will showcase Maurer’s legislative papers and a portrait of the first woman treasurer. Maurer died of a brain tumor in June 1996.
“Maurer had a long connection with the academy,” which prepares students for leadership roles by training, education, scholarship and service, said Nance Lucas, assistant director.
The new library will house a collection donated by leadership scholars across the globe and eventually the “historic books of Maryland political leaders,” Lucas said. There also will be two computer terminals with Internet and Lexis/Nexis access. Funds for the necessary design work and construction were appropriated by the 1997 General Assembly.
“The library is being built to be the definitive library of leadership studies in the world,” Lucas added.
Maurer, who died at age 73, lived in Silver Spring, where she was active in the PTA and the League of Women Voters and served two terms on the Montgomery County school board. She became a Montgomery County delegate to the General Assembly in 1969. While in the Legislature, she led efforts to revise the school-aid formula to provide more money for children in needy areas. She was elected treasurer by the General Assembly in 1987. In the process, she became the first woman to sit on the Board of Public Works, the panel made up of the governor, treasurer and comptroller that decides major contracting matters for the state. -30-
