[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 46 (Monday, April 18, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S3814]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING ANNE L. BLUMENBERG

 Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise today to pay special 
tribute to Anne L. Blumenberg, one of Baltimore's most skillful 
attorneys and equally one of its most dedicated and visionary citizens. 
Anne recently retired as executive director of the Community Law 
Center, which develops innovative legal strategies to assist 
Baltimore's community organizations and neighborhoods.
  Anne was born and raised in Baltimore's Waverly neighborhood, and she 
returned to Baltimore after receiving her law degree from Catholic 
University's Columbus School of Law. In 1983, she and a group of like-
minded lawyers and community activists founded the Community Law 
Center. In its early days the center focused primarily on public safety 
as the path to neighborhood survival, depending on volunteer lawyers to 
carry out its work. Under Anne's leadership, the center's attorneys 
pioneered the use of nuisance laws as a litigation strategy to address 
quality-of-life issues, including housing conditions and drug activity, 
in Baltimore neighborhoods. The center had such great success with 
these suits that in 1996, the Maryland General Assembly passed the 
community rights bill--developed in large measure by the center--
granting Baltimore City community associations legal standing to seek 
direct enforcement of housing, building, zoning, and health codes as a 
remedy to a public nuisance.
  Recognizing that creating healthy neighborhoods begins but does not 
end with public safety, Anne Blumenberg expanded the Community Law 
Center's programs to include economic development and real estate 
issues. Today the center has successful projects to end predatory 
lending and flipping practices and to end the blight of vacant 
properties in city neighborhoods. Further, the volunteer spirit that 
gave the center its start lives on in its pro bono project, which 
currently has 185 active pro bono attorneys and has opened over 500 
cases serving hundreds of organizations in the Baltimore area.
  In addition to the hours she has dedicated to the Community Law 
Center, Anne Blumenberg has generously donated her time to serve as a 
board member to numerous other community organizations, including Civil 
Justice, Inc., Empowerment Legal Services, the Coalition to End 
Childhood Lead Poisoning, and the Lawyer's Clearinghouse. And she has 
literally ``written the book'' on starting a nonprofit organization: 
her manual, ``Starting a Non-Profit Organization: A Practical Guide,'' 
is now in its fourth edition.
  Anne Blumenberg was truly a visionary. She saw, earlier than most, 
how legal tools could be used to improve the lives of some of the city 
of Baltimore's poorest and most vulnerable citizens, and she 
transformed her vision into a creative, vigorous and effective public 
services law firm. As a result of the programs Anne Blumenberg built at 
the Community Law Center, Baltimore's neighborhoods have come alive 
again. Residents now have the tools they need to fight the flipping of 
homes by unscrupulous lenders; to remove drug dealers from their 
corners; to acquire vacant houses, renovate them, and put them up for 
sale; and more broadly, to promote citywide policies that will improve 
the quality of their lives. In short, thanks to Anne Blumenberg's hard 
work and dedication, Baltimoreans are once again in control of their 
neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods, which do so much to define 
Baltimore's character, are blooming.

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