Career
He served as Chair of the Ethics Commission of Frederick County during 2012-2013. He joined the Board of Elections, of Frederick County as a Member, in 2015. He was president of the Review and Herald Publishing Association during 1978-1988, and also president of Family Enrichment Resources, a non-profit (?), during 1991-1997.
He served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Major
General Boyd C. Cook Foundation during 2012-2013. Frederick County Council
In 2014, Otis ran as the Maryland Republican Party candidate for one of the two at-large positions on the first elected council of Frederick County.
He was elected by total of 39,756 votes, more than each of the three other candidates. In the election voters were allowed to vote for two at-large candidates.
Otis and the other Republican candidate, Billy Shreve, were selected with 27.4 percent and 24.7 percent of the at-large votes, respectively.
The other votes went to Democratic candidates, Susan Reeder Jessee and Linda Marie Norris, and to write-in candidates. The election established that there would be four Republicans on the seven person council, which a Frederick News-Post editorial noted would give the leading position on the council, with powers to set agenda and more, to a Republican. The Frederick News-Post editorial called for Otis to be selected, out of the majority party"s members, as council president
He was in fact then elected by a 4-3 vote, ironically, with unanimous support from his Democratic peers.
