Faster than the speed of light

With apologies to Larry the Cable Guy, when the Democrats in the General Assembly want to “get ‘er done” they waste no time or worry about niceties such as rules. Hence, you get Senate Bill 1102. In the Maryland GOP‘s “Weekly Update” they have a synopsis of how the bill was ramrodded through:

Last Friday, the Senate suspends the rules to introduce the bill late and at the same time the rules are suspended to refer the bill to the Senate Finance Committee.

At this point the bill is scheduled for public hearing at 1:00pm,Tuesday, March 27th.

Monday afternoon at 4:30 the on-line hearing schedule is changed announcing the hearing will now occur at 6:00pm THAT SAME EVEING (sic) (1 1/2 hours notice of the hearing change.)

6:00 pm The bill has a hearing in Finance.

6:30 pm The bill is voted out of Committee (a mere half hour debate).

8:00 pm The bill is placed on the second reading calendar on the Senate Floor. The bill is then laid over for one day. (Editor’s note: I believe our Senator Stoltzfus got that layover. Too bad he couldn’t get another week – see below.)

Tuesday the bill passes 2nd reading.

Wednesday the bill passes 3rd reading in the Senate morning session.

Thursday the bill is placed on the House agenda for their afternoon session on the floor.

Current Maryland law dictates the Public Service Commission has 5 members, all appointed by the Governor “with the advice and consent of the Senate.” SB1102 changes the commission to be appointed as follows:

Two commissioners would be appointed by the President of the Senate. That would be Mike Miller.

Two commissioners would be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, one Michael Busch.

One commissioner would be appointed by Governor Ehrlich.

The real kicker of this measure is that all the commission terms – regardless of appointment date – will come to an end on April 9th, or the day before the General Assembly winds up its yearly term. Once again, the commissioners will have staggered terms, and I really love how they figured this one out.

The governor’s appointee will have his or her term end in 2007, basically just long enough to see if he wins re-election. The Speaker’s two appointees serve through 2008 and 2010. The Senate President’s appointees have terms through 2009 and 2011.

To boil it down: the General Assembly is pissed because they share a LOT of the blame for the electric rate hikes that are soon to take effect. And, of course, Democrats have a strangehold on Annapolis save for the invasive Republican who happens to sit in the governor’s chair and gets to make these PSC appointments. When Parris Glendenning and his Democrat predecessors were picking the commissioners, that was just fine with the General Assembly.

But now that all this rate increase fiasco comes into being just months before the 2006 election, it’s suddenly incumbent upon the Democrats in Annapolis to place “their” people in charge of the situation. And it’s my wager that they will bully BG&E, et.al. into rescinding or reducing their rate hike (never mind the market forces that dictate they need to raise rates, which have been frozen since 2000.)

In addition, timing is everything. Passing the bill by Friday gives the General Assembly Democrats time to override a certain Ehrlich veto on this and other related bills. And they will, because then they can claim that they gave Maryland consumers a break in their utility bills while big bad Governor Ehrlich and the utility companies wanted to stick it to the consumer – never mind that deregulation was passed in the first place by that same Democrat majority in the General Assembly and signed by a Democrat governor. The voters sure won’t get that tidbit in the O’Malley or Duncan campaign commercials certain to come this summer.

While it’s painful, there’s something that needs to be remembered about this electric price increase. Imagine you were stuck on the same hourly wage for the last six years while the price of everything went up. The only way to make more money in that case is to work more hours, and in the utility companies’ case, only so many new customers are moving into Maryland. Basically the majority of what the utilities want would be a retroactive pay raise to the year 2000 – they’ll just get it in one lump sum.

I’m not happy that my Delmarva Power rates may jump by 1/3 or more, particularly since both my cooling AND heating needs are served by electricity. But I’m less happy at the General Assembly for making yet another end run around the Maryland Constitution and usurping more power properly placed in the executive branch. While I can adjust my budget for changing electric rates, I can’t as easily control the machinations of a party in Annapolis whose sole purpose is maintaining and exercising their own power, rights be damned.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.