Legislative checkup, 2008 session day 60 (part 2)
Today’s excursion into the Maryland General Assembly will be shorter because I’ve found in my research that most GOP bills don’t get very far in our Democrat-dominated legislative body. I can pretty much set up four groups of bills: those that got a hearing but went no farther, those still awaiting a scheduled hearing, those that actually got the courtesy of a committee vote before being rejected, and rare victories. If you go back to the original Checkup post you can read what these bills are about with their sponsors.
Bills that were heard but proceeded no farther:
Still waiting on their day of debate:
- SB421 (March 11th)
- HB886 (March 12th)
- HB557 (March 13th)
- HB1102 (March 18th)
- HB1103 (March 18th)
- HB1199 (March 18th)
- HB1299 (March 20th)
Several GOP proposals were already defeated in committee:
Of all the bills I went through from the GOP side, only one survived and it was the one I thought was the most ridiculous. Senate Bill 111 added the homeless to the list of people who could be construed as victims of hate crimes. It passed third reading 40-4, with Senators Stoltzfus and Colburn in favor, as was Senator Andy Harris. The House has yet to act on the legislation.
I asked Harris about why he voted in favor of the bill last week, and his explanation was that there’s a strategy to water down the whole idea of hate crimes by continually adding groups to the equation to a point where most people could conceivably be covered. I can understand the logic of the argument, but I still disagree that any such legislation should be on the books.
This will take care of another installment of my Legislative Checkup. I’ll probably make another pass at this around the end of the month as the hearing process will be complete and omit those bills which died in committee previously in order to streamline the reporting. So chances are most of what I look at will be the lunacy the Democrats want to enact.
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