Pelura: lead through action, General Assembly Republicans

I told you earlier that Jim Pelura would be heard from later today. The other day he called on General Assembly Republicans to follow up what they said in this letter by withdrawing the bond bills they’ve already placed.

In part, Pelura noted:

Can the GOP in Maryland achieve relevency?

Throughout my years of being active in Maryland politics, I have always been very optimistic about the GOP message being accepted by Maryland voters.  That optimism remains even today.  

In spite of Republican legislators in the MD General Assembly being in such a minority, they can still be relevant.   Achieving this will, however, require a strong commitment by all Republican members to adhere to the basic Republican philosophy of smaller, more efficient government, low taxes, faith in the private sector and faith in the individual.

Republican members of the MD General Assembly must put aside their “every man for himself” attitude and unite in opposition to bad legislation put forth by Governor O’Malley and the Democrats.

This opposition must be backed up by legislation introduced and supported by all of the Republican members in both the House of Delegates and the Senate.  This legislation, based entirely on those Republican ideals will show Marylanders that Republicans have solutions to the major problems facing us today.

Recently, the House Republican Caucus voted to ask Speaker Busch not to fund the myriad of bond bills that are introduced each year…  As we all know, while this type of legislation may be good for a particular jurisdiction, it adds to the overall state debt and is thus bad for the state as a whole.

The House Republicans should be commended for this brave act and for understanding that accounting gimmicks, fund transfers, overspending and borrowing are the cause of Maryland ’s fiscal woes.  However, they must follow-up this request with action and withdraw the bond bills that they have requested.  All Republicans in the Maryland General Assembly, Delegates and Senators alike, must act as one and back those words with action.

The spending and borrowing must end.

Now is the time to show Marylanders that Republicans say what they mean and mean what they say!

The Democrats in the General Assembly are behaving like spoiled children.  They seem to have no idea what it is like in the “real world”, and have an unrealistic view that somehow things will work out.

It is time for the adults to take charge. (Emphasis in original.)

But it’s worthy to note that the House Republicans gave themselves an “out” in the letter:

We have all sponsored and advocated for bond bills in the past. This position reflects the will of the majority but does not bind individual members. (Emphasis mine.)

In reality, bond bills seldom progress beyond first reading but act as placeholders on the wish list each individual legislator has from his or her district. They’re only important for putting dibs on that $15 million the state splits among the dozens of requests placed annually.

Unfortunately, the letter came only after several bond bills sponsored by GOP members were already introduced; of course, the Baltimore Sun was quick to notice this particular piece of hypocrisy by local Republican Delegate Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, who signed the letter as Minority Whip. (I wish they’d work that quickly on Democrats’ foibles; then again, you’d see no other news in the Sun if they did.)

Obviously this blanket prohibition presents a problem to Republicans, as former Senator Lowell Stoltzfus pointed out sometime back:

There was another interesting query about state “pork”. The senator told us that this year’s capital budget statewide was about $800 million. Of that total, $20 million is reserved for legislative initiatives. So each district fights for their slice of that pie. And Lowell said that he was conflicted about that – on the one hand, it goes against his grain to spend this extra state money on items in the 38th District, but if we don’t get it, someone in another part of the state will be happy to grab it. He noted that one budget during the Ehrlich years did not have any money for legislative initiatives and he was quite happy about that fact back when it occurred. (Emphasis mine.)

While it’s great that Republicans are taking this stance the problem is, at least here on the Lower Shore, we have three Democrats representing the four counties who would gladly take the pork and all the credit which they can accrue to themselves for it. Perhaps a better strategy is to attempt to convince conservative Democrats behind the scenes that we need to swear off this addiction to pork and try to get the additional votes to stop it in the House and Senate.

Otherwise, the letter should have come out before the session even started. This would have allowed those Republicans like Haddaway-Riccio to explain to prospective bond bill recipients that they need to look to other sources rather than the state of Maryland (as they should, anyway.)

There’s no question that $15 million, while a large chunk of change to an individual, is a proverbial drop in the bucket when it comes to the state budget – about 1/10 of 1 percent. But it’s money we don’t have doing things that perhaps aren’t greatly needed, and because Martin O’Malley has made a habit of creating debt to pay the state’s current bills, these place us in even more financial trouble down the road.

So certainly, now that we’ve made this minor misstep, the situation can be at least symbolically corrected by withdrawing the bond bills. But next year they shouldn’t be introduced in the first place – let Democrats continue to prove they are fiscally irresponsible.

They don’t require any help in doing that.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.