Announcing: the 2017 monoblogue Accountability Project

For the eleventh year in a row, I have graded all 188 legislators in the Maryland General Assembly based on their voting patterns on a number of key issues. Beginning with sine die back in April, I started looking into floor votes trying to find those which reflected conservative principles, with an eye on civil liberties as well. The final product, all 20 pages, can be found right here or in its usual sidebar location.

The major change I made for this year was reverting back to a system of all floor votes, as I had in the early years before committee votes were made readily available. It’s not that committee votes aren’t important, but in this year’s case I had so many possible relevant votes from the floor that I decided not to use three on committee votes that may not have had such impact. Two of the 25 votes are veto override votes, one from legislation carried over from 2016 and the other from a bill proposed this session.

If there’s one thing that Democrats like even less than not being in the governor’s chair to spend money, I think it’s the fact that Donald Trump is President and the GOP controls Congress. Several of the bills I used had to do with impacts they perceived would occur with the Trump administration. It’s strange how federal government effects become a big deal with Republicans in charge, particularly one like Donald Trump. Mandates placed by his predecessor were just peachy with the General Assembly majority, and they often adopted them with very little fuss to continue Maryland’s complete over-dependence on the federal government as an economic driver. Ironically, the type of president this nation needs would be bad news for Maryland in the short run as those well-paid federal workers wouldn’t be working and paying taxes.

So you’ll notice quite a few floor votes deal with these subjects, but this year was about as loony far-left as I ever recall. Thus, the number of correct votes is little changed from last year; however, one significant change I made was adopting what I call a “flip-flop” indicator. Votes shown in red are votes where the member changed sides between the House and Senate votes. I was truly shocked how much this happens.

As I did last year, I’m leaving the 2015 and 2016 reports available as part of a long-term process to show trends for the 2015-18 term.

Feel free to print yourself a copy for your use – just don’t forget where it came from.