A question of priorities

The “90 days of terror” I call the General Assembly session do not begin until next Wednesday, but once some incumbent members were safely re-elected they pre-filed a small number of bills in each chamber – 39 in the House and 15 in the Senate.

Pre-filed bills are interesting because it gives a glimpse into what those members who introduce them believe to be burning questions. In the Senate, it’s apparent Senator Joan Carter Conway is most worried about the availability of prescription drugs in a state of emergency while Delegate Cheryl Glenn believes the establishment of the Hattie N. Harrison Memorial Scholarship for “students who pledge to work in fields of critical shortage in the State on completion of their studies” is top on her list. (Harrison was a longtime Delegate from Baltimore City who died in office early in the 2013 session.) Respectively, these bills were dubbed SB1 and HB1, presumably since they were the first bills requested for filing.

This stands in opposition to our Congress, which tends to use the lowest number bills for priority items. For example, there is no H.R. 1 yet in the 114th Congress because they reserve the number for the Speaker’s use on a bill he deems a priority. (It was used for the Tax Reform Act of 2014 in the last session.) S. 1 this term is the bill to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which Congress has tried to pass on several prior occasions.

Of the 54 bills in the hopper so far, most deal with mundane issues. But there are a few interesting Senate bills which could have merit: Senator Jim Brochin is trying to eliminate the annual indexing of the gasoline tax to inflation, while bills to exempt certain non-profits from paying a state-mandated minimum wage increase and to open up the election canvassing process to outside observers were introduced by Senator Joe Getty before he took a position in the Hogan administration. (This is interesting as Delegate Kelly Schulz also pre-filed bills on the House side. I’d be curious to know who would be considered to be the lead sponsor in the cases where that sponsor is no longer in the MGA.)

On the House side, Delegate Glenn also wants to accelerate the already-adopted $10.10 per hour minimum wage from 2018 to 2015 while Delegate Aruna Miller seeks to ban e-cigarettes from indoor venues. On the good side, Delegate Schulz wants to make sure only citizens register to vote, stop Common Core in its tracks, and eliminate one piece of the gun law.

Obviously there will be a lot more than this. Just as an example, one prospective bill that aroused a spirited discussion at an event for Delegate-elect Carl Anderton earlier tonight is Anderton’s as-yet-unreleased proposal to address our tax differential, an idea for which Salisbury mayor Jim Ireton (a possible 2018 opponent) is also pushing – however, the two probably differ on how to accomplish this goal. Once the legislation is written and introduced, it can get a fair hearing.

This also gives me the opportunity to remind readers about a great organization of volunteers called Maryland Legislative Watch, for which I have read and evaluated bills the last two sessions (and would gladly do so again.) They are a key to a more informed public, so I encourage you to check them out. Chances are we will once again see over 2.500 bills introduced and if the first 54 are any guide, it will be yet another intriguing session. And we haven’t even seen Larry Hogan’s legislative agenda yet.

TEA Party Caucus: Maryland Democrats need not apply

I’ll state the news item first: a day after it was announced he had become vice-chairman of the nascent Maryland TEA Party Caucus in the House of Delegates, Baltimore City Delegate Curt Anderson withdrew from the group at the request of fellow Democrats.

Yeah, I bet it wasn’t fifteen minutes from the time the news hit the wire to Anderson being called on the carpet by his fellow Democrats. Perhaps Anderson forgot that bipartisanship only works one way in Annapolis.

Honestly, I was surprised Curt would be the one to cross the aisle considering he never scored well on the monoblogue Accountability Project – I would have picked a Delegate like Kevin Kelly or John F. Wood, Jr. as they were the top two most conservative Democrats during the last term. (Wood is a cosponsor of the sales tax relief bill, HB465, introduced by Delegate Justin Ready earlier this week.)

But the venom from his city cohorts, as noted in this Maryland Politics blog posting, is scathing. The TEA Party is the Anti-Christ to the Democratic party? Get a grip, Delegate Glenn. What a poor choice of words! Let me tell the Democrats I know who participate in the TEA Parties that they’re quite at home in your version of the party. </sarc>

This just goes further to show the arrogance and disrespect elected Maryland Democrats have for the common working person. But it also shows the character of Delegate Anderson that he returned to the plantation so soon – why stop now, when they’re still threatening to take away your delegation chairmanship despite the fact you stepped aside from the TEA Party Caucus? To me, principles matter.

And despite the best efforts to marginalize the TEA Party Caucus, they’ve scored a victory by attracting the attention of liberal Democrats. Delegate Maggie McIntosh is quoted in the Sun as saying, “(The caucus is) highly organized. We should take them seriously.”

Damn right you should take us seriously because now we have a full four-year cycle to recruit candidates and build a war chest to defeat the liberals who have taken Maryland a long way down a dead-end street of debt and overbearing government. We didn’t do too badly in basically one year of preparation and not a lot of help from the state Republican Party since we picked off six Democrats from the House and it took a ton of special interest money to eke out two of OUR Senate seats that are now simply on loan to their Democratic occupants. (Yes, that means you, Jim Mathias.)

Go ahead and try to redistrict us out of existence – it won’t work because there’s too many of us now. If they want war because they consider us in the TEA Party the Anti-Christ, well, I say give it to them.

But Delegate Curt Anderson’s not a victim of that war, nor is he even a casualty. He may be put in his place for a short while, but eventually he’ll be back in the fold because they’ll need his vote and all will be forgiven when he delivers. Most likely it won’t serve the rest of us well, but that’s how the game is played in Annapolis and that’s why it needs to change four years hence.