Category: featured

Batting .500 in the Budget

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

You win some and you lose some.

I’m talking about the Governor’s supplemental budget, not the baseball season.

There’s money for expanded services for the mentally ill but no money for the Race to the Tots grant program for pre-Kindergarten classes.

Shortly after the Newtown shootings last December, I met with advocates for the mentally ill.

“We don’t want the discussion in Annapolis to be limited to when the mentally ill should be denied guns,” I said.

We decided to introduce legislation outlining the unmet needs for services, the Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Safety Net Act of 2013.

Three items from this bill were included in today’s budget: expanded crisis response services, crisis intervention teams, and mental health first aid.

The proposed appropriation is $3.5 million.

My bill was not the only factor that prompted the Governor to increase these vital services, but it played a part.

Race to the Tots, on the other hand, was not funded.  However, we’ve already begun strategizing on how to make a better and more effective case for next year’s budget.

The best person to lobby the Governor

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“Is there someone who can make our last pitch to Gov?”

 

I sent that email to a colleague and a lobbyist first thing this morning.

 

We have a bill where the outcome is uncertain, and Governor O’Malley’s support would be very helpful.

 

We quickly decided on who would be the best person to lobby the Governor.

 

The highlight of today’s floor session was a visit from Ravens receiver Torrey Smith, the Lombardi trophy for winning the Super Bowl in his grasp.

            Governor O’Malley joined him on the rostrum, then stepped aside for the picture taking.

            “I’m the best person to lobby the Governor,” I audibled to myself.

            I made my pitch and got a positive  response.

            Results to be known before the clock runs out on the session.

Rational basis and a proud student

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Can a law prefer males over females in the administration of an estate to which they both have equal claims?

Bills dealing with trusts and estates are heard by my committee but not this one.

Idaho passed such a law in 1864.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the attorneys who successfully argued before the Supreme Court in 1971 that the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

I first read that case, Reed v. Reed, as a law student in 1974 in a class entitled Sex Discrimination and the Law.  The professor was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Much of the oral argument today on the Defense of Marriage Act dealt with whether DOMA violated the Equal Protection Clause because it treated same-sex marriages differently than heterosexual unions.

Justice Ginsburg reminded the Court that “in the very first gender discrimination case, Reed v. Reed, the court did something it had never done in the history of the court under rational basis” [the test for determining that a law is constitutional if there is a rational basis for its enactment].  “The Court said this is rank discrimination and it failed.”

I attended today’s oral argument.

It made me very proud to have been a student of Professor Ginsburg.

Running out of time

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Time is a very precious commodity, especially during the last two weeks of the legislative session.

 

Today, we held our first hearing on Senate bills.

 

After one senator had testified on his legislation, I asked, “Is your bill identical to the version that has passed the House?”

 

“Yes” was the reply.

 

I would have told the committee that before any questions were asked.

 

Another senator fumbled with his laptop before presenting a power point on a bill that had already passed the House.

 

“’If you have the votes, sit down and shut up,” I reminded my seatmate.  “In this instance, sit down and keep your laptop off.”

 

An advocate came to me with a letter asking the Governor to fund a program in his supplemental budget, which he could submit as soon as tomorrow.

 

“Instead of spending time getting more members to sign the letter,” I advised, “get it up to the Governor’s office.”

Questions at the Seder

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I gave this prayer at the start of today’s session of the House of Delegates.

 

During the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the desert.

 

Judiciary Committee hearings only seem that long.

 

During one lengthy afternoon, I came across this commentary about the seder, the oldest continually practiced ritual in Western civilization.

 

“Someone who knows all the laws of Passover is still required to ask questions, and scholars on their own at the Seder are required to ask themselves questions.”

The Four Questions are a highlight of every seder.

 

For young boys – and now girls as well, it is a milestone to be old enough and wise enough to read the questions in Hebrew – in front of all of your family.

 

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” the questions begin.

 

Because of what we eat – unleavened bread (the matzoh), and because of what we celebrate – freedom from bondage.

 

On the eve of this special occasion, when we welcome the stranger and the hungry, please join me in saying Amen.

Compromised positions

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

 

Compromise is the order of the 90 days.

 

Some examples from the 79th day.

 

On the House floor, nobody raised concerns about my bill to criminalize certain conduct by either side of a referendum petition effort.

 

A Rosenberg bill on election law usually generates skeptical (but misguided) questions from my Republican colleagues.

 

This time, however, the bill had been amended to reflect the compromise reached by Delegate Parrott, a Republican, and myself.

 

I’m no scholar when it comes to the 4th Amendment and search warrants.

 

But I do know that prosecutors and the police will be one side, the Public Defender and the American Civil Liberties union on the other.

 

I played a supporting role in a meeting where we tried to find common ground on a bill dealing with cell phones and search warrants.

 

Lastly, even after your legislation is dead, a compromise may be possible.

 

Can you get the bill’s opponents, who opposed requiring them to do something, to agree to do so voluntarily?

 

The support of the chair of the committee that killed your bill can bring that about.

Translated from legalese

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

More than once this session, one of my Judiciary Committee colleagues has declared that the 2nd Amendment prohibits regulation of weapons in common use.

 

When he said it again in a small group meeting about the Governor’s gun bill, I found this excerpt from Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on handgun possession in one’s home.

 

     We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [a prior Supreme Court decision] said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”  We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

 

Translated from legalese: Dangerous and unusual weapons can be prohibited, even if they have been in common use.

 

I read the decision out loud and told my colleague that his statement was misleading.

 

He disagreed.

 

I expect we will discuss this again – in full committee and on the House floor.

My mantra for the week

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

     Take nothing for granted.

     That’s my mantra for the week.

On my long list of bills, the only ones I’m working on this week are the ones that could still pass the House by Monday night and thereby avoid the Senate Rules Committee.

If the amendment I drafted last night is not adopted in committee today, its chances of being in the final bill are greatly diminished.

So I said to a key staffer this morning, “Am I being a nudge if I ask what’s happened since we first discussed this last night?”

The response was not negative.

On the House floor, I was told that my referendum petition bill was in trouble because of expected Republican opposition.

So I asked Del. Parrott to explain our compromise to the GOP members of the Election Law Subcommittee and to the Minority Leader.  They’re now on board, and the Dems on the subcommittee were told that.

No doubt more mini crises before Monday night…

Drafting on the fly

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I grade law students on their drafting in the fall semester.

I drafted an amendment on the fly this afternoon.  I’ll be graded on it twice.

Here’s how this speed drafting came about.

I had been told that there were no problems with the language that I wanted to add to a bill in another committee.

Late this afternoon, I learned that the relevant provision would not be as specific as I had proposed.  The committee will be voting on the bill and the amendments tomorrow.

To have any chance of succeeding now, I would have to tinker with the unsatisfactory language.  Make a not so good amendment better.

A major rewrite has no chance.

I spoke with the person who had helped me draft the language I had originally submitted.  We came up with a suitable revision.

If it’s added to the bill in question, a B.

After that B, the more important grade will be based on whether this language has the positive impact I’m seeking.

We’re a better state

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I had given the speech in my head countless times.

This is what I said during yesterday’s floor debate on the death penalty.

Earlier today, each of us passed the Thurgood Marshall statue on our way into the State House.

In addition to Marshall, there is a statue of Donald Gaines Murray.

He attended the segregated Douglass High School and went out of state for college.

He wanted to attend his home state’s law school, which had denied Marshall admission.

Marshall sued the school and won admission for Murray.

But Murray was not his only client.

He also represented James Gross, accused of the murder of a gas station owner in Prince George’s County.

Gross was sentenced to death by hanging.  Marshall asked the Governor to commute the sentence, but he did not.

Marshall brought his experience with capital punishment to the Supreme Court.

As a Justice, he wrote, “The American people, fully informed as to the purposes of the death penalty and its liabilities, would in my view reject it as morally unacceptable.”

The people of Maryland are now fully informed about the death penalty and its flaws.  And so are we as their elected representatives.

Afterwards, a reporter asked for my reaction.

“We’re a better state for ending the death penalty,” I said.

It was spontaneous, and it is true.

 

  • My Key Issues:

  • Pimlico and The Preakness
  • Our Neighborhoods
  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Lead Paint Poisoning