Sometimes, other people can do the work for you.

You may remember that the doctors objected to my bill allowing homeless minors to provide consent for their medical treatment.

I asked the bill’s advocate to meet with the pediatricians’ lobbyist. I have heard that their talks were productive.

Today, I was told a letter is on its way from the physicians, withdrawing their objections.

Now I’ll follow up with key members and staff of the committee that will vote on the bill.

Sometimes, a lawyer can hedge as well as a politician.

The attorney from the State Bar Association raised specific objections to my bill requiring board of directors or shareholder approval before a Maryland corporation can make an independent campaign expenditure.

It was far more effective than if he had made the tired old claim that corporations would flee the state for Delaware if this burden was imposed upon them.

Then a committee member asked if he could support the bill if certain provisions were removed.

“It would probably be ok, making it more difficult to testify against it,” he artfully responded.

“Can I read it first?”

I was on my way to the Amendment Office with the advocates’ proposed changes to my legislation.

And I did read the bill with the staff lawyer who would draft the amendments before I gave my OK.

It is an advocate or lobbyist’s job to advance their cause, but it is ultimately the member’s decision to make as to what is sound public policy.

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Last week, you may recall, I testified on a bill of mine that was prompted by a Supreme Court decision.

Next fall, the court will hear a case that may affect a law that I helped pass four years ago.

Rev. Fred Phipps and the Westboro Baptist Church are infamous for their anti-gay sloganeering. “Fag troops” and “Thank God for dead soldiers” were among the signs they displayed outside the funeral in Westminster, Md. of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

The Marine’s father sued in federal court and won a $5 million defamation judgment. The Supreme Court announced today that it will decide whether the church members’ right to free speech is violated by that damage award.

Our bill makes it a crime to knowingly obstruct another person’s access to a funeral, address speech to a person attending a funeral that is likely to produce an imminent breach of the peace, or picket within 100 feet of a funeral.

Rev. Phipps and his followers were not prosecuted for violating that law. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court’s decision next term will discuss the free speech principles that guided us in crafting our statute.

Friday, March 5 – Nothing is guaranteed

No votes were taken today, but progress to report on several bills.

Two of my bills have been assigned to subcommittees.

That’s no guarantee of favorable action. Nothing is guaranteed in the legislative process.

But a committee chair doesn’t ask members to work on a bill that the chair wants to kill.

On the Cigarette Restitution Fund, the interested parties had positive discussions about how to streamline the distribution of funds to reduce smoking among teens and treat those with tobacco-related illnesses.

Amendments have been drafted on my bill to require stockholder approval before a Maryland corporation can make an independent political expenditure. I’ve shared these changes with the people who expressed concerns at the hearing on the Senate version of this legislation.

My objective for one of my bills is a legitimate summer study. The chair of the committee that would conduct that review is interested in doing so.

In Annapolis, reconciliation takes place in conference committees.

For a bill to become law, it must pass both houses of the legislature in identical form.

If one of my bills passes the House of Delegates and the Senate adopts substantive amendments to it, the House can accept those changes or request a conference committee “to resolve the difference between the two houses.”

No such committees have been formed yet this session.

But twice today, I strategized about what compromise a conference committee might make if the House amended a bill I’m working on.

If we accept an unfriendly amendment because it brings us the votes needed for the legislation to pass the House, will the conference committee sufficiently diminish the negative impact of that change?

That depends, in large measure, on who serves on the conference committee.

Who selects those people?

The chair of the committee that first considered the bill.

“I am here only by chance. I could have been the one walking down the street and killed by the drunk driver. Miriam Frankl’s friends here today don’t want to lose any more of their friends.”

Miriam Frankl was the Johns Hopkins student who died last fall at the hands of a driver with a lengthy record of drunk driving violations.

I haven’t witnessed such moving testimony since we heard from the childhood victims of sexual abuse.

I wrote earlier this session that we can’t eliminate problems. We try to reduce the number of fatal accidents, the number of children poisoned by lead paint.

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The attorney was not a constitutional lawyer, but he should have known better.

He testified that my bill violated the constitutional separation of powers.
Last year, the Supreme Court issued an opinion interpreting the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

As was the case with my Lilly Ledbetter bill last session, this decision does not limit the authority of the Congress and state legislatures to modify the relevant federal or state law.

If a student of mine made such a misguided argument, like Professor Kingsfield in “Paper Chase,” I would have given him a dime to call his mother and tell her “there is serious doubt about your ever becoming a lawyer.”

(No cell phones in 1973 when the movie came out; Google today so I could get the exact quote.)

So this delegate walks into the Chairman’s office – in Annapolis speak, the back room.

I was about to make an impassioned 1st Amendment argument for my libel tourism bill.

But discussion of legislation was put on hold.

The delegate wanted my chairman’s advice on how to handle a theft charge against one of his clients.

We are, after all, a citizen legislature.

An hour later, I walked into the Economic Matters Committee hearing room.

My share of bills has been heard there over the years, but this was the first time I was testifying on legislation dealing with utilities.

“Each of us shops online for the best price for hotels, air travel, and books,” I told the committee. “However, very few of our constituents are going online to compare utility costs.”

House Bill 744 would require the Public Service Commission to make comparative information about electricity prices easily accessible to the public.

The chairman didn’t ask me any questions, but he did ask a later witness about how to pay for creating the website and the other educational efforts mandated by my bill.

A very positive sign.

I‘ll talk further with the chairman on the House floor tomorrow.

Today was the 45th day of the session. We’re halfway there, day-wise.

There were brownies to mark the occasion, by chance available outside the Joint Hearing Room where we heard the medical marijuana bills.

So a quick rundown of where some of my bills are on the chessboard.

My bill clarifying licensing requirements for morticians whose religious beliefs prohibit embalming has passed the House.

The Judiciary Committee has approved my legislation extending protections for a reporter’s confidential sources to college journalists.

Two bills are on the Judiciary voting list for next week. One has an “up” arrow, indicating leadership support; the other has a down arrow. The former I won’t take for granted; the latter I’ll try to reverse. (The names of these bills have been left unsaid to protect the unresolved.)

I’m optimistic about calming Republican objections to allowing the courts to restrain potential election law violations before voters go to the polls.

Amendments are in the works for the bill requiring corporations to obtain shareholder approval before making independent campaign expenditures.

Discussions will soon begin with the pediatricians who objected to the bill allowing homeless youths to consent to medical treatment.

Public hearings in the weeks ahead for bills protecting employees from discrimination in the workplace, providing consumers with more information about electricity options, and keeping guns away from people with criminal records.

And only 42 days til Opening Day at Camden Yards.

Publicity is nice, but it doesn’t get your bill passed.

USA Today had a story about legislation regulating corporate contributions to political campaigns in response to the controversial Supreme Court decision on this issue.

I was quoted, discussing my bill to require shareholder approval before a corporation can make an independent political expenditure. (“Delegate Rosenberg said he hopes it has a ‘tempering effect’ on outside spending in state races.”)

There was also a photo. (I’m wearing my Marx Brothers tie.)

Earlier in the week, I received a letter from the Maryland Bar Association, raising concerns about my bill.

That prompted me to ask an election law attorney for his thoughts. He sent me his suggested revisions yesterday afternoon.

At dinner last night, I learned that Professor Larry Gibson, who teaches election law, had testified against the Senate version of my legislation.

So this morning, I began drafting amendments to my bill.

As soon as they are available, I’ll seek comments from the election law attorney, the Bar Association, and Professor Gibson. But not the USA Today reporter.

That can wait – until the bill passes.

“My testimony wrote itself Saturday night.”

“I attended a fundraiser for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill,” I told the Health and Government Operations Committee, before relating the following from the notes I had scribbled that evening.

“Doug Duncan, the former Montgomery County Executive, was the honoree. He told the group that the Mental Health Association had received 1,000 calls within two days of his announcement that he was ending his campaign for Governor because he suffered from depression.

“Another person with mental illness declared, ‘My mother and brother never gave up on me, even though I had.’

“I am here today on behalf of those who don’t have family to support them,” I told the committee. “House Bill 742 would allow homeless minors to obtain health care without parental consent.”

But I did not rely solely on the emotional impact of my testimony.

Before the hearing, my staff had shown me the pediatricians’ statement opposing my bill because current law allows a minor to consent to medical treatment if “the life or health of the minor would be affected by delaying treatment” to obtain parental consent.

I shared this with Debbie Agus, the mental health professional who asked me to introduce my legislation. Consequently, when the committee chair read from the doctors’ statement, she was prepared.

“That standard doesn’t address the reality for homeless children,” she replied.

PC, in this instance, did not mean politically correct.

We were discussing my bill requiring the police to get a judge’s approval before getting the records of where someone was when he or she made cell phone calls.

There were nearly a dozen prosecutors and police officers in the room, plus the lobbyists for the Public Defender and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The bill hearing is next week. We were trying to reach a consensus beforehand.

The sticking point was the legal standard the state would have to meet for a judge to grant access to those records.

PC is a difficult test, said one of the prosecutors.

PC, I realized after a moment’s uncertainty, was probable cause.

Initials aside, these were the questions I was trying to answer:

Are these changes necessary to get the votes for the bill to pass? If we enact a weakened bill, how many years will it be before we would again consider this issue?