Sandy’s 2013 Legislative Diary – Page 6

February 5 – The wrong interpretation

The hearing on my bill to create a task force to study phased retirement for state employees was going very well.

The group would study how employees could work part time and tutor their successors at the same time.

Representatives of management (the Department of Budget and Management) and labor (AFSCME) sat next to me at the witness table. Both were supporting the bill.

We testified that we had already shown the relevant subcommittee chair language that would accomplish our goal with committee narrative attached to the budget bill. My bill would not pass but we would still achieve my objective.

“But then Delegate Rosenberg would not get credit,” stated one member of the committee, “unless we called it the Rosenberg Retirement Task Force.”

“That could be interpreted the wrong way by some people,” I responded.

—-

I didn’t go to the Ravens parade.

I’m waiting for next October.

Sorest loser and declaring victory

February 4, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“The sorest loser that ever lived.”

That’s what Earl Weaver wanted inscribed on his gravestone.

And that’s how he managed when the pros played the Fantasy Campers, some of his former players recalled last week.

Earl aside, Jim Palmer would throw batting practice fast balls. However, you did not want to come to the plate after another camper had gotten a base hit.

To win, a manager has to keep his 25 players happy. Only ten people start each game.

Every camper is in the starting lineup, but if you’re hitting twelfth and last, as I did, that’s only two at bats each six-inning game.

I did, however, come up twice against 20-game winner Mike Boddicker. The second time, I stroked a run-scoring two-out “legitimate” single to left (Boddicker’s term).

With a career average of .500, I now “own” him, as they say in the dugout.

Back in Annapolis, I now need to keep the bills in my lineup happy.

I’ve introduced thirteen, with an additional dozen or more to be put in the hopper by the Thursday 5 p.m. deadline.

Four bills will be heard this week. That means revising draft testimony and ensuring that a broad group of witnesses will testify, hopefully with a story to tell about why we need to pass this bill.

And if a task force to study the issue is the best that you can accomplish, as may be the case for two of my bills already, you don’t need to be a sore loser.

Declare victory instead.

Race to the Tots

January 28, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Bill Ferguson was 27 when he was elected to the State Senate in 2010. (I was 32 in 1982.)

Before that, he taught in the Baltimore City public schools as a member of Teach For America and graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law, where he took the Legislation class that I co-teach.

Shortly after his election, we decided to work together on education issues.

Bill would bring his knowledge of the classroom; I my knowledge of the legislative process. Or as one educator commented, “Sandy will be the muscle.”

Last year, we enacted a loan forgiveness program for teachers who have excelled in the classroom.

Pre-schoolers are the focus of our attention this session.

President Obama encouraged education reform with his Race to the Top program.

Senator Ferguson and I hope to provide a better pre-kindergarten education for high-need children so that they can enter elementary school ready to learn. Our program is called Race to the Tots.

Local school systems would submit their proposals in a competitive evaluation process.

Our proposal got a very favorable reception from two dozen education advocates at a lunch meeting.

Their one criticism: it doesn’t go far enough.

Our bill draft would fund the program at $10 million for each of the next three years.

More money and more years, they said.

I hope the bill hearing in Annapolis goes that well.

If your Task Force recommendation can make it there, it can make it anywhere…

January 26, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

The New York Times reports:

Governor Cuomo’s “aides worked with several advocacy groups, including the Brady Campaign in Washington, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco, to develop a package of measures that would be comprehensive but also politically achievable. They looked to other states; a provision in the new law to require mental health professionals to report possibly violent patients was similar to a recommendation by a task force created last year by Gov. Martin O’Malley and state legislators [Delegate Lu Simmons and I were the sponsors] in Maryland.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/nyregion/cuomo-used-all-his-means-to-pass-gun-control-package.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

That is a first. My legislation leads to a law being enacted in another state before we do so in Maryland.

As we draft our bill, Delegate Simmons and I will include all of the recommendations of the Task Force so that they can receive a full hearing by the legislature.

We will also introduce legislation outlining the preventive programs the State should fund so that people don’t reach the stage where they pose a threat to others.

Translating into bill language

January 25, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

All verbal or physical actions threatening suicide or serious violence toward a reasonably identifiable victim or victims should be reported to local law enforcement. Mandated reporting should apply to psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, social workers, addiction treatment counselors, educators, case managers, and probation agents.

That is a recommendation of the Task Force to Study Access of Mentally Ill Individuals To Regulated Firearms.

Delegate Simmons and I will try to translate those words into bill language. Along the way, we will also have to make some decisions.

If we include suicide, will people be less likely to tell one of those professionals of their concerns?

Which educators should be covered by the law? Teachers, supervisors, office staff?

Our decisions will not be the last word. They will be reviewed by the House committee to which our bill is referred

That’s what I told the members of the Task Force at its meeting this afternoon.

Some of them wanted us to delay introducing a bill until the group reached a consensus.

“With all of the attention focused on gun violence this session, now is an opportune time to begin consideration of these issues by the General Assembly,” I stated. “My colleagues may decide that, like you, they need more time to do this right.”

What I didn’t work on yesterday

January 23, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Today was a day to work on the legislation that I didn’t work on yesterday.

I emailed the drafts of several bills to supporters and asked for their comments.

Their suggestions could improve the bill. Better to incorporate them into the bill before it’s introduced than to present a long list of amendments at the bill hearing.

The latter is a sign that your bill needs lots of work, which can be fatal.

I also learned of my first bill hearings of the session.

My early voting legislation will be heard on February 7. My staff and I need to discuss potential witnesses and what data will bolster my argument that Sunday voting will increase turnout, without interfering with the preparations for Election Day two days later.

This summer, I read that the federal government offers phased retirement for its workers. On February 5, there will be a hearing on my bill to create a task force to study doing the same in Maryland. We need to find state government employees to testify on how they and their successors would benefit.

Meeting a deadline and the votes for passage

January 22, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I’m old enough to remember when the clock was literally turned back at midnight to provide additional time for the General Assembly to conclude its business on the last day of the session.

To avoid that time travel, we are now guaranteed a bill hearing if we submit our bill requests to our drafting staff by the close of business today. The overwhelming majority of House bills will be introduced by the next deadline on February 7, and all of that legislation will have a public hearing by the second week in March.

No matter how well I think I’ve planned ahead, there’s a rush of requests today – seven to be exact.

I realized that I’m old enough not to remember the email address for the bill drafting office. I had to settle for CtrlC(copy).

In some cases, some of the details of your proposed legislation may be lacking. So you request that last year’s bill be reintroduced with the intent of making changes to gain support before the bill is introduced.

An advocacy group may be unaware of the deadline. So at a meeting yesterday, you offer to make a bill request, giving the group the time to find another sponsor who’s on the committee that will hear the bill.

—-

My name will be on one bill that was introduced today.

I am one of 66 co-sponsors of the Governor’s legislation to repeal the death penalty. As I sought support on the House floor, additional members also indicated they would vote yes but not co-sponsor.

We have the votes for passage.

First Bill, Long Arc

January 21, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I introduced my first bill of the session.

House Bill 217 would extend early voting to the Sunday before Election Day and double the number of early voting locations in every jurisdiction before the general election.

Baltimore City, for example, would have ten, instead of five.

For the bill hearing later this session, I hope to have data that compare the turnout and the time voters spent waiting in line in the states that have voting on that last Sunday (mostly blue) and those that don’t (mostly red).

We will also need to address the concerns raised by our State Board of Elections that there would not be enough time to prepare for Election Day after Sunday voting.

I’m also looking for a Senator to sponsor this legislation.

The prospects for my bill will be better in the Senate if its provisions have had a full hearing, instead of the brief review that a House bill often gets in the last two weeks of the session.

When I testify on HB 217 in the House (and hopefully, the Senate), I will quote from President Barack Obama’s Inaugural address:

“Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.”

However, this portion of his speech moved me the most:

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”

At those locations, historic events took place in the history of women’s rights, voting rights, and gay rights, respectively.

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “but it bends toward justice.”

Counting to 25

January 20, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“The most important decision you make each year is which 25 guys to bring north from Florida,” Earl Weaver told us at Fantasy Camp.

As he chose his roster, Weaver envisioned the role each player would have.

In his only season as an Oriole, there was no doubt about Reggie Jackson’s status.

Tim Nordbrook, a utility infielder, sat at the other end of the scale.

Jackson frequently taunted Nordbrook, “What do you do on this team?”

In a rare start, Nordbrook saved a run with an inning-ending play at shortstop.

After the players returned to the dugout, Weaver confronted Jackson, “That’s what he ——- does on this team.”

Knowing my own name

January 17, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“I found my father on Facebook before Catholic Charities did.”

Thomas Diepenbrock decided at age 40 to try to find his birth parents.

He was testifying on House Bill 22, which, according to its supporters, would “expand the rights of adopted adults to know their original identities, as well as their medical and ancestral histories.”

He continued, “I desperately wanted to know what my birth name was on the original birth certificate. I am legally barred from knowing my own name.

“It was shocking and revealing to learn that my children have ice blue eyes because my birth father does.

“I just wanted to know where I came from.”

I always try to have a witness who personalizes the issue my bill addresses. You can’t do it better than this one did.

In this instance, the technology outran the law, as Facebook rendered obsolete the statute, the product of a compromise in 1999.

My Key Issues:

Category: Sandy’s 2013 Legislative Diary