Category: Sandy’s 2016 Legislative Diary

Preakness, Northwestern Senior High, and Laboratories

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The 90-day legislative session starts in two weeks.

A reporter asked me today, “What do you want to accomplish in 2017?”

This is my reply.

  1. Preserving the Preakness at Pimlico – Next month, the Maryland Stadium Authority will release a study evaluating the ability of Pimlico Race Course to serve as the permanent home of the Preakness.  I will work with Governor Hogan, Mayor Pugh, the Stadium Authority, and the Maryland Jockey Club, which owns Pimlico, to secure financing for a new seating facility.

 

  1. Future Use of Northwestern Senior High School site – The School Board has voted to close the school.  That will take place after Forest Park High School is reopened (September 2018) and possibly after Cross Country Elementary/Middle is renovated.  (September 2019)  The process that determines the future use of the building and the site must provide for input from all of the affected parties.

 

  1. Laboratories of Democracy – Justice Brandeis wrote, “The states are the laboratories of democracy.”  If the Congress or President Trump take actions that are not in the best interests of Marylanders and we have the legal authority to undo that misguided action in our budget or laws, I will try to do so.

 

I welcome your thoughts.

November 14 – Legislative Laboratories

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“How concerned should I be?” a constituent and friend, Scott Sherman, emailed me yesterday. Scott asked me about a tweet that said Democrats now control only 13 state legislatures (26%). If they lose one more they fall below the % needed to stop constitutional amendments.

“Any words of wisdom or comfort?” he asked.

“The states are the laboratories of democracy,” I replied. “Put your time and expertise into making this dictum of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis a reality in one aspect of policy in Maryland.”

Then I read a Sun article headlined Trump victory sparks activism.

The article describes a 21-year-old political science and American studies major at Washington College who has already shifted his post-college plans from finding a well-paying job that could reduce his student debt to looking for work at a nonprofit or a political job “where I could make a difference.”

I wrote him about the state program which provides grants to recent graduates to help repay their academic debt if they take a lower-paying job in the government or non-profit sector. I introduced the bill that created the Janet L. Hoffman Loan Assistance Repayment Program.

Which legislative district in Maryland has the most people 25 years of age or older without a college degree? The 6th District in Essex and Dundalk.

A trade war with China will not bring unionized well-paying manufacturing jobs back to Beth Steel or the GM plant on Broening Highway.

On Friday, I asked that language be drafted to require the Baltimore City and County Community Colleges to target job training efforts in areas where the number of college graduates is below a certain level.

I’m no scientist, but I look forward to spending time in Brandeis’ laboratory.

On voting rights, Mr. Trump is not alone.

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In light of the response that my post/letter to the editor generated, some additional thoughts.

North Carolina’s restrictive voting law imposed voter-ID requirements, reduced the number of early-voting days, and changed registration procedures in ways meant to harm African-Americans’ right to vote.

“The new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel that struck down the law for violating the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.”

A recent study looked at around a billion ballots cast in the United States from 2000 through 2014 and found only 31 instances of impersonation fraud at the polls.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/?tid=a_inl

Mr. Trump is not alone in relying on ungrounded assertions of voter fraud. Republican-dominated state legislatures have passed restrictive voter-ID laws in approximately 20 states since the 2010 election.

 

 

Our elections are not rigged.

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I sent this letter to the editors at the Baltimore Sun:

“I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th — go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine,” declared Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania last week.

His supporters nationwide can fill out a form on the campaign’s website to receive more information about becoming a volunteer Trump Election Observer.

In Maryland, it is a crime if a person willfully and knowingly votes or attempts to vote more than once in the same election.

It is also a crime if a person willfully and knowingly influences or attempts to influence a voter’s decision whether to cast a vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, reward, or offer of reward.

An individual whose right to vote is challenged at the polls may establish his or her identity by presenting any of the following forms of identification: the individual’s voter registration or Social Security card; the individual’s valid Maryland driver’s license; any identification card issued to the individual by the local, state, or federal government; any employee identification card that contains a photograph of the individual; or a copy of a current bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the individual’s name and current address.

Our elections are not rigged.  They will stay that way if our right to vote is upheld.

 

 

September 22 – Landlords and the Law

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I just sent the following letter to the Baltimore Sun.

Dear Editors:

Courts should strictly scrutinize landlords’ claims of being compliant with lead paint laws, the Public Justice Center recommended in a report issued last year funded by the Abell Foundation.

A significant number of landlords did not provide the required proof that they had complied with the state law requiring owners of older rentals to register their properties and provide certification that they have been inspected for reducing the risk of lead poisoning, according to a study by the Legal Aid Bureau, released this week.

These findings are not “a squishy concept” or “pretty sweeping and generalized assessments about the entire rent court system, based on a very small number of cases,” as a lobbyist for property owners told the Sun.

They are a disturbing pattern and practice of property owners’ failure to comply with the law.

Delegate Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg

Don’t worry. I’m not relying on this letter alone to increase the landlords’ compliance with the law. I’m a part of a study group reviewing the issues raised by the Public Justice Center report, as is the lobbyist quoted in the Sun.

The article that prompted my letter is at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-evictions-legal-aid-20160920-story.html

 

August 12 – Summer Priorities

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The Preakness, pre-kindergarten, lead poisoning, and Enoch Pratt top my priority list this summer.

Pimlico Race Course should remain the long-term home of the Preakness. The study of that issue is underway, under the auspices of the Maryland Stadium Authority. If the report recommends building a new facility at Pimlico, my job will be to help make those recommendations a reality in Governor Hogan’s capital budget.

Attending kindergarten was not mandatory in Maryland until 2002. Now we must decide whether to do the same for pre-kindergarten. The benefits to 4-year olds are clear. They begin kindergarten with important skills and are less likely to fall behind their peers. How do we pay for this? How does the need compare with other education objectives?

None of my lead poisoning bills passed last session. My efforts this summer should lead to a different outcome next year. People on all sides of the issue have been meeting under the auspices of the state judiciary. Our recommendations, including compromises, will carry the weight of our diversity.

Libraries have become our window to both the printed word and the Internet. That’s the case in Roland Park, Edmondson Village, and the Bronx. House Bill 1401 provides additional funding for Pratt branches that increase their operating hours. Public and philanthropic dollars are needed to make this happen.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/opinion/too-poor-to-afford-the-internet.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

To read more about these issues, go to the newly redesigned delsandy.com.

June 28 – From delivery to the neighborhoods

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My mother’s obstetrician was Dr, Alan Guttmacher. He would later become the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation.

When I first ran for the House of Delegates in 1983, I supported Medicaid funding of abortion.   One of the incumbents I defeated did not.

I was the House floor leader in 1991 when we passed the legislation making the principles of Roe v. Wade the law of Maryland.  The voters agreed, approving Senate Bill 162 on referendum, 62-38%.

Yesterday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote: “It is beyond rational belief that H. B. 2 [the Texas law at issue before the Supreme Court] could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions.’”

I celebrated with Planned Parenthood at the Golden West Café’s Happy Hour in Hampden.

Then I went to the Edgewood and Hilltop 4100 neighborhood meetings.

That’s an important part of a legislator’s job as well.

June 17 – The same priority

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Who can arrange for reinterring a family member’s remains in Maryland?

Why is that relevant in the wake of the death of 50 people at a gay dance club in Orlando?

Seven years ago, I learned that the buried body of a family member could not be moved without the permission of the State’s Attorney – even within the same cemetery.

That prompted me to introduce House Bill 482, which established, in order of priority, who could approve a reburial.

When I drafted the bill, I looked to the existing law regulating when “any person in interest may request the owner of a burial site..to grant reasonable access to the burial site for the purpose of restoring, maintaining, or viewing the burial site.”

The definition of a “person in interest” in that law included a domestic partner of the deceased.

Consequently, my bill did too. The “surviving spouse or domestic partner” was given the first priority in arranging for a reinterment.

HB 482 passed the House, 107-28. All of those 28 votes against were cast by Republicans. Nine members of the party of Lincoln voted yes.  All 13 Republican Senators voted no as well.

The reference to domestic partner was the reason why.

So it should have come as no surprise that the Republican leaders in Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan, made no mention of gays in their initial statements about the deaths in Orlando.

June 10 – Ben Gurion’s Diary: From the profound to the lyrical

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I was honored to speak last night at “We Declare: Re-Reading Israel’s Declaration of Independence.”  The event was sponsored by BINA, the Jewish Movement for Social Change and held at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

This is what I said:

The Declaration of Independence was made possible by the UN partition vote six months earlier. David Ben Gurion, in his diary entry for that day, November 29, 1947, listed his 17 priorities. They range from the profound, “Government, Name, and Capital,” to the lyrical, “National Anthem.”

Courtesy of the Jacob Blaustein Institute at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, I have a copy of that page from his diary. Above that list of priorities is the heading, “Decision reached: 10:13:33.” Reading from right to left, that’s 33 votes for, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. An absolute majority. One of those votes was secured by Jacob Blaustein.

The next day’s entry has another vote tally. Tel Aviv Printing Workers: Hamiflaga, Hadshomer Hatzair, and Polalei T’Zion.

 

For Ben Gurion, a Histadrut labor leader:

כל הפוליטיקה היא מקומית   Kol Hapolitica He Mikomit.    Translated: All politics is local

 

“This is the day that the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”   So reads the 118th Psalm. Who knows how many of the signatories to the Proclamation of Independence thought of that verse that day in May 1948?

Four of them were rabbis, but most however, were secular and Socialist. Who knows how many of them would recite those words at the Kotel after the Old City was recaptured, as so many of us have?

The democracy they created was in a land sacred to three religions, where democracy would be tested by how the followers of those faiths get along – on matters profound and mundane.

On May 14, 1948, those signatories – 35 men and two women, including Golda Myerson, like their all-male counterparts in Philadelphia in 1776, pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor..

June 7 – To see Ali

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One of Muhammad Ali’s fights took place while I was a student at Columbia Law School.

I went to a movie theatre on the Upper West Side to watch the closed circuit telecast.

Kenneth Clark was seated in the row in front of me.

Not the PBS host but the sociologist who had conducted studies showing the Negro children preferred white dolls to darker skinned dolls.

Clark’s work was included in Thurgood Marshall’s legal brief and cited by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.

I introduced myself to Dr. Clark and asked, “Why are you here?”

“To see Ali,” he replied.

One commentator this weekend said that Ali gave people courage.

Dr. Clark, along with many others, gave the Champ the opportunity do so.

  • My Key Issues:

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