Category: Uncategorized

Good Advice

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

It’s good to get some advice that you already follow.

The Attorney General and Solicitor of New Jersey have written:

First, state elected officials must be ready to respond quickly to, or act in advance of, rulings from the Supreme Court. If, for example, the Affordable Care Act is weakened or struck down, Democratic state legislatures should have bills drafted to introduce that day to protect people who will lose coverage. And officials must act now to protect and expand access to reproductive health care — especially for poor women and women of color — given the clear threat to Roe v. Wade.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/opinion/progressive-conservative-courts.html

When the General Assembly enacted HB 959, Health Insurance – Consumer Protections, we made it  as consistent as possible with the ACA protections.

When we wrote the holding of Roe v. Wade into Maryland law, I was the floor leader in the House of Delegates.  If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, women’s reproductive health will still be protected in our state.

“The new court may also make it easier for companies to degrade the environment,” the op-ed continues.

Last year, I introduced HB 869 to require that all State agencies adopt environmental regulations consistent with the federal standards in effect on January 1, 2020, in case the Trump administration weakened those protections.   After reading the op-ed, I wrote state environmental advocates, “Are there cases on the Supreme Court’s docket that pose this problem?”

The Supreme Court will reach decisions this term regarding the free exercise of religion.  I’ve already written a colleague about working on an appropriate response.

From the start

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

Growing up I spent some time at Pimlico Race Track, but I was born at Sinai Hospital.

Not at the Sinai that neighbors the track, but when it was located on Wolfe Street on what is now the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus.

I made note of this when I spoke yesterday at the first groundbreaking on the Pimlico-Sinai redevelopment site.

The hospital bought the eastern end of the track property several years ago. It’s a parking lot for hospital employees 363 days of the year.  Preakness Weekend it’s still for racing fans.

The Center for Hope will be the first new structure on this site.  It will provide intervention and prevention for child abuse, domestic violence, and community violence.

It’s a major step forward for all of the communities that neighbor Sinai and Pimlico Race Track.

 

Homes for Sale

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

The house at 5601 Merville Av. and Northern Parkway is for sale.  It’s right across the street from the northern boundary of Pimlico Race Course.

The listed price is $469,999.

“The after renovation value [is] in consideration of the Pimlico Race Track redevelopment and large residential projects scheduled in the area,” the listing states.

That is a very encouraging sign of the impact that the Pimlico redevelopment will have on the surrounding neighborhoods.

But not the only one.

There was a Zoom meeting yesterday about the new housing development at Park Heights and Virginia Avenues – about one mile south of the race track.

There will be apartments for seniors and families, and there will be single-family homes for sale.

The likely asking price will be between $140,000 and $160,000.

Employees at nearby Sinai Hospital are among the likely home buyers.

From the outset of my work to save Pimlico and the Preakness, I’ve been meeting with residents from the communities on all sides of the track.

Now we have the first signs of the benefits that will bring.

Covid 19 – Working with scientists and health care providers

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Headlines today for the Covid-19 advisory panel appointed by President-elect Biden and Pfizer’s announcement that early data indicate its trial vaccine is more than 90% effective.

I am already involved in our state government’s preparation of an operational plan for vaccine acceptance, distribution, and administration.

In Washington and Annapolis, government officials will be working with scientists and health care providers.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris: “It takes sacrifice and Joy.”

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“Protecting our democracy takes struggle,” declared Vice President-elect Kamala Harris last night.  “It takes sacrifice. There is joy in it and there is progress.”

Many have suffered personal, physical, or economic loss during the pandemic.  We must address the underlying problems that the virus has laid bare.  There is sacrifice and there is joy, Kamala Harris teaches us, in the hard work of doing so.

Next Steps After Tuesday

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

On Election Night, I advised my 32-year old niece and nephew to concentrate on an issue they really cared about and to volunteer their time and money.  As a state legislator, I told them, I will be in a unique position to protect the people of Maryland against harmful  decisions in Washington.

I wrote that four years ago.

What advice would I give them and myself as the votes are still being counted on the Friday morning after Election Day?

If Joe Biden wins, we won’t have to worry about harmful decisions.

But Maryland can still serve as an example by enacting programs that are stalled by gridlock in Washington.  We can be the laboratory of democracy, as Justice Brandeis said of the states’ role in our system.

While doing that, we should bear this in mind.

Again, while Biden made small inroads with working-class voters, there seems to be no huge shift. Maybe because many working-class Trump voters not only feel looked down upon, but they also resent what they see as cultural censorship from liberal elites, coming out of college campuses. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/opinion/trump-biden-election-2020.html  (Tom Friedman)

The concerns of the working class are shared by the conservative religious community, I would add.

The electoral transformation of power was made possible by John Lewis, Lyndon Johnson, and millions of Americans exercising their sacred right to vote.

It is now up to all of us to follow Abraham Lincoln’s counsel to “bind up the Nation’s wounds.”

Addressing Domestic Terrorism

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Last year, I introduced a bill to criminalize domestic terrorism.

House Bill 1164 would make it a separate offense to commit a crime with the intent to cause serious physical injury or death to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.

There would be an enhanced penalty for these acts, like a hate crime.

The bill did not pass.

However, I worked with the committee chairman, Delegate Luke Clippinger, on a letter to the Director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security.

The letter asks for a “report on the State’s efforts and plans to prevent, detect, and address domestic terrorism, to the extent that the publication of such information does not jeopardize public safety or security.”

The letter was sent on May 11.  There has been no response.

Last week, as you know, the F.B.I. and state authorities arrested 13 men in connection with a domestic terrorism plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan.

I already planned to reintroduce my bill.

A Reminder At the Polls

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    A person may not willfully and knowingly influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision whether to go to the polls to cast a vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward. 

Election Article, 16-201 (a)(6)

I introduced the bill that added that provision to Maryland law.

Campaign literature implying that you couldn’t vote if you owed rent or hadn’t paid your parking tickets prompted me to act.

The Election Day telephone calls urging people to relax and stay away from the polls were illegal because of this law.

President Trump recently tweeted: We need every able-bodied man, woman to join army for Trump’s election security operation at defendyourballot.com.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/918317570/democrats-worry-gop-efforts-to-recruit-poll-watchers-may-lead-to-voter-intimidat

That prompted me to speak with PJ Hogan, a former colleague in the General Assembly and now the vice chair of the Maryland State Board of Elections (SBE).

We discussed the need to remind all involved – voting officials, the voting public, and those who might disrupt the election process, of Maryland’s law.

At yesterday’s SBE meeting, Vice Chair Hogan reminded everybody of our law by reading it out loud.

https://elections.maryland.gov/about/board.html44:20

I’ve decided to print our law and take it with me to the polls when I’m there for early voting and Election Day.

Hopefully not to show it to a police officer because someone may be violating the law.

But to remind me that this is how the system works.

A Student of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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As a student at Columbia Law School, I took Professor Ginsburg’s class on Sex Discrimination and the Law.  She had already argued and won two cases before the Supreme Court.  Nonetheless, she was open to her students’ ideas and suggestions.

My concern for civil rights, fostered in me by my parents and my faith and nurtured at City College, prompted me to take her class. 

I told my mother that this weekend.

As a member of the House of Delegates, I successfully introduced the Lilly Ledbetter law, protecting a worker’s right to equal pay.  The bill  wrote into our law a dissent by Justice Ginsburg.  

I read this quote of Justice Ginsburg’s last night: “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” 

I’ve tried to follow that advice. 

As a citizen, I mourn her passing and recommit myself to the principles of fairness and equity where Justice Ginsburg set an historic example. 

The Road to Nowhere To a 21st Century Mass Transit System

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

The road to nowhere was paved with the dislocation of hundreds of families.

Many of those people who were forced out of their homes in the Franklin-Mulberry corridor moved a mile north to Edmondson Village – in the 41st District.

I knew about that before I went to my first meeting about the Red Line at Edmondson Senior High School. 

It was there that I first heard a constituent say she did not want to experience that again. 

She drove the point home for me. 

“We will sweat the details about how the Red Line would affect your neighborhood,” my legislative colleagues and I said at many neighborhood meetings. 

We introduced and passed a bill prohibiting the dislocation of any families along Edmondson Ave. 

There were no plans to do this.  We made sure of it. 

Governor Hogan pulled the plug on the Red Line five years ago. 

Cynthia Shaw, president of the Lyndhurst Community Association, recently told the Baltimore Sun that she had convinced her skeptical neighbors that the Red Line would connect them to the rest of the region, not take their homes. 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-red-line-five-years-20200911-b2d3knvbpngdrirbc44fd55pti-story.html

There will be a new administration in Annapolis in two years. 

We need to work with Mrs. Shaw and many others to plan for the redevelopment of the communities throughout Baltimore City and Baltimore County that would benefit from a 21st Century mass transit system. 

  • My Key Issues:

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