Uncategorized – Page 42 – Sandy Rosenberg

In the room and not

No one was in the room, but progress was made.

My bill to protect the instructional, creative, or scholarly work product of professors was first on the list for the Government Operations subcommittee.

Before it was taken up, however, there was a request to leave the room from the lobbyist for the University System of Maryland, my chief of staff, counsel for the Washington Post, and a lawyer for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Email does wonders, but this face-to-face meeting resulted in a better understanding of what I was trying to accomplish than the many messages that had preceded it.

No agreement yet, but we’re now discussing a revised amendment online, instead of a request for summer study.

—

My legislation to require businesses to make their websites accessible for the blind was also introduced in the State Senate.

The Senate sponsor is a member of the committee that will vote on the bill. I am not.

I discussed the legislation with the lawyer who asked me to introduce it.

“Let’s try to move the Senate bill first,” I suggested. “The sponsor will be in the room when decisions are made.”

If the Senate bill gets favorable action, the same is also likely for mine.

A big plus, career leader, and design advice

February 22, 2012February 22, 2012 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary, Uncategorized | No Comments

A rare day without a hearing on any of my bills but action on several.

Housing Secretary Ray Skinner emailed that his department will support my bill creating a task force to study providing home improvements for senior citizens.

Since his agency would implement the recommendations of the task force, that is a big plus.

—

Proposed amendments received from the police and prosecutors on my legislation requiring a judge to approve access to the records of the location of someone’s cell phone calls, text messages, and data transfers.

Since the bill hearing is next week, I invited the Public Defender’s Office to meet with me on Friday.

—

I asked why a bill I’m interested in was taken off the list for a subcommittee work session.

The response: “We simply want to get an opinion from the Attorney General as to whether the bill, as drafted, is preempted by federal law.”

I replied, “As the career leader in requests for advice of counsel letters, I cannot object.”

—

My kitchen cabinet gained a new member.

I needed some advice on a construction issue.

So I wrote my niece, Rachel, holder of a masters degree from Pratt Institute.

And now my design adviser.

The Right Words

January 27, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

My first bill hearings are next week.

That means I have to write my testimony.

My staff will do the first draft. I’ll revise the first sentence so that it gets the attention of the committee members – the equivalent of hitting my colleagues in the middle of their foreheads with a 2×4.

But I won’t read that opening sentence or any other part of my testimony. Better to look into the eyes of my colleagues and briefly stumble or search for the right word than to drone on with my head down and eyes on the paper.

The bottom line: I have to demonstrate why we need this bill.

I may also be writing amendments.

I’ve had conversations with interested parties, whose position may change from opposed to favorable with amendments.

If we find the right words.

A digital lesson

January 16, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

I’m back from the planet Digital.

I’m upgrading my website, delsandy.com, and got a one-hour lesson on its bells and whistles this morning.

The smartest thing I did was ask one of my twenty-something staffers to accompany me.

She can tutor me from now until session ends. By then, hopefully, I can do things on my own.

That was not my only encounter with the binary. (The binary system is used by virtually all computers. That I knew before today.)

I had breakfast with the State Archivist, Ed Papenfuse. Digitization has also come to the keeper of “Maryland history from 10,000 B.C. to present day.”

P.S. delsandy.com is a work in progress. I welcome your comments.

Drawing maps and striking the right balance

January 12, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

The most important legislation I worked on this past summer won’t have my name on it.

The Governor introduces the resolution redrawing the boundaries for our legislative districts.

If you can’t be elected in your new district, you can’t pass any bills.

So my 41^st District colleagues and I met early and often. We proposed a map that looked very much like our existing district – geographically and demographically.

The 41^st District in the Governor’s plan meets both of those criteria.

We lose none of our current neighborhoods and add Roland Park below Cold Spring Lane, Sinai Hospital and its adjacent residential communities, and the Uplands redevelopment along the Edmondson Avenue corridor.

—–

This morning, I introduced the first bill this session that will have my name on it.

House Bill 62 would exempt a professor’s research from a Public Information Act request.

Translation: Someone who disagrees with a professor who took a stand on a public issue could not harass the academic by demanding a copy of his or her research.

This is not hypothetical. It happened during Wisconsin’s battle over union rights and government spending last year and a controversy over climate control research by a former faculty member at the University of Virginia.

For HB 62 to pass, I must demonstrate that it strikes the right balance between the public’s right to know and academic freedom.

First Days

January 11, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

When I was 10 years old, Aunt Margie took me to the U.S. Senate gallery. “See that person strutting around like a peacock,” she told me. “That’s Lyndon Johnson, the Majority Leader.”

Today, as I began my 30^th year in the House of Delegates, Aunt Margie was in the gallery in Annapolis, with her daughter/my cousin, Babette.

I asked a legislator who’s beginning his second year how it differs from his swearing-in last January. “I was nervous and excited then. This time, I’m excited,” he replied.

“I was thrilled,” recalled a colleague who was here when I began in 1983. “My parents were here.”

My parents joined me for breakfast at Chick and Ruth’s Deli my first day. This morning, I called my mother after my annual cholesterol-fest.

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin spoke from the rostrum today where he once presided as Speaker: “In Annapolis, you confront issues directly, engage in open and honest debate, and move forward with your best response to a problem.”

Left unsaid was the contrast with the Congress.

P.S. Aunt Margie insists that the peacock she was referring to 50+ years ago was Bobby Baker, LBJ’s aide. Nonetheless, I’m sticking with Johnson. Only he could cast a vote.

January 10 – None of us is safe

January 10, 2012January 11, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

“None of us is safe as long as there is a death penalty,” declared Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, at our death penalty repeal press conference.

(Kirk Bloodsworth had made that very clear to me at breakfast. An honorably discharged Marine with no criminal record, Kirk was sitting on Maryland’s death row for a murder he did not commit until DNA evidence freed him. )

“We have a very simple request,” I said to the reporters and advocates. “Give us a vote on repeal in both houses of the legislature. A majority of senators and delegates want to end the death penalty.”

I ran into an NAACP official later in the day. Ben Jealous will be returning to Annapolis to lobby for repeal.

That’s more important than an eloquent statement at a press conference.

Read the Baltimore Sun’s account of the press conference.

January 9 – At home

January 9, 2012January 10, 2012 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

My workday began and ended in Baltimore.

That won’t happen again until April because the legislative session starts in two days.

Education reform was the topic of my meeting at the Canton Starbucks. Senator Bill Ferguson and I discussed with a reporter our bills to repay the college and graduate school debt of our most highly rated teachers if they agree to remain in the classroom and to fund pre-kindergarten classes for four-year olds so that they can enter school ready to learn.

My after-dinner meeting at the CHAI offices dealt with the use of slots revenues in the neighborhoods above Northern Parkway. A weak economy and the decision not to open a temporary facility in Anne Arundel County will significantly decrease the money allocated to these communities this fiscal year.

Tomorrow begins with a 9 a.m. press conference on repeal of the death penalty – in Annapolis.

My Key Issues:

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