If you’re going to negotiate, make sure the other side is in the room where it happens.

If you reach a compromise with a neutral third party without your opponents at the table, they are certain to demand that your bill be weakened further.

I gave that advice to a liberal group I‘m working with.

Then I walked 30 feet to a group of conservative friends I’m working with on another issue and gave them the same advice.

But you can’t negotiate about the facts.

In his State of the State speech today, Governor Hogan declared, “The day after I was sworn in, we submitted the first balanced budget in a decade, which eliminated nearly all of the $5.1 billion dollar structural deficit which we inherited.”

The State Constitution requires that the budget be balanced. So does Wall Street.

The budget must be balanced when it is introduced by the Governor, when it is amended by either house of the General Assembly, and when it is finally adopted.

In the 36 years that I have served in Annapolis, the budget has always been balanced.