senior citizens – Sandy Rosenberg

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

I’m still batting 1.000, but that won’t last.

The two bills I wrote about last week remain in good shape.

The Senate version of my bill to allow medical practitioners to provide care to homeless youth got a favorable committee report. Monday afternoon, I’ll be discussing my legislation to protect professors’ research and creative work with the subcommittee chairman and the lobbyist for the University of Maryland System.

Thursday was the deadline to introduce bills and be guaranteed a public hearing.

I now have 29 bills in the hopper.

I don’t expect all of them to become law – this session. Several I introduced to start discussing an issue.

Some positive developments to report on some of those bills:

House Bill 460 would require the police to get a warrant before they contact your service provider to learn where you were when you used your mobile communications device. After we met this week, prosecutors are drafting amendments to the bill, instead of opposing it.

I already knew that advocates for senior citizens were enthused about House Bill 991, which would create a task force to study how to assist seniors with minor repairs needed to maintain their homes. I learned that state housing officials are interested as well.

You can’t use someone else’s image to promote your business without their consent. Several states protect the commercial value of an individual’s identity even after they die. House Bill 557 would add Maryland to that list. Yesterday I learned that a prominent Marylander may have assigned his publicity rights to another state because his estate would not be protected here.

No doubt actions have already been taken or planned to kill some of my bills, but I don’t know about them – yet.