tech interns – Sandy Rosenberg

Over 600 students have interned at nearly 150 organizations with support from the Maryland Technology Internship Program (MTIP) since 2018.

After reading UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski’s op-ed about a similar program in Massachusetts, I introduced the bill creating the program.

Governor Hogan has funded it.

The people at UMBC who administer MTIP suggested that we change the minimum GPA average from 3.0 to 2.5.

Qualified students are unable to participate, they’ve told me. I respect their judgment.

But I couldn’t resist calling our legislation to bring about that change the “Belushi bill.”:

At the Senate hearing today, Christine Routzahn from UMBC testified about Ben Cichy, a Mission Systems Engineer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, who had mediocre college grades.

House Bill 307 is now the Cichy bill.

You work for months, sometimes years.

And this is the week when you find out if your idea will become a law.

Only good news so far.

My bipartisan bill to criminalize the same conduct by both sides during a referendum petition-signing process has passed the House several times over the years but always died in a Senate committee.

Not this time. It’s on the Senate floor – the vote for final passage scheduled for tomorrow.

I’ll wait until later to try to learn how and why it got there.

The slots revenue allocated for certain neighborhoods near Pimlico Race Track over the last two fiscal years remains unspent because of the City government’s abysmal handling of these funds.

My legislation to require the City to establish a specified schedule for the distribution and expenditure of these grants is now on the House floor. Assuming it passes, it will be a challenge to get Senate approval before the session ends at midnight next Monday.

I was assured by two Senators that their committee will add technical amendments to my bill creating tech internships, matching students and start-ups. “That’s good news,” I responded.

Things are going so well for the O’Malley-Brown Administration’s pre-kindergarten expansion bill it wasn’t even discussed in the Sun’s preview of the last week in Annapolis.

When I read Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s op-ed on the subject today, his four points read very much like my bill of last year and the Administration’s this year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rahm-emanuel-on-early-education-both-parties-need-to-grow-up/2014/03/31/c7d9e1f0-b6a4-11e3-8cc3-d4bf596577eb_story.html