Leaving the Legislature, part 5: Henry Heller

By Erich Wagner
Erich@MarylandReporter.com

Hank Heller said he became interested in politics when he was in junior high school, and he became more and more involved ever since. Now, more than 50 years later, 24 of them in the General Assembly, the Montgomery County delegate is calling it quits.

Before becoming a politician, Heller was in education, both as a teacher and a management and budget specialist for Montgomery County Public Schools. He first decided to run for the House of Delegates when he realized that "every decision was made by politicians," he said.

Heller kept his eyes fixed on education in the General Assembly, working on the Sen. Jack Cade formula for aid to community colleges as a members of Ways and Means Committee -- where he also chaired its education subcommittee -- and then serving on Appropriations and its education subcommittee, as well as the Special Joint Committee on Pensions.

For all the work he put into improving education, he fears that he hasn't made a "lasting difference."

"I've seen a lot of things that I've done being stretched out and reduced," Heller said. "I think that's not necessarily my fault. Listen to [U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan], he's calling it a state of emergency."

Heller sees budget cuts to education as a retreat from the high goals for training teachers set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

"We tried to get wholly trained teachers in every classroom, and now we let some of the newest, brightest and best trained go because of funding," he said. "But otherwise, you get into a conflict like [Washington] DC, where you're purging teachers."

Education is a necessity for the state and should be safe from budget cuts, Heller said.

"It's amazing how basic services should be education, fire departments, health and safety, but sometimes other things are there because of political pressure," Heller said. "That's nice, but we tend to set them as a sacred cow when they're added on."

Heller said he has several friends in the General Assembly, including the members of his education and economic development subcommittee. He said the members "worked very well" together, without any "animosity or tense moments." But he feels particularly close to House Appropriations Chairman Norman Conway and longtime Ways and Means Committee Chair Sheila Hixson.

"Norm Conway and I came into the legislature at the same time, he's from the Eastern Shore and I'm from Montgomery County," Heller said. "We agreed on a lot of things -- he was an educator and I was an educator."

He and Hixson worked closely together both during his time on the Ways and Means Committee and when working on issues between Appropriations and Ways and Means.

"We shared an office suite, and for me it's more or less obvious," Heller said. "[She is] one of the few I've been friends with the whole time [in the General Assembly], and both inside and outside of Annapolis."