It was a fitting end to Sunshine Week in Annapolis Friday morning when the chairman of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee threw everybody out of the hearing room with no explanation.
Those tossed included staff, lobbyists and our reporter Erich Wagner. Staff members told Wagner it had to do with an individual senator.
Len Lazarick and Andy Rosen of MarylandReporter.com sat down with Liam Farrell of The Capital to talk about some of the top education issues before the General Assembly. Topics include the BOAST tax credit for private school donations, teacher pension costs and more....
The Senate budget committee has taken the first step toward passing half of the state’s massive burden for teacher pensions onto local governments, as part of the budget it voted to send to the Senate floor on Monday.
The Budget and Taxation Committee approved language Friday that would begin moving the pension obligations to local governments next year. Nothing would change in the fiscal 2011 budget now being reviewed, but the move could shift nearly $338 million to counties within five years. The state now pays for all teacher pensions.
The Senate budget committee put off decisions on $60 million in local school aid Thursday, but lawmakers made many controversial decisions about tax credits, environmental programs and life science research.
The committee is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss spending related to local governments. Senators are considering ways to reduce the state’s commitment for teacher pensions and aid formulas, and looking at how Maryland should distribute road aid to local governments in coming years.
Today we've got fallout from the death of a teacher at the Cheltenham youth detention center. The Senate budget committee put off some of the more difficult budget decisions, and the Senate gets heated over card games. CHELTENHAM: The superintendent of the Cheltenham...
Lawmakers need to “conjure up some more courage” and increase Maryland’s gas tax, according to testimony heard Wednesday in the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee.
Proposing a fixed gas tax increase has been unpopular among lawmakers for over a decade. That sentiment apparently hasn’t changed for a bill that would tie tax rates to the price of gas, but limit fuel tax increases by 2 cents per quarter.
SEX OFFENDERS: The House of Delegates gave preliminary approval to two major bills concerning sex offenders, writes Annie Linskey for The Sun’s Maryland Politics blog. While bills passing through both the House and Senate are in place to strengthen sex offender laws,...
What happens to property owners who don’t pay their water bills? For most people, it means no bathing, because the local government shuts off service. But that apparently isn’t always the case in Baltimore City, where Sen. Jim Brochin was trying to pass a bill to make it harder for counties to seize properties over delinquent water debt.
A proposal to provide tax credits to businesses that contribute to scholarship programs at private schools faces an uncertain fate in the House after it passed the Senate 30 to 17 Wednesday.
The Building Opportunities for All Students and Teachers in Maryland tax credit (BOAST) was scheduled for a hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday afternoon.
Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposal to reward companies for hiring workers off unemployment rolls emerged unscathed after attempts to alter the bill on the House floor Wednesday.
Republicans tried to resurrect changes that were rejected when the bill was in the House Ways and Means Committee. One would have required employers to use the federal E-Verify program to ensure that new hires are lawfully present, and another would have heavily altered the bill to work as a cut in the corporate income tax rate.
Recent Comments