VIDEO: Disability advocates demonstrate for tax hike

A small group of people with developmental disabilities demonstrated in the State House lobby Monday night, chanting “10 cents makes sense.”

The group was frustrated with failure to pass a major hike in the alcohol tax to help pay for services for the disabled. Alcohol taxes, now about a penny a drink, have not been raised in more than 30 years.

Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch have said for months that the legislature would enact no tax increases of any kind this year.

At the end of the video, Sgt. Larry Barnes, a state trooper who is the sergeant-at-arms for the House, told the group to quiet down, but he promised to try to get them in to see Busch and Miller. According to Busch’s office, the speaker later went out to meet with the group, but they had already left the building.

About The Author

Len Lazarick

len@marylandreporter.com

Len Lazarick was the founding editor and publisher of MarylandReporter.com and is currently the president of its nonprofit corporation and chairman of its board He was formerly the State House bureau chief of the daily Baltimore Examiner from its start in April 2006 to its demise in February 2009. He was a copy editor on the national desk of the Washington Post for eight years before that, and has spent decades covering Maryland politics and government.