Seizing on bribery and conspiracy charges facing former Democratic lawmakers, Gov. Larry Hogan unleashed a handful of bills Thursday to rein in corruption and put an end to influence peddling in Annapolis. Hogan also proposed legislation to take some of the politics out of liquor board appointments, force the Maryland Senate and House to video stream their sessions, and set up an independent commission to draw lines for legislative and congressional districts.
A bill establishing the Maryland Transit Administration Oversight and Planning Board may get enough votes in the House to override Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto from the 2016 session, but the chance it clears the 29 votes needed in the Senate is slim, according to several lawmakers in both parties.
The budget Gov. Hogan rolled out Wednesday is short on mandatory funding increases for workers serving Marylanders with developmental disabilities — putting providers in direct competition with fast food chains, said Senate Finance Chair Thomas “Mac” Middleton in a press briefing Wednesday. Hogan’s budget cuts the mandatory 3.5% wage hike to the Developmental Disabilities Administration to 2%. The legislature needs to make up the 1.5% reduction before the end of the session, said Middleton, a long-time advocate for DDA caregivers.
Maryland taxpayers could save $11 million annually if 127 of the current 1,426 uniformed positions in the Maryland State Police were replaced with civilian employees, according to a report released by the Office of Legislative Audits. The audit found the positions were not involved in daily law enforcement activities. The savings would be found in lower salaries and fringe benefits attributed to civilian employees, which would include a $7.8 million reduction in annual pension costs.
Public financing of Maryland gubernatorial elections could get help from the general fund in years the Fair Campaign Financing Fund falls short, said Del. Eric Luedtke, D-Montgomery. Prince George’s Del. Jimmy Tarlau plans to introduce legislation creating public financing for legislative races.
As the very first piece of legislation, Democrat lawmakers have reintroduced the Maryland Healthy Working Families Act, the paid sick leave bill, which passed the House in a party line vote last year but failed to move in the Senate. This year’s House bill, HB01, will compete with a measure recently announced by Gov. Larry Hogan. But some Republican lawmakers are not enthusiastic about Hogan’s compromise, even though it is less burdensome to businesses than the House bill.
On the eve of the 2017 legislative session, Democrat lawmakers and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh rolled out two bills that would authorize the state to sue drug makers for price gouging — and require that companies give public notice when price hikes exceed 10%.
The Clean Chesapeake Coalition, a group of seven Maryland counties formed in 2012 to challenge the priorities and science of the $14.4 billion cleanup mandate for the Bay, is again sparring with environmental groups it says continue to ignore the Susquehanna River as the single largest source of pollution that flows into the Bay. This time the debate is over a proposed moratorium on chicken houses, the biggest industry on the shore.
Long before Freddie Gray’s death ignited unrest in Baltimore, high profile cases of police misconduct nationally failed to move Maryland lawmakers to pass meaningful reforms this year, according to LBSBaltimore.com, a grassroots think tank that advocates a rewrite of the state’s policing policies. “At the end of the day we saw special interests of police officers and law enforcement in Maryland overrule what the community needed here in Baltimore,” said Adam Jackson, head of the think tank located just yards from City Hall.
Maryland Department of the Environment has moved to deny a water quality permit for Exelon Corp. to operate the Conowingo Dam — on concerns the dam’s impact on the Chesapeake Bay could undermine state efforts to comply with the Clean Water Act.
“MDE intends to deny the application due to insufficient information provided by the applicant regarding the impacts…on state water quality standards,” said MDE Communications Director Jay Apperson in a press release on Tuesday.
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