Thursday, March 25 – Summer Flowering

A dead bill in another forum may smell as sweet - eventually.

Some of my legislation may not flower before we adjourn, but some of these proposals will be worked on after the session ends.

Consigning a bill to summer study often delays the inevitable, but it doesn’t have to.

I realized last fall that my bill to fund loan forgiveness for public service attorneys was not going to pass this session.

That came about when I learned that the Maryland Access to Justice Commission, an arm of the judicial branch, had crafted a bill to increase funding for the Maryland Legal Services Corporation.

That bill would be in the line ahead of mine this session, but that commission could work on my idea next. Its support would be a big boost for my idea in 2011.

A second summer study came about after the committee chairman said at the public hearing on another bill of mine that he wanted to examine in greater depth how the state allocates the money from the legal settlement with the cigarette industry.

He’s already told me I can be an active participant in that review.

So I won’t be spending the entire summer on the campaign trail or Camden Yards.

Tuesday, March 16 – Half Full

By nature, I think the glass is half full.

But in Annapolis, I don’t take that for granted.

Ten years ago, I sponsored the bill creating a special fund for the money Maryland received from its legal settlement with the tobacco industry.

We targeted this money to address the health problems caused by tobacco use: preventing kids from starting to smoke, helping adults to break their addiction, and research and treatment for the diseases attributable to tobacco.

For example, a $250,000 grant to a young researcher at Johns Hopkins in 2004 was the starting point for a blood test that now monitors tumors in cancer patients.

However, the fiscal crisis has resulted in the cigarette money being siphoned off to other uses.

So I introduced a bill to redirect that money to my original priorities.

At the end of today's hearing on my bill, the committee chairman said that since there were a lot of unmet health needs, it was time to take a look at how we spend this money in the future. He told the committee there would be a summer study.

I’m already following up to make sure that the glass is flowing over at the conclusion of that study.

Friday, March 5 – Nothing is guaranteed

No votes were taken today, but progress to report on several bills.

Two of my bills have been assigned to subcommittees.

That’s no guarantee of favorable action. Nothing is guaranteed in the legislative process.

But a committee chair doesn’t ask members to work on a bill that the chair wants to kill.

On the Cigarette Restitution Fund, the interested parties had positive discussions about how to streamline the distribution of funds to reduce smoking among teens and treat those with tobacco-related illnesses.

Amendments have been drafted on my bill to require stockholder approval before a Maryland corporation can make an independent political expenditure. I’ve shared these changes with the people who expressed concerns at the hearing on the Senate version of this legislation.

My objective for one of my bills is a legitimate summer study. The chair of the committee that would conduct that review is interested in doing so.

Monday, February 15 – Long memories

There are some things you can’t find on Google.

But with a long memory and good staff, you can get what you want.

Republican legislators have been invited to discuss their proposed budget cuts at a joint meeting of the House and Senate fiscal committees.

“This is a first,” a budget staffer told the Sun in a front-page story today.

“Not true,” I said to myself.

I knew we had done this before because I was on the committee when it happened.

I spoke to a budget analyst who used to staff Appropriations. She found the 1997 letter from Chairman Rawlings inviting the House Republican Caucus to present its budget savings proposals.

I then shared it with the Sun reporter.

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It’s good to know somebody’s reading this diary.

I ran into an executive branch official at lunch. “What are you working on?” he asked.

“A bill that would restore money to the Cigarette Restitution Fund that’s been redirected to Medicaid to meet budget shortfalls,” I replied.

I was a lead sponsor of the bill creating that fund. It directs money received from the legal settlement with the tobacco companies to research and prevention programs related to cigarette smoking.

“That law passed ten years ago. It may be time to study how we allocate that money in the future,” the official said. “As you write in your diary, sometimes you can accomplish things without passing your bill.”