In$urance Follie$

Maryland's Legislative Democrats continue to wage war on the working poor on behalf of their trial lawyer benefactors in Annapolis, as the bill to raise minimum insurance premiums continues to work its way through the legislative process.

Lobbyist Minor Carter pretty much said the most relevant and succinct thing about this bill: "It's a tax upon the poor people of our state." Mainly because the customers most likely to be impacted by the bill are the drivers who are on MAIF, the state's insurerer of last resort:

The Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund, the state's provider of auto coverage for high-risk motorists who can't obtain it on the open market, said 98.6 percent of its customers would absorb the increase. According to MAIF, which opposes the bill, the change would require rate increases between 6.1 percent and 9.3 percent.

And it's being brought to you by Maryland's Democrats.

As we said before, this is all part of the O'Malley Administration's Christmas in April trial lawyer handout program, or as Senator EJ Pipkin called it "the Trial Lawyers Relief Act of 2010." It is completely inexcusable that these Democrats (and the nine Republicans in the House who voted for this bill) are trying to stick it to Maryland's working poor in this manner, and to benefit nobody by the trial lawyers lobby.

It's a shame, but entirely unsurprising, that Maryland's Democrats want to screw the poor in such an unscrupulous way...

Trial Lawyers will get their Christmas in April....but why did some Republicans tie on the bow?

It's Christmas in April for Trial Lawyers in Annapolis! One of their pet bills has passed out of the House of Delegates....with some Republican support, no less. And at the end of the day, taxpayers are going to be the ones left holding the bag.

House Bill 825 passed out of the House earlier this week. The bill increases the minimum amount of coverage for injury or death related to a car accident from $20,000 or $40,000 (for one or two cars) to $30,000 or $60,000 (for one or two cars).

And it's a that point that things patently fly off the handle. As part of the process, insurance companies are going to need to create a new classification of insurance policy. The standard slotting for insurance policies across the country have always been incremental. They current $20,000/$40,000 slot is standard across the country. The next slot is $25,000/$50,000, the standard in the District of Columbia. The slot after that jumps to $50,000/$100,000. Insurance companies are going to have to create a whole new classification of policy specifically to deal with Maryland if this passes....a policy which, incidentally the Sun points out will be among the highest liability coverage rates in the nation.

When you are increasing costs to the insurance companies, for having to create an entirely new classification of policy, while at the same time increasing the required coverage for policyholders, guess who is going to be left holding the bag. Consumers. But it won't impact most consumers....

No, the brunt of this impact will be felt by low-income Marylanders, the same middle and working class families that Democrats routinely go out of there way to stick it to. As a matter of fact, almost the entirety of the premium increase will be taken out of MAIF's policy holders., which of course lead to some drivers driving without misurance altogether. As House Minority Leader Tony O'Donnell so poignantly noted:

"This bill is going to hurt people at the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder," said House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell. "It's a tax increase. Call it something else. It's a burden that's going to come out of their pockets."

This bill is, at its most basic level, a ten-percent increase in insurance premiums for those least able to afford a ten-percent increase in insurance premiums. It's why the Democrats don't blink a passing such an expense on to the taxpayers, because their raison d'etre is to hurt people at the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder to enrich their special interest buddies.....

....which leads me to the Christmas in April title of this post. You see, this bill is being championed by two groups of people:

• The O'Malley Administration
• The Trial Lawyers that keep the O'Malley campaign awash in contributions.

Within the Administration, there has been a gag order on this bill. Leadership at the Maryland Insurance Administration is against this. Leadership at MAIF is against this. But they have been gagged on the orders from the Second Floor of the State House to stay out of the way and let this pass. Insurance companies are also opposing this as well, because it's an administrative burden on them and will increase their cost of doing business in the state of Maryland as well.

This friends is O'Malley's gift to the trial lawyers. Presumably, it's to make sure that his campaign stays funded this fall.....but it may also be a tacit admission that the O'Malley Campaign and his trial lawyer allies have no confidence whatsoever in O'Malley's ability to get himself re-elected.

Incidentally, this isn't the only O'Malley give away to the trial lawyers; SB 119 has passed out of the Senate, a constitutional amendment that would raise from $10,000 to $20,000 the minimum amount of damages that would be required to be sough in order to guarantee the right to a jury trial....

O'Malley's Christmas in April give-a-way to the trial lawyers is bad enough. But then nine Republicans broke with the caucus and decided to vote with O'Malley on this issue. If anybody would like to explain why the following Republican Delegates broke ranks with their party and decided that Marylanders need to pay more for insurance, I'm all ears:

• Bob Costa
• Donald Elliott
• Rick Impallaria
• James King
• Pat McDonough
• Tanya Shewell
• Mike Smigiel
• Donna Stifler
• Nancy Stocksdale

These are the kind of a votes where we need a cohesive Republican Caucus that stands up for taxapayers and not special interests...and it is VERY hard for us Republicans to make the argument that we are a better choice for Maryland's middle and working class families when we've got such a large percentage of the Republican caucus going off the reservation and siding with Governor O'Malley and the trial lawyers.

The people of Maryland, particular those Marylanders who are least able to pay, should not be subject to Martin O'Malley's giveaways to his trial lawyer special interest buddies. We owe it to ourselves and to the future of our state to make our opinion's about Governor O'Malley and his handouts at the ballot box this November.

Starve the Beast

Well it looks like the poster-child for failed state agencies doesn't have enough money to keep things going into the next fiscal year:

The Maryland Transit Administration may not have enough money for personnel and operations in next year's budget, legislative analysts warn, but state transit officials insist that they’ll make do with the funding the governor gave them.

Transportation Secretary Beverly Swaim-Staley told the Senate budget committee Thursday that fiscal 2011 will be challenging under Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed budget, but she vowed to make it work.

"We have to move things around in the budget, or look at the capital program to meet our needs,” she said.

Now we know that the Transit Administration is possibly the worst-run aspect of Maryland State Government, with a spate of problems throughout the years; failed equipment, unsafe transit lines, services that don't make any money. I have been calling for the senor leadership to be replaced for a long time at the least, and at most to see the entire system privatized so that it can be better managed.

What better way to prove the fiscally reckless manner in which the MTA is being run than the fact that the in the budget submitted for the Governor's approval the agency doesn't have enough money to keep things going.

And what is one reason that the agency is running out of money. Labor unions:

The Department of Legislative Services raised concerns in its analysis of the MTA’s proposed $468 million budget that projected costs of labor contracts could outpace the agency’s funding next year. The document pointed specifically to ongoing negotiations with transit unions.

“There is concern that the fiscal 2011 allowance for MTA is insufficient to support all of the contract increases for services and union personnel expenses in addition to the ongoing expenses of operating a large transit system,” the analysis said.

Here's a memo to MTA leadership; when negotiating these contracts, why not be reasonable? Why not negotiate within your means and try not to spend more than the Governor has allocated for you? Why? Because that's how we operate in the real world. If you are already projecting $468 million in shortfalls because of the contract that is currently under negotiation, you better come up with a plan that will offset that $468 million projection.

Which then leads to the issue of farebox recovery rates, in that the MTA's stated goal is a recovery rate of 35 percent; that means that the goal of the state is to recover only 35 cents of every dollar that it takes to operate the entire transit system.....and MTA right now is only getting a 30 percent recovery rate.

If the MTA were a private business, they would be hemorrhaging money and close their doors within a year with such rates. ...but here in Maryland, such business practices seem to be perfectly acceptable.

If I were in charge of the MTA, I would take steps to make the Agency profitable. There are ways to make the system self-sufficient without making the system unsafe or transit fares unaffordable to average riders. I'm not saying that the MTA needs to have a 150% farebox recovery rate like they do in Hong Kong (on a privatized system, incidentally), but I would make sure that steps were taken in order to move closer to ending the subsidization of of the system.

But I'm not. Instead, MTA senior leadership needs to do the competent thing and spend within their means. With a budget shortfall, there is no room in the budget to throw more good money after bad toward a failing transit administration. General Assembly leadership needs to resist the urge and make the MTA work with less; we need to starve the beast to create efficiencies and costs savings that will finally make the MTA take common sense approaches to improve service.

Overreaching

There's no way around it: Delegate Don Dwyer is getting a raw deal from Legislative Leadership and the media on his threat to impeach Attorney General Doug Gansler.

What is getting lost in the hub-hub about the gay marriage issue is that Dwyer's call to impeach has nothing to do with the gay marriage issue. Nothing at all. Yes, Dwyer is one of the most vocal opponents of gay marriage in the entire state of Maryland. But even above all of that, Don values the Constitution and the Legal Process just as much. Gansler has, in fact, tried to obfuscate the roles of government by trying to circumvent the lawmaking process by trying to influence the courts and influencing changes in state law without the will of the General Assembly. In Dwyer's words, Gansler's actions "show a clear disregard for Maryland and the legislative process by which it is enacted."

Face it; Gansler's opinion on the matter is substantially overreaching of the authority of his office.

Gansler's reaction to Dwyer's attempts at impeachment were also curious in and of itself. The fact that Gansler's office put out an opinion saying Gansler cannot be impeached seems to be a bit of political jujitsu to defend the flank, a political maneuver whose technical term is "CYA." The fact that Gansler's office felt it necessary to put out an opinion you can deduce on your own, but when you consider the shaky precedent that Gansler's built his case upon (on top of all of the other constitutional issues) and the fact that Gansler is running his office based on the judicial activist tradition without actually being a judge and you realize that there is some there there where Gansler could legitimately face the music.

Doug Gansler is clearly in the wrong here. I may be a minority in supporting the idea of gay marriage, but Delegate Dwyer is right to pursue this as he sees fit. I certainly don't think that Gansler will be impeached or removed from office, but sometimes the point of accountability has to be made.....

....but it's a point that doesn't have to be made. If Legislative Leadership would just let the issue of gay marriage come to a vote once and for all, this issue would disappear. The General Assembly cannot duck this issue forever. We all know why Maryland's Democrats don't want this to come to a vote; because it is political inexpedient for them to do so. The basically have the Hobson's Choice of ticking off half of their base, no matter how the vote turns out. The moral we should really take away from the Gansler's marriage opinion is the fact tat Legislative Leadership needs to show the moral turpitude to bring the issue to a vote once and for all....

Playing the Hand Your Dealt

I don't often disagree with Streiff's assessment of local politics, but I don't think his assessment of yesterday's budget hearings does the Republican Caucus justice in this regard.

As soon as President Miller and Speaker Busch called for public hearings and a public airing of Republican ideas; the caucuses were faced with a Hobson's Choice:

• Show up; or,
• Not show up.

Of course, there were consequences to the Caucus picking either choice:

• Show up, and you get the opportunity to air your grievances publicly, in front of citizens and the media. You get the opportunity to show the people and legislative leadership that there are, in fact, real alternatives to the failure of Martin O'Malley and the Democrats to lead on this issue; or,
• Don't show up, and then the story becomes Republicans not wanting to present their ideas on fixing the budget.

Tony O'Donnell, Chris Shank, David Brinkley, EJ Pipkin, Steve Schuh and other Republicans down in Annapolis did the best they could with the hand that they were dealt; in fact, I think that Republican leadership, in actuality, called the bluff of the Democrats. I am not sure that Speaker Busch thought the Republicans had real budget solutions to offer (never mind all of the amendments that O'Donnell, Lowell Stoltzfus, and others have offered over the years).

The fact that Republicans participated in the budget hearing was the best of all possible solutions, particularly when you consider the media hellstorm that would have followed had the Republican caucus balked.

That leads into a different problem; everybody and their brother knew that the Republican budget ideas were not going to get a fair shake in the media. Which leads me to wonder where the hell the Maryland Republican Party has been on this issue. What messages, emails, and talking points have gone out to aggressively push the Republican side of the story?

Frankly, there are two points that need to be said about the State Party media operation;

• One, it seems to comprise short, pithy, not particularly aggressive our meaningful press releases; and,
• Two, it seems to me that we here at Red Maryland seem to have a more aggressive and organized media operation than the State Party does.
  

Republican legislators in Annapolis did what they had to do yesterday; they played the hand that they were dealt.

Now, we have to do our part to grow their numbers this fall....

The Selfbeclowning of Bill Frick

Delegate Bill Frick may have become the first Delegate to selfbeclown himself in 140 characters or less. Check out this tweet from Frick:

In a tax bill hearing. Lectured at by a 22 year old from Americans 4 Prosperity about freedom and how business works. This is my life.

Apparently, Delegate Frick isn't a fan of, you know, public participation in the Legislative Process. Apparently it is a tremendous strain on Frick's life to listen to testimony from somebody who probably understands more than Frick how free markets work and how to pull Maryland out of our economic doldrums. Then again if you read into his condascending tone, I suppose Bill Frick doesn't think 22-year olds should participate in the political process except to be quiet and knock on doors.

Of course, Delegate Frick, if your life is so difficult and you are so inconvenienced by public testimony, you could always hit the bricks, go back to Montgomery County, and let one of the thousands of unemployed Marylanders take your $43,500 a year seat in your place...

Sunshine and Open Government

Again pointing out as I did last month about how certain issues bring the left and the right together, Adam Pagnucco discusses one of the issues on which we agree and how Delegate Heather Mizeur from Montgomery County is leading the push for the Open Government Act which will make public access to the up-to-minute bill tracking service, post agendas online in advance, allow hearings of Committees and the Board of Public Works to be broadcast over the internet, and other good government ideas.

You know, bringing the General Assembly into the 21st Century.

As I stated before, open government is better government no matter what side of the aisle you're on. And as before, I encourage all Republicans, including all members of Republican House and Senate Caucuses who have not already pledged their to support, to support such this legislation and help bring the business of Maryland out into the open.

Deschenaux questions O'Malley Budget

Last week I called Martin O'Malley's budget irresponsible budgeting. Warren Deschenaux, the General Assembly's Chief Budget analyst, seems to agree:

Maryland lawmakers should consider a Plan B in case the roughly $389 million in federal stimulus funds Gov. Martin O'Malley is counting on to balance the state's budget doesn't materialize, the General Assembly's top budget analyst said Monday.

"Some have questioned whether that money is reliably in the bank," Warren G. Deschenaux said at a hearing. "I would say that is not a certainty. The question then is: What to do about it?"

Deschenaux also warned that the roughly $442 million in cash infusions from previously untouchable parts of the budget that O'Malley uses to help close the revenue hole "amounts to an erosion of accounting standards." But he stopped short of ruling the transfers out-of-bounds, saying they had been used during past downturns to keep services going.

"We've been doing this for a long time," he said. "There is very little that is actually new in terms of the thinking underlying the 'found money' aspect of this budget."

"An erosion of accounting standards." Seems like a synonym for irresponsible budgeting for me.

The question, of course, is what the General Assembly is going to be with Deschenaux's assessment, particularly in regards to the $389 million in Monopoly money that O'Malley invented in order to cover this budget shortfall. When the General Assembly's own policy analysts are telling them that a budget seems to be relying on gimmicks, smoke, and mirrors it (should) be incumbent upon them to make appropriate cuts in order to pass a responsible budget.

But I'm not holding my breath...

The Consequences of Failure

We at RedMaryland have taken, of course, a great interest in the appointment process for the vacancy in the House of Delegates in District 3B. And now we see what the consequences of Republicans failure to lead has been.

Governor O'Malley appointed Charles Jenkins to fill the vacancy. And as my friend a colleague Greg Kline noted, Jenkins is on the record as being against tax hikes and for tax increases.

Is it any wonder Governor O'Malley picked Jenkins to fill the vacancy?

And is it any wonder so many average Republicans have no faith in their local Republican Party apparatus?

These are the consequences of failure. Our party needs to pick up the pieces and learn from this mistake....

Not Good Enough

Well it looks like the General Assembly's Spending Affordability Committee has advised Governor O'Malley to freeze state spending when he introduces his FY2011 budget next month. And while I commend the fact that even legislative Democrats realize our spending growth has gotten untenable, it still is not enough action being taken on the part of the legislature.

Fortunately, Republicans on the Committee tried to show Democrats the way:

Republicans rebuked O'Malley and Democratic leaders, accusing them of fiscal mismanagement. Some contend the state shouldn't accept federal stimulus funding, while others predict Democrats will temporarily reduce spending next year and then propose tax increases after the November 2010 election to fix a structural deficit.

A GOP proposal before the spending committee sought a 7 percent decrease in year-over-year spending. It failed on a party-line vote.

Nobody is surprised that this failed on a party line vote. But it is absolutely correct that state cannot and should not maintain spending at it's current levels. Spending has already increased over the past several years at levels that we cannot afford. And that spending problem is only partially the result of the national economy. As we have noted again, and again, and again, the reasons Maryland has a spending affordability problem are:

• Unnecessary increases in social spending, that led to;
• Historic and immoral tax increases, that led to;
• Lower revenue and a higher costs for Maryland's small businesses, that led to;
• Fewer jobs and a higher cost of living for Maryland's middle and working class families, that led to;
• Lower tax revenues.

And of course we have talked extensively about wasteful spending and tax policy before.

The State of Maryland has a spending problem and our legislative leadership needs to cut spending. NOW. And until Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly decide to do right by Maryland's middle and working class families, Maryland will continue to have spending affordability and revenue problems.

Marylanders need responsible leadership. We get that chance in 2010...

Get Real

Len Lazarick reported yesterday about the work of the General Assembly Compensation Commission, which determines whether or not the members of the General Assembly are underpaid when they make $43,000 a year for part time work. But it seems like some of the findings of the commission are not going to put members of the General Assembly (presumably of both parties) in a good light:

The 51 pages of data legislative staff produced for the commission contained a number of telling statistics. For instance, 86 percent of the 188 lawmakers claim their full $42 daily meal per diem during the 90-day session without submitting receipts, though some senators and delegates attend receptions and committee dinners hosted by others....

...Eighty percent of legislators --156 lawmakers -- are reimbursed for lodging for all 90 days the legislature is in session, most at the maximum rate of $126 a day, even though many live within commuting distance. Some of the hotels throw in free breakfast, Sprague noted.

Emphasis mine. And why not give these folks higher compensation during a recession, the lot of them are doing such a bang-up job...

This is an issue that we have touched on before, with a number of legislators who live right here in Anne Arundel County staying the night in Annapolis and claiming their full $126 per diem rate. As I said nearly two years ago:

There is virtually NO good reason (except for maybe issues concerning the weather) for an Anne Arundel County legislator to seek state reimbursement for hotel rooms in Annapolis. It's completely insulting as a taxpayer to see legislators, regardless of political affiliation, live the high life at the Loews or the Marriott in Annapolis while the rest of us mere mortals are subjected to higher taxes and higher costs of living. Sure, I don't have as much of a problem allowing for reimbursable expenses for legislators from the Eastern Shore, or Western Maryland, or even Montgomery County. But when you work in the county you live in, it's just shows embarrassingly poor judgment.

And it still stand true. Frankly, any legislator who lives within a reasonable commuting distance from Annapolis who decides to stay in Annapolis and claim their full per diem is unfit for office. Period.

In the meantime, somebody also needs to get the memo to Senate President Mike Miller that it's a tacky to justify these handouts to General Assembly members in the middle of a recess

Miller defended the per diems and lodging arrangements.

“I don’t think people abuse” the meal or lodging per diem, Miller said. “These are elected officials. Nobody is going to be chintzy about meals.”

“I get invitations to four or five receptions a night, and I rarely eat or consume anything at these events,” Miller said. “Obviously you can’t drink or you’d be an alcoholic.”

“You’re not there to eat, you’re there to meet and greet, and you can’t talk with your mouth full,” Miller said.

He pointed out that some senators and delegates don’t go to any receptions on principle, and other members will go out to eat after they’ve attended a reception.

Well, let's throw a pity party for General Assembly members. It must be tough getting $43,000 a year to work a part-time job (that admittedly does require a lot of extra attention) while generally holding down another full-time job.

There are thousands of Marylanders right now who are unemployed (a lot of them thanks to the General Assembly's complicity in Martin O'Malley's reckless spending) who would be absolutely delighted to be making $43,000 a year for a full-time job, much less a part-time one. To then defend the legislators use of per diem, with the added insult that implies General Assembly members are too good to eat like the rest of us, is an insult to all of the middle and working class taxpayers who are suffering thanks to the actions of Miller and the rest of the Democrats in the General Assembly.

I hope that the compensation commission recommends no changes to the salary or expense rates for General Assembly members. Regulations should be adopted by the General Assembly regarding who is and is no eligible to receive per diem lodging payments (banning legislators within a 50-mile radius of Annapolis from receiving lodging reimbursements would be a good start). And the commission should continue to hold the line on expenses until legislators shape up, provide receipts, and stop abusing the system. They are not send to Annapolis to have a taxpayer funded vacation; they are citizen legislators who are (theoretically) there to serve the interests of the state, not to be reimbursed for expenses that are clearly unnecessary or nonexistent.

Let the Sunshine In

In one of those rare instances in which the left and right of the Maryland blogosphere can wholeheartedly agree, Adam Pagnucco points out that Del. Saqib Ali is introducing the Legislative Sunshine Act, which will require that the business of committees of the Maryland General Assembly, particularly voting records on both legislation and amendments to the aforementioned legsilation, would be posted online. This is an idea whose time came a LONG time ago.

If one wanted to research committee voting histories of a member of the General Assembly, you would have to:

1. Go to Annapolis (easy for me, but not for a lot of Marylanders);
2. Visit the Committee Staffers for that particular committee;
3. Ask them for their Committee Records
4. Hope the Committee Chairman allows them to be made public (this is NOT at all a certainty);
5. Pour through countless copies of paper records to determine a member's voting record.

Why is this such a big deal? Because a pretty significant amount of legislators, on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle, vote a lot differently on bills in committee than they would on the floor. Why is that? It's precisely because the committee records are not publicly available. It lets, for example, Republicans to support tax increases in committee (note: this happens more than you think it would), but still vote to "hold the line on taxes" when the bill comes to the House or Senate floors.

The fact of the matter is that open government is better government, partiuclarly in a state such as Marylan where such a large amount of business is conducted in committee, and particularly in a state in which the elected officials are a little less on the ethically straight and narrow than one would hope. Particularly important when you consider that it was members of the Senate Finance Committee, to name one such group, who were incredibly nervous when former Senator Tommy Bromwell took a deal in 2007. Committees in Annaolis are incredibly influential; their level of influence demands accountability and accessibility to records in this modern time.

I encourage all Republicans, including ALL members of Republican House and Senate Caucuses, to support such this legislation during the upcoming General Assembly session. Maybe if Marylanders truly knew what was happening in Annapolis, they'd be more inclined to seek the change our state so desperately needs...

Lines in the Sand

My RedMaryland colleague Michael Swartz has done some excellent analysis about the likely prospects of Congressional and Legislative reapportionment here in Maryland following the 2010 election. And some of it is not pretty. Based on some of the potential redistricting plans Michael found floated by "silver spring" on the Swing State Project website, we could be in for a huge problem here in Maryland.

Take a look at this Congressional District map:What do the inner DC suburbs have to do with Carroll County? What does Gibson Island have in common with District Heights? Nothing, but that's one of the many permutations that Democrats could concoct after the next year's census.

The legislative plans? Potentially worse:
Heavily gerrymandered districts designed to do Mike Miller's goal of "burying Republicans for forty years?" You betcha.

Anybody who has been around Maryland politics during this decade knows what can happy when it comes to the reapportionment process. And that is what makes the 2010 Gubernatorial election so vitally important to the state of Maryland. In Maryland the process is, more or less, completely controlled by the Governor. Once the Governor introduces his plan to the General Assembly, the General Assembly has forty-five days to pass their own redistricting plan or else the one that is proposed by the Governor is put into place. Of course, the likelihood of a majority of the General Assembly agreeing to the creation of district lines, particularly those for their own seats, when members of the Assembly are bound to find themselves in an uncomfortable position is relatively unlikely. So the likelihood of the plan proposed by whomever is Governor is 2011 being adopted is a relative certainty.

Now, rewind back to 2002 and the legislative and congressional plans introduced by Parris Glendening. The plans were introduced by the Governor and became law 45 days after their proposal due to the inability of the General Assembly to adopt its own plan. Glendening's plans presented us with laughably gerrymandered districts; you can see his Congressional Districting plan, which remains in effect today. However, his legislative districting plan was so onerous and ridiculous that it clearly did not meet the Constitutional requirements for legislative districting; some districts were not geographically congruous and many districts were clearly desgined to screw Glendening's political opponents. For example, six precincts from Baltimore County were mysteriously redistricted to District 31, across the Patapsco River in Anne Arundel County. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that State Senator Norm Stone lived in one of those six precincts. Because of such shenanigans, Glendening's plan was tossed out of court and replaced with today's court-imposed plan in late June 2002.

Now this brings us back to the importance of the 2010 Gubernatorial Election. The Governor has the power to create these legislative district lines. Which means the voters of Maryland have an opportunity, moreso than in most elections, to have major longstanding change on the makeup of the Maryland General Assembly. And there are two distinctive scenarios.

Scenario one sees Martin O'Malley reelected. And can you imagine the districts that this petulant Governor would come up with? Given O'Malley's ability to hold grudges and inability to lead, no legislator who has ever crossed O'Malley would be safe. Anne Arundel County, for example, would likely be shredded to pieces, with shared districts across county lines to force a Republican leaning county into districts with more sympathetically Democratic areas in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard, and Prince George's County. An O'Malley redistricting plan would strike a chilling blow against competitive government and the marketplace of ideas in Maryland.

Scenario two sees the election of a Republican governor next year. And it would be a tremendous opportunity for Maryland's middle and working class families to see positive change in Maryland. We would have the opportunity to see redistricting done in a manner that is more fair, more equitable, and more in line with the ideological leanings of Maryland voters. Furthermore, we may finally see redistricting done in the most fair manner of all, with the introduction of single member districts for the election of all 141 members of the House of Delegates. Not only would this see the elimination of the constitutionally questionable one, two, or three member districts depending on your location and subdistricting, but would also allow for a greater diversity of members being elected to the General Assembly. Not only would single member districts allow for a more ideologically-balanced House of Delegates, it would also create more majority-minority districts that would allow for a more accurate minority representation in Annapolis. All in all, legislative districts drawn by a Republican governor will be more fair and more accurately representative of Maryland's economic, ideologically, and cultural diversity than anything that will be drawn by a Maryland Democrat.

These districts are not just lines in the sand; they are the basic building blocks for the elected legislators who make decisions in Annapolis. We must seriously consider the consequences of redistricting as it relates to the 2010 election, and we must make sure that the voters understand what is at stake as we get closer to next November...

Sin Wagon

Once again it looks like some Democrats are going to go into the 2010 General Assembly session hellbent on raising your taxes. And once again these Democrats are going to try to take their pound of fresh from the poor:

Legislators are not ruling out increases in so-called sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco to prop up programs that have suffered during the state's ongoing budget crunch.

Such taxes have been at the heart of attempts in recent years to fund services for the developmentally disabled and to expand health care coverage for the needy.

Now, with services for the disabled sustaining $24 million in cuts, as part of the $735 million in budget reductions by the state Board of Public Works this summer, and with health care advocates looking to restart a stymied expansion of Medicaid, legislators say they are not ruling out raising taxes on alcohol and tobacco.

Cognizant of the 2010 elections, legislative leaders have said no to new taxes. And rank-and-file members agree that taxes are unpalatable.

"However, that being said, there may be a few targeted revenue increase measures that we may be able to take," said Sen. Mike G. Lenett (D-Dist. 19) of Silver Spring.

Of course sin taxes on alcohol and smokes disproportionately take their toll on the poor, since it is lower income Marylanders who use these products at a higher per capita rate than middle and upper class Marylanders do. And, of course, this is the kind of regressive tax that Democrats love to pretend to hate precisely because it is a tax that is aimed at those Marylanders who are least able to mount a credible response against them. Of course, calls for higher sin taxes are nothing new to Annapolis liberals, and still reeks of attempts at social engineering with a tax theoretically designed to bring diminishing returns.

Sen. Richard Madeleno of Neptune Kensington chimes in with this productive train of thought:

Madaleno expects an "uphill battle" when he introduces the bill again in 2010. Given the bleak fiscal outlook, a sin tax "might be more palatable to some of my colleagues who are prone to support them," he said.

But he doesn't expect to get the support of anti-tax conservatives. "To those who want to run on a mindless anti-tax platform, one tax is just as evil as the next," Madaleno said.

Wow, that added a lot to the debate. But I'm not exactly sure that Madaleno should be throwing stones when he and his leftist colleague in Annapolis run on a mindless platform to constantly screw Maryland's middle and working class families.

Either way, the politics of sin taxes are going to be on everybody's mind until the General Assembly gets to Annapolis January 13th...

Never Ceasing to Amaze

This is not the first time we have heard Democrats float this idea, but it never ceases to amaze me that in the middle of a recession that has seen Democrats continue to put the financial hammer to middle and working class families, they want to tax us some more:

A Montgomery County delegate says that legislators should consider new taxes after revenue shortfalls forced Maryland to slash $736 million from its fiscal 2010 budget this summer.

"If our guiding principle is to protect those vulnerable among us, we need to look at revenue, because clearly our problem is a revenue problem," said Del. Roger Manno, who added that the legislature should "as soon as possible, take another look at revenue as opposed to cuts."

Yes, clearly what is called for right now when families are suffering is to make more families suffer, and to make families suffer more.

What is amazing about Del. Manno's attitude is the fact that we need to tax more in order to protect the vulnerable. What that assumes is that anybody who makes even a reasonable middle class living should be forced to subsidize not just the needs of the poor, but also the needs of the special interest groups that bend over backwards to support Democrats during election season. If Manno was not so oblivious to the needs of his constituents, he would do something constructive in order to "protect those vulnerable among us" by sticking to basic good government principles. And a good start to enact those good government principles would be to fight for smaller taxes and to eliminate the very same wasteful government spending that Manno belives we need to raise taxes in order to afford.

Yes, the likelihood of a tax increase during the 2010 General Assembly session is slim to none. But remember that the small minority of Democrats who are willing to admit that they want to raise taxes in the year before an eletion will become a thundering cacophony of tax-hiking Democrats come 2011.

We owe it to our neightbors to make sure that these slicksters don't deceive the electorate into thinking they are against tax hikes, and the electorate needs to be reminded that the historic O'Malley tax hikes and O'Malley deficit will be child's play compared to what will come in 2011 if Democrats are kept in control of our state through another election cycle.

Maryland Democrats catch the Stupids

We rail a lot about Maryland Democrats and their poor decision making, but nothing could possibly have prepared us for the nonstop festival of stupidity and lack of judgment that we have seen from Maryland's Democratic elite in the past week.

First, it all started off with the now infamous marriage proposal of Delegate Jon Cardin, who of course had to invoke the use of the police to propose to his wife in one of the most dangerous, crime ridden cities in America. While this stupid misuse of police resources is obvious to everybody, apparently Cardin's proposal was a hit with Democratic legislative buddies at the Maryland Association of Counties (MACO) Conference in Ocean City last weekend. More curiously the House Ethics Committee, which of spent untold millions investigating Governor Bob Ehrlich's legal hiring and firing of at-will employees, has decided to punt on doing an investigation of this actual ethically challenged decision.

Speaking of MACO, then we come to the first Facebook fiasco of the week. First reported by Adam Pagnucco were the pictures posted from MACO of Governor Martin O'Maley and Mayor Sheila Dixon and other Democratic pols hamming it up down in Ocean City. The pics were posted by Jeremy Rosendale who works in the Governor's office. I know Jeremy, and Jeremy is a good guy, but this was just a bad choice in posting these pictures to Facebook for the entire world to see. But that really isn't biggest issue here; the issue is that elected officials, despite assurances to the contrary, decided to go down to OC and partake in the usual debauchery that happens every year during the MACO conference. And it was because of that debauchery and the presence of these photos that the story really, really blew up.

And while we are talking about special Facebook moments, that brings us to Democratic Delegate Saqib Ali. Ali's Facebook status updates have been interesting insofar as that in the span of three days he called opponents of Obamcare terrorists, and followed that up with a really stupid and offensive joke about Glenn Beck's grandmother.

On top of that, apparently Sun reporter Michael Dresser seems to think Ali's offensive comment is funny.

What has gotten into Maryland Democrats that has made them lose even more of their common sense? While thes transgressions are little more than blips on the political radar, they are more indicative of a dangerous arrogance seen in Maryland Democrats. These Democrats seem to think that they can do no wrong, that they are above reproach, and that nothing can stop them from doing or saying whatever they want, regardless of the ethics or the consequences of the situation. It is a key character trait from people who believe that they are entitled to lead in a single-party state.

It's just a sad, sad state of affairs that elected officials believe that this kind of behavior is acceptable (and, apparently, approved by Baltimore Sun reporters).

The Five in 33

Surprisingly (at least to me) only five candidates applied to fill the State Senate vacancy created by the resignation of Janet Greenip in District 33. The candidates are:

• Tom Angelis: Baltimore City High School Teacher and Republican Candidate for County Executive in 2002 and 2006
  
• Dave Boschert: Former Delegate, Former County Councilman, Republican Candidate for County Executive in 2006 and Currently the Executive Director of the Maryland Classified Employees Association.
  
• Art Ebersberger: Insurance Broker, Member of the Anne Arundel County School Board Nominating Commission, Anne Arundel Medical Center Trustee and founder of Leadership Anne Arundel.
  
• James King: Current Delegate from District 33 A and owner of the Rockfish & Kaufmann's Tavern.
• Big Ed Reilly: Current County Councilman from District 7 and Insurance Agent

I'm somewhat surprised that County Councilwoman Cathy Vitale took a pass.

A special meeting/public hearing of the Anne Arundel Central Committee will be held on Tuesday, June 2 at 6 pm in room 180 of the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis. The committee intends to conclucde the process on the 2nd but if necessary, the conclusion of the procedure and recording the vote will occur at the regularly scheduled Central Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 3 meeting at 7 pm at 15 West Street in Annapolis.

The Committee is allowing for public comment until June 1 by US mail to the RSCCAAC, ATTN: Chairman Rzepkowski, PO Box 127, Riva, MD 21140 or by e-mail to arzepkowski@aagop.org.

It will be interesting to see who winds up with the seat. Conventional wisdom says it's between King and Reilly, but I have heard rumblings that Boschert may have support on the Committee as well.

Since none of these five candidates come from the small government/low tax wing of the party, I would expect that there will be a challenger from the right in the 2010 Primary regardless of who gets selected.....

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 05-14-2009

For more info on this story, click here.

Thanks for playing along

Republicans, conservatives, and sane people in the state of Maryland have been saying for some time now that fiscal policy during the the 2009 Legislative Session has been nothing like the common sense fiscal changes our state truly needs. We have been saying for some time (even going back to the 2007 Special Session) that O'Malleynomics was no way to run a state, and that the Democrats tactic of gaming the system now to forestall actual fiscal decisions until later was no way to solve the budget crisis.

Nice to know that the Baltimore Sun and the rest of the state have caught up:

But all that effort still won't put the state on solid, long-term financial footing.

Even with the influx of federal stimulus money, the General Assembly will reconvene in nine months facing a budget gap that analysts expect will reach more than $1 billion.

That's right. The Democrats mismanagement of the budget situation this year has already sunk us $1 billion into the red for next year. And if there is any solace in the fact that the Democrats can't lead their way out of a paper bag on economic issues, it's this following fact:

And, some would argue, it might be the worst possible time for Gov. Martin O'Malley and lawmakers to make unpopular cuts that could include layoffs or curtailing services.

After all, it will be an election year. The governor is expected to seek a second term, and all 188 General Assembly seats will be on the ballot.

"Next year is going to be enormously challenging, and that's an understatement," said Warren G. Deschenaux, the legislature's chief fiscal analyst, who has pointed out to lawmakers that the next budget they craft will take effect four months before they face re-election.

That's right. The Democrats are going to have to eat their long-standing, long-developed budget disaster at precisely the time they hope the voters are not going to notice.

Now, the last time we had an incumbent running for Governor was in 1998. In that year, the state increased social spending and passed a significant tax cut in order to head off at the pass any momentum that Ellen Sauerbrey might have had going into her rematch against Parris Glendening. It seems like it will be impossible for the Democrats to do either next year given the deficit that O'Malley and legislative leadership has already dug for themselves.

Just wait until 275 days from today, when the General Assembly reconvenes in Annapolis (unless Governor O'Malley reconvenes them in Special Session for some cockamamie reason). And the Democrats, who have already ruled out both spending cuts and tax cuts, are going to have to try and figure out how to get out of the ocean of red ink they made for themselves. And we all know who is going to wind up paying in the end; the taxpayers.

Is is any wonder that tax prostests are popping up all over the country, particularly here in Maryland? Maryland Democrats have proven time and time again that they are incompetent stewards of our taxpayer dollars, and incapable of learning the basic economic lessons that the majority of Marylanders have known for years; that you can't spend your way out of debt.

And I think that come next November, the middle and working class families of Maryland who Democrats are continually screwing over are going to say "enough is enough"......

Do as I say, not as I do

The "Progressive" blogosphere is all a flutter about the fact that ThinkProgress founder and former Hillary Clinton research director Judd Legum is running for the House of Delegates in Maryland, targeting conservative Republican incumbent Delegate Ron George. This of course has the folks at Kos, MyDD, HuffPo and other places tripping all of themselves proclaiming Legum as the next big thing and the "first national blogger to run for office" (never mind the fact that RedState's own Erick Erickson ran for and was elected to the Macon City Council two years ago).

Like most activists on the fringe left, Judd Legum is a big believer in campaign finance reform and public financing of campaigns. This of course would require a whole new bureaucracy and funding source just to fund campaings out of the public trough here in Maryland. It would also require campaigns to follow to a T a whole slew of new filing and campaign finance requirements in order to comply with the public funding plan the Legum and his ilk want to see.

Which brings me back to Legum and his current campaign. Legum has already raised a decent sum from his campaign via ActBlue. But you see, in Maryland you are required to a do a few things before you can start organizing a political campaign and raising money. This includes filing a statement of organization and opening a dedicated bank account for campaign activities. However Maryland's online database of campaign finance entities does not contain any information about Legum filing the appropriate paperwork that would allow him to legally raise campaign contributions.

This is not the only issue that Legum has when it comes to campaign finance issues. Maryland law also requires that each item of campaign material must contain an authority line on it indicating who produced it. That authority line must contain the name or address of the individual producing the material unless an appropriate entity is on file with the State Board of Elections. Legum's website, on which he is soliciting donations for his campaign for the House of Delegates, contains no such authority line.

Both of these violations are pretty serious. Even the seemingly minor issue of an authority line is punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, up to one year in jail, and a prohibition from seeking public office for four years.

At issue of course is the holier than thou nature of progressives like Judd Legum. Legum and folks like him want to continue to regulate our campaigns, regulate our lives even, to the highest extent possible. And when the continual burden of over-regulation continues, everybody at some point seems to find themselves in violation of a law one way or another. Legum will probably cry foul and explain that these issues are merely "oversights" on his part, however the issues that we have here are very serious indeed.

Legum's problem is the same as the of many a progressive: do as I say, not as a I do. His seeming failure to follow even the most basic of Maryland campaign finance laws goes a long way towards proving that many on the fringe left believe in holding politicians to the fullest extent of the law only until the point in which it inconveniences them.....