The Maryland General Assembly starts tomorrow. What are some of the issues that the General Assembly is going to be dealing with this year?
Alright...this will hopefully prove to be my least controversial diary to date.
Here is a brief list of some of the things which the General Assembly will be wrestling over this upcoming session. Things that are ** are issues which I will be personally working on getting passed during this session.
First we start with veto overrides:
**Fair Share Health Care Bill -- This bill is dubbed the "Wal-Mart Bill" only because Wal-Mart is the only employer in Maryland that will be affected by the bill, however, that doesn't mean other businesses might not be affected however. What is the bill? This is from today's WashPost: "The legislation would require private companies with more than 10,000 employees in Maryland to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on employee health benefits or make a contribution to the state's insurance program for the poor."
**Minimum Wage Increase -- Last year the General Assembly voted to increase the minimum wage in Maryland $1.00. Now, $1.00 may not seem like much (because it isn't) but if you listen to Ehrlich and his big business buddies, you think it will be the end of the world as we know it. I wonder why Ehrlich hates workers so much?
**Medicial Decision Making Act -- Essentially this bill would allow domestic partners to register with the state so that partners may be able to make medical decisions for their partners. This makes perfect sense to me, but of course the bigots of the right think it is a slippery slope towards legalizing gay marriage. I HOPE THEY ARE RIGHT!
Election reforms -- There were a serious of reforms such as allowing absentee ballots upon demand, provisional voting at a polling place that is not YOUR polling place, and early voting. I do not have a strong opinion one way or the other about these issues. Obviously we have to increase voter turn out and do things that encourage people to vote. My personal issue which I have been working on has been voting rights for ex-felons, however, it seems we have reached a plateau for the time being on that issue.
Alright...now onto the main course...
**1. Healthy Air Act http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org
This is also known as the "4-P Bill" because it targets the 4 major pollutants that are produced by Maryland's coal fired power plants -- one of the most important of these being CO2. Ehrlich has recently created regulations that will limit the amount of 3 pollutants, but does not include CO2. Furthermore, his regulation is LAME. It doesn't do much of anything.
**2. Full funding for Program Open Space. Program Open Space is funded by a real estate transfer tax. It is money that is used to buy up open space so that we can actually keep green space in our state. Unfortunately, Ehrlich has continually raided this fund so he can say that he has done something about our budget mess. Well...sounds like Enron accounting to me (what else would you expect from Ehrlich?). Now it is time for Ehrlich to pay the money to the fund!
**3. Paper trail for the Diebold machines. Maryland unfortunately has the nasty Diebold voting machines. Activists from http://www.truevotemd.org have been working tirelessly over the past few years to try to have a paper receipt added to these machines so we can make sure our vote is counted correctly and not just lost in the black box. I would love to list all the problems with these machines, but that would be a diary unto itself. Just check out that link above if you are interested in more info.
**4. Death penalty abolition/moratorium. Just like last year, this bill will probably go nowhere. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth considering. A study released by the University of Maryland determined that locality and race appears to be the determination as to whether or not someone receives the death penalty. That doesn't seem like justice to me. We need to get rid of it. Glendening deserves major kudos for his moratorium on executions, but blood thirsty Ehrlich came into office and resumed the heinous act of exections by the state. When will we learn that it just doesn't make sense to kill people who kill people in order to teach that killing people is wrong.
- Embryonic stem cell research. I do not know much about this particular issue, so I hope others can chime in about this. I know that I ran across it in my reading the other day. Any thoughts or comments or explanation of the issue at hand?
- State-wide property tax cap. If we want to tie the hands of our state, and limit our revenue, and thus ultimately decreasing our quality of life, this is a sure fire way to do it. I believe this bill is being introduced by a right-wing nutjob from Anne Arundel. We have a tax cap here in Anne Arundel and it is killing us. We need money for schools, for teachers, for infrastructure, but we can't raise the money to make those things happen. I think this is a bad idea.
Alright...so here is my very short list. I'm sure there are other issues which other people and suggest and share with us.
Given the controversy of yesterday's diary, I suspect that no one will read this, but here it is. Enjoy! I look forward to your comments, suggestions, additions, and clarifications.
CONTACT YOUR SENATOR/DELEGATE