We will turn our focus to Howard County and our local districts in the Maryland State legislator. The meeting will be led by Zoom-in member Ken Stevens, who has been active in local politics for many years.
Here a some web links which can provide background;
Find your election districts: http://www.elections.state.md.us/voting/where.html
List of local races: http://elections.state.md.us/elections/2014/primary_candidates/index.html
Howard County Council: http://cc.howardcountymd.gov/displayprimary.aspx?ID=4294968693
Howard County Budget: http://www.co.ho.md.us/current_budget.htm and http://www.co.ho.md.us/Departments.aspx?Id=6442458740
Ken has also recommended these news articles:
ON NEWS ITEMS ABOUT CANDIDATES IN THE HOTTEST LOCAL PRIMARIES
LD12 Delegate candidate news in press:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/arbutus-lansdowne/ph-ca-at-candidate-forum-1120-20131114,0,7005243.story
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/catonsville/ph-ca-at-district-12-forum-0312-20140307,0,832349.story
LD13 Delegate candidate news in press:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/howard/columbia/ph-janet-siddiqui-withdraws-district-13,0,7520635.story
On Columbia Democratic Club forum for Democratic legislative candidates:
On Democratic Council district 1 candidates at Columbia Democratic Club forum:
I found some interesting material on the Maryland General Assembly on Wikipedia,
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_Legislature#Overview_of_legislative_procedure
There seems to be little difference between how State Senators and Delegates are elected, except that there are three times more Delegates than Senators. Are the two Maryland legislative bodies redundant?
The Maryland House of Delegates is to the Maryland State Senate as the US House of Representatives is to the US Senate. The state bodies are only as redundant as the national bodies. In each case, the Senates have the power to confirm nominations and the Houses generally don't.
ReplyDeleteActually, since both Maryland bodies are strictly based on population, I regard the setup here as far preferable to the national one (in which the least populated state has the same number of US Senators as the most populated one). Unfortunately, we are stuck with the national system of state representation in the Senate. Prior to Supreme Court decisions in the 60s, Maryland had a similar situation to that of the federal government (with counties represented in the State Senate on an equal basis and Baltimore City, for whatever reason, having six State Senators). Now, it's people rather than counties who are equally represented here. Of course, this kind of equality requires redistricting after every census.
How interesting. The Supreme Court ruled against state legislators being disproportional but allows it in the US Senate.
DeleteI think the Supreme Court case was Reynolds v. Sims.The ruling was based on the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
A bit about my "qualifications" to lead a discussion on local politics:
ReplyDeleteMy educational background is in political science and I am ideologically very liberal with a strong libertarian bent on social issues and socialist tendencies on economic ones. After 4 years in the Air Force and then getting a BA degree in what they called Government from my home state University of New Hampshire, I came to Howard County in 1961 for a job with the federal government. I have some graduate school education in Government and Politics at the University of Maryland in College Park. Here I've served a number of groups as legislative chair (the county NAACP, of which I've been a life member since the late 60s; Howard County NOW during the late 70s and early 80s; and Columbia Democratic Club, for various periods of time until leaving them for good). While a federal employee, I could not participate in partisan politics. But immediately upon retirement in mid-1988, I helped Dukakis lose while doing computer input at the county headquarters. In 1990, I ran in the primary against the county political establishment slate and won a seat on the county Democratic Central Committee. My "reward" was to serve four years on that party committee with a majority of people who either disliked or distrusted me as insufficiently loyal. (In general, I wouldn't wish that job on anyone.) Since then, I've participated in the winning campaigns of other people. In 1998, I went door-to-door with Guy Guzzone in his first race for County Council. In 2000, I served as a numbers guy on Pat Gordon's first campaign for school board. In 2006, I did research and computer input in Jim Rosapepe's Laurel office as he had to twice beat the same conservative incumbent Prince George's County Senator who was a Democrat in the primary and had accepted the Republican nomination for the general election. I was also serving that year on Jen Terrasa's campaign committee as she won her first race for Council. So I've made both friends and foes among local and state politicians. And a few of my political friends are Republicans.
Anyway, despite my inclinations, I'll tell you no lies about county politics or whatever.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Zoom-in is fortunate to have you as a member.
DeleteI also noticed the member of the General Assembly serve for only 90 days a year and have fairly low salaries. As a result , they usually have other jobs. Do you think that this has hurt he quality of our state legislators?
ReplyDeleteThe legislators who are elected in 2014 to serve in the annual session that begins in January 2015 are going to get a year by year increase in their salary. This is based on the recommendation of a commission that presents a proposal with increases that could be reduced or eliminated by resolution of the present body. With the session due to expire at midnight on Monday, no such resolution has been considered (and, you may be sure, it won't be). Therefore, the recommendations will go into effect automatically. Here is the commission's proposal:
ReplyDeletehttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LEVzmw1z5Tyj8AcetXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTBybnV2cXQwBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMgRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--/RV=2/RE=1396656177/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fmgaleg.maryland.gov%2fPubs%2fCommTFWorkgrp%2f2014rs-General-Assembly-Compensation-January-Report.pdf/RK=0/RS=p1wrhpa.uVHImtT0pvLtMp183PQ-
In addition to their salary, they do get reimbursed for transportation costs and for any costs of renting temporary quarters in the Annapolis area.
Also, sometimes some legislative committees will meet at times after the regular session to consider particular bills or subjects that have been referred for what they call "summer study" of subjects that may be reconsidered at the next annual session. More likely, bills are sent to "summer study" to be forgotten. The affected legislators will be compensated for that too.
I'm sure there are high quality people who are making plenty of money doing other things. I don't have an opinion on whether the quality of our legislators is diminished by the level of their compensation.
Some other states have full-time legislators. A deceased former State Senator often remarked that we should never rest easy while the legislature is in session. I have no position on full-time legislatures either.
I googled that the current starting salary of a MD State legislator is $43,500 while a Howard County Councilman is $53,400. Both are getting pay raises next year, but the Howard County seat will still pay more. This would imply that the Howard County seat had more power and more important than a state legislator.
DeleteAlthough both positions are regarded as part-time, there are these differences in when and how often they meet. The state legislature has an annual 90-day session (beginning on the second Wednesday in January) and will occasionally have special sessions for specific purposes that involve all legislators and/or special committee meetings to do specific studies that don't involve everyone. The County Council generally has two regular sessions a month (with the exception of August). One of these sessions (on the first Monday of the month) deals with introduction of new bills or resolutions and voting on bills or resolutions that have already been introduced. The other (usually on the third Monday) is for public hearings on newly-introduced measures. Also the subject matter handled by the Council is more limited than that of the state legislature. A lot of the county legislation is about zoning matters and land use or development (which is, to me, very boring). (There are those who have a "not in my backyard" philosophy about these matters,) They also deal with the county budget (a lot of which goes into education). The subject matter for the legislature is broader (and much broader for non-charter counties). To me, it's much more interesting. At any rate, you don't often see state legislators giving up that position to run for County Council or county commissioner. It's usually the other way around. State legislators will occasionally go after the County Executive position (as one is doing this year in Howard County). Also, there are no term limits for the legislature and in Howard County, you can only serve three terms for Council and two for Executive. So the latter can be a dead end position for some. The pay differences between Howard County Council and the state legislatures may have to do with the fact that Howard is among the wealthiest counties per capita in the country. So we can afford to pay to attract more candidates. New Hampshire is the prime example of a low-paying legislature. Unless it's changed in recent years, each of the 400 members of the lower House get a salary of $100 (that's one hundred) a year plus travel pay. You can imagine what kind of people can afford to perform that service.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the County Council deals with things that are routine, but did you see that they formed a Task Force on human trafficking? Is normal for the Howard County Council to deal with matters of international significance?
DeleteHas anyone else looked at the Howard County Budget for 2014? Depending on where you look the total budget is either $1,583,721,044 (page 5) or $1,299,109,179 (page 198). Maybe Code for America needs to help Howard County simplify their budget report for the general public.
ReplyDeleteIn the debates for the 12th district, one of the questions was if they supported tracking. I was not aware that tracking was an issue in Howard County.
ReplyDeleteIt's "fracking." which is defined in one of state bills introduced this year as
ReplyDelete"engaging in the hydraulic fracturing of a well for the exploration or production of natural gas". A lot of environmentalists are vehemently opposed to this, while people in the business would be supportive.
Nothing came of this year's bill to either outlaw this process or put a moratorium on it until further study of its effect could be made.
The word fracking (shorthand for fracturing) was new on me a couple of years ago and I can understand why the f could be misread as a t. Anyway, it's totally been an issue for the state legislature and not the Howard County government to the best of my knowledge.
That should read: Nothing came of this year's bills ... (there were a number of such bills.
DeleteSorry for the confusion. I meant to type "fracking" but my spell checker may have changed it to "tracking". I may not have noticed since in small type, the "t' looks like "f".
DeleteBut anyway, where in Maryland would they do fracking?
The writers of such links as the following seem to know where any fracking in Maryland would occur. They both seem to be on the anti side of the argument. This is not an area in which I have any degree of expertise.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Maryland_and_fracking
http://beyondbarricade.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/is-maryland-a-free-state-for-fracking/
Thanks. I did not realize that fracking was such a big deal in Garrett and Allegany counties. I guess that O'Malley is using the study to duck the issue. The study is also gives cover for some of the legislator candidates.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that the articles in the links above did not mention gun control. Does that mean that gun control is a non-issue in the upcoming election?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/maryland-house-passes-strict-gun-control-measure-crafted-after-newtown-massacre/2013/04/03/303e1754-9c69-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html
ReplyDeleteThe above link describes the fairly strong gun control law that was enacted in Maryland last year. Although it's not as strong as I'd like, the general opinion seems to be that it's as far as the legislature is likely to go and it isn't likely to be weakened much. However, the usual gun-loving suspects will regularly introduce bills seeking to make it as easy as possible for individuals to gain access to guns and for us to accept weaker laws in neighboring states as regards gun-carrying. Given that these pro-gun measures are not popular with the public in general, they are not likely to be that successful. I think Delegate Malone didn't include a question about gun control in his forum because he doesn't expect anything to happen on that subject. It's not exactly a non-issue as regards state legislation here, but not one that most people in Maryland seem to be worrying about at this time. Now national legislation would be another matter.
The 12th District was supposed to be more progressive after the redistricting. However, it seems that only one of the ten Democrats, Lam, is openly progressive. Even Sachs seems conservative on issues besides healthcare.
ReplyDeleteThe Howard County League of Women Voters is having a forum at Vantage House on Tues., Apr. 29 at 7 PM for candidates running in Legislative District 12. It's open to the public. See link below:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/calendar/render?eid=ZmpidGhnOHUyczdsbTR1b2xranBmYnU5aXMgY2FlanBpbXZoMmEzM2hwaHE2M2V1M2ZhdmtAZw&ctz=America/New_York&pli=1&t=AKUaPmYt_cynMLqeJPJwAG-Xf4O3RJWZL4OqLQm-CfDNkfV_fcT8x-DKb-IENHGR1Z3m2cHL597PSzIr4Ho25PwZQMznSAy68Q&sf=true&output=xml