O’Malley optimistic so far

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - After the three amigos — Gov. Martin O’Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch — ambled down the grand staircase of the State House on Friday afternoon, the script became clear: The first week of the special legislative session had gone just great.

“I think we are moving together toward a common goal of restoring fiscal responsibility to our state and getting Maryland back on the path of progress,” said an “optimistic” O’Malley.

Miller was brimming with optimism: “Hopefully we can go ‘round the clock” in the coming week “so that we can get the entire — I stress the word ‘entire’ — the entire package passed through the Senate and over to the House.”

Busch, the only one of the three that opposed the special session, was more cautious, talking about the difficulty of rounding up votes in the 141-member House.

The next day, the Senate budget chairman said he didn’t have the votes to pass “combined reporting” for corporations, a measure strongly advocated by O’Malley and the liberal “gang of 14” in the Senate as a way to make tax-evading companies “pay their fair share.” It’s not a lot of money — $27 million — but it sent a progressive message. So fares the “entire” package in the Senate.

Tweaking

O’Malley said he expected some “tweaking” of his proposals on the “tweakin’ weekend.” Little tweaking got done. Senate and House committees are hunting for deeper budget cuts than O’Malley has proposed. These will likely lop off some of the county aid the governor had promised local officials he would protect.

Later in the news conference, Miller — notorious for sending mixed messages to reporters and pols — shifted to a battlefield image as he talked about the difficulty of enacting the “entire” package.

“The speaker and I are going to be out on the front lines, but there’s a general behind us,” Miller said, as the governor stood to his rear.

“When we run into little problems and we need reinforcements — we need a howitzer over here, we need another squadron over here — we’re going to call the second floor [governor’s office] to come down and help us out and somehow, some way we’re going to get these bills passed,” he said.

Urban Warfare

Republicans are already gearing for house-to-house fighting, if that image can apply to failed amendments. House and Senate GOP leaders have already lodged formal protests over restricted participation for members not on the fiscal committees. The Joint Hearing Room does not allow broadcast of proceedings the way the newer buildings do; people have to be there to hear — or listen on loudspeakers outside, as lobbyists were happy to do as they plied their trade.

One lobbyist called it “the illusion of due process.” This truncated session is happening at the frantic pace of the past two weeks of a regular 90-day session, without all the slow scrutiny and give-and-take that happens in the 10 weeks before.

Fighting is likely to be fiercest over O’Malley’s slots proposal, which has drawn criticism from several angles. Free-market Republicans want to squeeze more juice out of the gambling lemons; liberal Democrats have a hard time stomaching what they see as a predatory tax on working suckers, leading to crime and addiction; evangelical Christians, both political conservatives and liberals, view it as flat immoral.

Comptroller Peter Franchot, one of those liberal Dems, has dropped any pretense of collaboration with O’Malley, becoming the lead cheerleader for the anti-slots forces. “We just agreed to disagree,” Franchot said when The Examiner asked him if he and the governor had talked about slots.

Saving Days

The General Assembly may not be saving money, but it is definitely “saving days,” as they say here in the State House time machine.

When the full Senate resumes work this evening, it will be Oct. 30, and when the House comes in on Tuesday morning at 10, it will still be Halloween — Oct. 31. In Annapolis, there are “legislative” days and calendar days. When the state constitution doesn’t allow lawmakers to vote on a bill twice in the same day, voila, they simply adjourn, and resume in the next moment on the following day. I kid you not.

This would be a terribly useful tool for their constituents facing unmet deadlines to have, but alas, the legislature cannot mandate day-saving for everyone the way we all picked up an hour Sunday morning.

State House Bureau Chief Len Lazarick can be reached at llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com.

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