Before Maryland lawmakers headed home early Tuesday morning, they said yes to energy conservation mandates and yes to a legal settlement easing electricity rates to BGE customers. They said no to speed-monitoring traffic cameras and no to a measure setting goals for reducing carbon emissions that produce

global warming.

The approvals of energy conservation and the Constellation Energy-BGE deal were major victories for Gov. Martin O’Malley, and rejection of bills on speed cameras and global warming were at least

temporary losses.

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The Constellation deal provides as much as $2 billion in rate relief for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers over the next few years, including a $170 rebate in the fall. The enabling legislation helps end nine years of legal wrangling between the state and Constellation over deregulation in 1999. The victory came when the Senate reversed an amendment that the attorney general and the company said would nullify the agreement. The amendment sought to put regulation on any future power plants built in Maryland. But Sen. James Rosapepe, a co-sponsor of the amendment, said he was now willing to support the bill without the change.

“Nothing in the agreement would stop the state from re-regulating,” Rosapepe said. While there was no time to pass such regulation this session, he said, “We have the opportunity today to put money back in the pocket of ratepayers.”

The loss of the speed cameras legislation was more puzzling to lawmakers. The measure backed by O’Malley at the behest of local officials got caught in a disagreement over House and Senate versions about the money that the traffic fines would generate.

“I don’t know what happened to speed cameras,” O’Malley told reporters Tuesday after he signed the repeal of the computer services sale tax, another major victory for him.

“Sometimes this place is like the yellow submarine, full of holes,” he said. “Sometimes things fall into holes with no fingerprints.”

The governor said homicides and fire fatalities were down statewide, but traffic deaths were up, “so we have a challenge with road safety, and I’m sure [speed cameras legislation] will be back next year.”

While Democrats relished victories on taxes, freezing university tuition, funding more Chesapeake Bay cleanup and adding 100,000 people to the Medicaid health insurance rolls, Republicans said they all

represented unjustified increases in state spending.

“We’re going into a recession,” Senate GOP Leader David Brinkley said, adding that Maryland should not be adding new programs and

new taxes.

“The Democrat leadership is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the taxpayers with empty rhetoric about spending cuts and sound fiscal management,” House Republican Leader Anthony O’Donnell said. “For virtually every cut that has been made, the governor has found somewhere else to spend those dollars.”

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com