Baltimore County is picking up new clout at the State House on an expanded Senate Budget and Taxation Committee as Sen. Ed Kasemeyer becomes the vice chairman and Sen. Bobby Zirkin gets one of two new seats on the committee.
The appointments by Senate President Thomas Mike Miller help resolve long-standing complaints from Sen. Delores Kelley and other Baltimore County officials that the county didn?t have sufficient representation on the committee.
Kasemeyer keeps his post as Democratic majority leader and will become chairman of the education subcommittee. Zirkin moves from his post on the Finance Committee.
Miller called Kasemeyer “one of our most skilled and veterans members.” Kasemeyer represents southwest Baltimore County and parts of Howard County.
“He has a great ability to work with his colleagues and his innate sense of fairness is well respected,” Miller said.
B&T, as the committee is called, was already the largest in the Senate, and now will have 15 members. Miller said he was enlarging the panel because “we are facing one of the most difficult fiscal times we have experienced in many, many years.” The last fiscal crisis in the early 1990s required “much painful work,” Miller said.
Sen. P.J. Hogan, D-Montgomery, left the Senate and his post as vice chairman to become chief lobbyist for the university system.
“It?s a job that Mike needs filled,” Kasemeyer said. “I don?t think it changes my role.”
