When the hoards of witnesses go home, the committee hearing rooms turn into killing fields.
The great bulk of bills ? 2,364 introduced so far, 500 more than three weeks ago ? often meet quiet deaths or are shot down after brief but impassioned debate.
In many cases, no one will be watching.
The House Judiciary Committee is a notoriously efficient killing machine. The 22 committee members and several staff members began a long voting session on 27 bills at 5 p.m. Thursday. Eleven were held, and only three made it out of committee after some tweaking.
A lone reporter and one advocate for the death penalty ban were present. The committee actively discourages lobbyists from attending what is an absolutely crucial stage for every bill.
The chairman for the last 14 years, Del. Joseph Vallario, D-Prince George?s, starts with the presumption that most legislation will get what?s called an “unfavorable report” ? the endof the road.
The voting sessions are often relaxed and friendly, even when disagreements are strong. An opponent on one bill may be an ally on the next, and these folks spend hour after hour together listening to dreary testimony.
For Judiciary, the voting list is a tightly held secret. Hearings are scheduled weeks in advance, but voting is a matter of showing up and finding out what?s on the list.
The topics are serious ? sexual abuse, domestic violence, evictions and sentencing ? but the atmosphere is often light. Representatives joke, they laugh, they make amendments, they rib each other, they win, they lose and then they lose again.
If it?s an issue close to your heart, it might be a painful process to watch. Most people don?t get to.
King brings home message of mercy
Gov. Martin O?Malley said shortly after his family arrived in Government House, where they live on the top two floors, son William went downstairs and reported back: “At night, this place is really quiet and really creepy.”
Not so Wednesday night, in a celebration marking the end of Black History Month.
The stirring Morgan State University Choir sang a spiritual, and O?Malley said, “It has really filled the house with spirit. It felt like I was home,” not just the temporary occupant of a big old mansion, as the head of the Legislative Black Caucus reminded him.
O?Malley talked about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., for whom he is not named. He was named for St. Martin de Porres, he said. (The popular saint was a 17th century Dominican friar who was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and freed black slave, and a tireless worker for poor people.)
O?Malley was only 5 when King was assassinated, but he said his father would tell him that as the years went on, the sainted civil rights leader “will become bigger” while his contemporaries grow smaller.
King taught the country that “the arithmetic of mercy is stronger than the arithmetic of vengeance,” O?Malley said.
Money talks taxing on lawmakers
The House Appropriations Committee finished its hearings on the governor?s operating budget Friday and is scheduled to finish making its cuts to the budget this week.
On Saturday, the committee and the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee will hold marathon daylong hearings on local bond bills, which are requests for state help in building projects. There are 127 bills in the Senate, and 144 in the House, where proponents will get just three minutes to talk about any one project.
These brutal weekend hearings are one of the reasons that serving on the budget committees is so taxing for lawmakers. They are about the only General Assembly panels that meet on Mondays.
This month is Irish Heritage Month at the State House. Legislators will need the luck of the Irish to get a bond bill approved; nine out of 10 requests will die.
Len Lazarick is the State House bureau chief of The Examiner, he can be reached at [email protected]
