Front row and center is where Sen. Ulysses Currie sits in the Maryland Senate chamber, the place of honor reserved for the head of what is arguably the legislature’s most powerful committee.
The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee handles the state’s entire $31 billion budget, and also must pass on all its taxes, unlike the House of Delegates where those duties are divided.
Currie, 70, a Prince George’s County Democrat who has become part of an FBI investigation, has chaired the committee six years and was its vice chairman before that. He served eight years in the House.
He has told reporters it was a rise to power never contemplated by a sharecropper’s son who had worked the tobacco fields of eastern North Carolina and attended segregated public schools.
“He’s one of the least likely members of the legislature to have the FBI coming to his house,” said Barbara Hoffman, the former chairman of the committee who recommended Currie succeed her when she lost reelection in 2002.
Senate President Thomas Mike Miller agreed with Hoffman’s assessment, and made Currie the chair, where he is widely viewed as Miller’s loyal lieutenant.
That role was especially apparent as Currie took the lead on the sales, income and corporate tax increases passed during November’s special session. It was Currie and his committee that initiated the computer services tax he muscled wary House members to accept. He also played a very visible role in getting that controversial tax repealed and substituting higher rates on millionaires.
“He’s a very good leader of people,” said Hoffman. “People have always underestimated his abilities. Maybe you don’t get the glibness you find in other senators,” she said, but “he’s thinking big thoughts.
“I think he’s held in high regard, well respected by everybody,” said Sen. Ed Kasemeyer, the majority leader and vice chairman of Currie’s committee. He called him “kind of a consensus leader” who doesn’t like close votes on the committee. “Even if you disagree with him, you still like him,” Kasemeyer said.
Currie’s district is so solidly Democratic that he’s never had any Republican opposition for re-election to his four terms, and he’s only twice been challenged in the primary.
