Republicans in the Maryland House of Delegates are exploring whether to take legal action to challenge the constitutionality of the last crucial days of the legislature?s special session after the House did not vote to allow the Senate to adjourn for six days last week.
House GOP leaders had raised continuing objections on the floor throughout the week, but Speaker Michael Busch said he was relying on an attorney general?s opinion saying the vote was not required.
“The attorney general?s opinion is not worth a warm bucket of spit,” said Del. Michael Smiegel of Cecil County, the Republican parliamentarian.
Republicans also have raised questions about whether some of the documentation was backdated and journals changed.
Del. Don Dwyer, R-Anne Arundel, has even called on Busch to launch a bipartisan investigation. Smiegel said the GOP caucus preferred to take a look at it legal options.
In the most extreme case, if the Republicans are right and the attorney general is wrong, the Court of Appeals ? Maryland?s highest court ? could potentially overturn any of the bills sent to the governor this weekend, according to Smiegel.
The dispute centers on a single long sentence in the Maryland Constitution, Article III, section 25: “Neither House shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, at any one time, nor adjourn to any other place, than that in which the House shall be sitting, without the concurrent vote of two-thirds of the members present.”
Last week, the Senate was due back in town Monday, but Senate President Thomas Mike Miller decided to delay its return until Thursday because the House was making such slow progress on the tax increases and slots.
He had the secretary of the Senate send a formal message to the House, but the House nevertook a vote.
Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Rowe, who works with the counsel to the General Assembly, analyzed the grammar and punctuation of the constitutional provision in an opinion.
Rowe concluded that the text meant that the two-third vote “applies only to a relocation, while the adjournment for more than three days requires only “consent of the other? house.”
