Let them eat Smith Island cake and let them continue to carry it home from the store in plastic bags, along with their Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice, still at the low price of beer.
With three weeks left in the session, bills, alive and dead, are coming fast and furious out of House and Senate committees as they face key deadlines for action. Any bills expected to pass by April 7 are supposed to be reported out of committee by today and get passed and sent to the opposite chamber next week.
With 37 of 47 senators co-sponsoring, the Senate was expected Monday night to pass the bill designating Smith Island cake, a multilayered confection, as the official state dessert. If enacted, it will join 21 other official state symbols, and can be downed with a glass of the state drink (milk) after a meal of the state fish (rockfish or striped bass) and state crustacean (blue crab).
Speaking of crabs and drink, a Senate committee has approved a measure to tax mixed drinks with 6 percent or less alcohol as beer, which is taxed at a lower rate than distilled spirits. The comptroller?s office already taxes the beverages as beer, but Attorney General Doug Gansler wanted the taxes raised to discourage underage drinking.
In case you were wondering what to call the day after Thanksgiving besides Black Friday, a House committee has approved Del. Talmadge Branch?s idea to name it American Indian Heritage Day. “It doesn?t cost a cent,” Branch noted.
Among bills that have bit the dust in committees was a measure outlawing plastic bags by Del. Todd Schuler and other Baltimore County Democrats, and a prohibition on counties and municipalities declaring themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens, a ban proposed in different versions by Del. Warren Miller, a Howard County Republican, and Del. Patrick McDonough, a Baltimore County Republican, with many Republican co-sponsors.
The Judiciary Committee also killed a proposal by the Baltimore City administration to make failing to report a lost or stolen firearm a crime, a proposal that was sharply criticized by gun-rights advocates at a hearing last week.
