Republican leaders of the Maryland General Assembly filed a lawsuit on Thursday to block all the tax increases, spending increases and the slots referendum enacted last month and signed by the governor.
The complaint says the legislature violated the state constitution because a six-day adjournment of the Senate was never approved by a House vote, and the slots referendum was a revenue measure that could not be sent to the voters under the state charter.
In the lawsuit, filed in Carroll County Circuit Court, Senate and House GOP leaders asked the court to issue injunctions against various officials from carrying out the legislation. The head of a Westminster computer company affected by the extension of the sales tax to computer services also joined the lawsuit.
“Legislators are not empowered to make the law when they break the law,” attorney Irwin Kramer argued in his memorandum supporting the complaints.
“Even elected lawmakers must respect the constitution and follow the letter of the law in conducting their affairs.”
GOP leaders already had raised most of these objections during the special session, including objecting to the unexpected adjournment of the Senate while the House worked on bills the Senate passed. House Speaker Michael Busch rejected those objections on the basis of an attorney general?s opinion that said no vote needed to be taken, despite explicit language in the constitution requiring a “two thirds vote” for an adjournment over three days.
The lawsuit also says that the referendum on a constitutional amendment permitting slot machines gambling at five specific locations was simply a back-door vote on the revenue measure using the slot machine money for education. Gov. Martin O?Malley had proposed the referendum as a way to send the contentious gambling question to the voters.
“We tried to remove the politics of this,” said Del. Michael Smigiel, the House Republican parliamentarian who coordinated the lawsuit.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller mocked the lawsuit as “bungled legal reasoning and frivolous.”
“They are using this provision to invalidate work, when its intent is to insure that work is accomplished and complete,” Miller said in a statement. “We were not out for more than three days, as you do not count Sundays and state holidays for this purpose. I was not about to have the Senate waste taxpayer dollars by coming in from all over the state to have nothing to do.”
Most state officials had not seen the lawsuit Thursday afternoon. Franchot was bemused when he was told he was the lead defendant and that his letters to Miller and Busch objecting to the special session were being used to justify getting an injunction against him.
