Special Session Round-Up for Thursday
Here is a selection of news and links from around the web that supplement The Post's coverage of the Maryland special session as of Thursday, Nov. 8.
''We have to be able to get Maryland citizens back in Maryland and out of Dover, out of West Virginia and out of Pennsylvania," said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. of Chesapeake Beach, a slots supporter, in the Gazette. ''... We've got to be able to put a good product in place to recapture that Maryland money that's flowing out of the state."
From the Associated Press: "A House committee decided today to abandon the so-called 'Green Fund,' a fee on impervious surfaces that would have raised $85 million a year for Chesapeake cleanup."
A new report says the state should consider an increased sales tax, slot machine revenue, lottery proceeds and other means to help fund the operation state parks in Maryland, according to a story in the Annapolis Capital.
"The bottom line is, we're trying to raise about $1 billion for tax cuts, and we're trying to do it without hurting any particular demographic or geographic group," Bowie's Democratic Delegate Jim Hubbard said in the Bowie Blade-News. "It's our job to make sure Bowie doesn't get hurt in any of this and to do what we think is fair across the board."
Also from the Blade News, a Bowie health club is distributing a "glossy little foldout [that] urges members to e-mail and call legislators to express opposition to a proposal that would attach a sales tax onto health club memberships. It gives step-by-step instructions on how to write an effective e-mail and follow it up with a call to their legislator's office."
Democratic Senate majority leader Edward Kasemeyer "is about to make a choice he acknowledges could cost him at the polls when he is up for re-election in 2010," reads an article in the Howard County Times...
A West Virginia gaming company operator believes new facilities in Maryland won't destroy his business: "I don't think any other facility in the area is going to be able to provide what we can provide,'' MTR Gaming Group CEO and President Ted Arneault said in an Associated Press article. "I think we have an extremely unique product that's going to keep our customers coming.''
From The Post
The General Assembly's special session has thrown a wrench into Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett's travel plans. Leggett was scheduled to leave tomorrow for India as part of his economic development department's trade mission. But Leggett has decided to stay put for the legislative session.
As Maryland lawmakers debate how to balance the state budget, a local poll shows that Anne Arundel residents have mixed feelings about taxes proposed by Gov. O'Malley. But a majority in the county back the governor's efforts to bring slot machine gambling to the state.
And budget writers in the Maryland Senate were peppered with questions yesterday about whether their deficit reduction plan protects the interests of working families and why they had decided, with no public debate, to propose taxing landscaping, video arcades and visits from the Geek Squad and other computer services.
Finally, more than 50 bills have been introduced during the special session. Most offer alternative ways to close the projected shortfall, but many of the bills, have nothing to do with the state's budget problem.
-- Compiled by David P. Marino-Nachison
By Washington Post Editors |
November 8, 2007; 5:49 PM ET
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Posted by: Sit Down Son | November 9, 2007 12:13 AM
David, who writes above, obviously thinks he will be a Post editor one day. He writes about a poll which says at least 65% of Anne Arundel residents are opposed to a sales tax increase by saying voters there have "mixed feelings," about it. Come on Dave, I know your bosses who claim to be "progressive"are supporting this regressive tax hike which Forbes Magazine calls "economic idiocy." Why don't you tell it like it is? The Democratic legislators have obviously decided to vote against the interests of their constituencies in the name of party unity. A party above people ideology. To me that is unAmerican. The parties aren't even mentioned in the Constitution. The way to combat that anti-people approach is to run on a tax cutting platform and then to see what the voters approve. What has amazed me about this whole special session process is how these quickly these legislators forget the folks back home and how easily they are persuaded by the lobbyists and campaign contributors.
Posted by: Robin Ficker of Robin Realty | November 9, 2007 4:48 AM
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Sit Down.