delsandy – Page 64 – Sandy Rosenberg

What Telford Taylor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg taught me

January 23, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

The Speaker of the New York Assembly was indicted yesterday on corruption charges related to payments to his private law practice for which where he performed little or no legal work.

It prompted this anecdote on the front page of the New York Times:

Al Smith, the storied governor of New York in the 1920s who laid the groundwork for the New Deal, has been credited with making a famously cynical remark as he walked through a law school library. He spotted a student, bent over books and reading.

“There,” Smith supposedly said, “is a young man studying how to take a bribe and call it a fee.”

That’s not what Telford Taylor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg taught me at law school.

What I learned was that the rule of law is supposed to apply equally to everyone.

Moreover, when individuals fail to do the right thing on their own initiative, laws – civil rights, consumer protection, anti-trust, among many others, require them to do the right thing.

No Wrong Door

January 22, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

My first bill hearing will be on February 3.

Under the No Wrong Door pilot program, individuals with a range of needs that cross departmental lines would be assisted by one case worker.

The result: greater efficiency for public and private providers; needed services for those in need that would put them on the road to employment or recovery.

We discussed who should testify at the hearing on House Bill 66 and whom we need to meet with before then.

A senior with hunger issues is a better witness than the caseworker who tried to help.

We’ll meet with the new leadership of the Department of Human Resources. As the agency that would need to budget for this program, its support is crucial.

From poetry to prose and numbers

January 21, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

In his Inaugural address today, Governor Hogan declared, “I am prepared to create an environment of trust and cooperation, where the best ideas rise to the top based upon their merit, regardless of which side of the political debate they come from.”

The proof will be in his policies.

As a freshman member of the Appropriations Committee, I learned that the budget bill is the policy document of the state.

Where you spend the public’s money establishes the state’s priorities.

Governor Hogan’s budget bill will be introduced on Friday.

The late Mario Cuomo said, “You campaign in poetry and govern in prose.”

The prose and the numbers are about to take center stage.

No secrets; Bring on the Establishment

January 20, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Nothing is a secret in Annapolis.

A lobbyist asked me today about legislation of mine that is still in the drafting stage. I have discussed the concept with a few people but have yet to introduce the bill.

The lobbyist had a friendly insight: the name of someone who might have problems with my bill.

I reached out to that person right away.

There are no secrets here; you try to avoid surprises.

—-

Two people met with me about a bill that liberals are more likely to support than conservatives.

You want to have judges and lawyers lobby your bill, I advised them.

Members of the establishment supporting a liberal bill will help you with conservatives.

From Selma to Annapolis

January 19, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

In the opening scene of “Selma,” Oprah Winfrey’s character seeks to register to vote.

Asked to recite the preamble to the US Constitution, she knows it.

How many trial judges in Alabama? Without hesitation, the correct number.

Name them, says the clerk. Silence.

Application denied.

The end result of the civil disobedience and violence that follow is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That law gives the Attorney General of the United States the authority to go to court when there is reasonable grounds to believe that an election law violation is imminent.

My legislation to give that same power to the Attorney General of Maryland passed the House of Delegates in 2013, 91-45. Forty two of the “no” votes were cast by Republicans.

My desire to pass the bill has intensified after seeing “Selma.”

What planet does he live on?

January 16, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

President Obama had lunch at Charmington’s in Remington yesterday.

It’s too hipster for my tastes. The kind of place where you can order alfalfa sprouts on mashed yeast.

The President wasn’t there for the cuisine, however. He made the case for requiring paid sick leave for workers in companies with at least 15 employees. The staff at Charmington’s has that benefit.

To provide balance, the Sun article quoted Sen. Lamar Alexander, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which will consider the President’s legislation.

Americans already have “great freedom” when it comes to work, said the Tennessee Republican, who also said that workers have latitude to choose a career and negotiate for the benefits that matter most to them.

Perhaps the Senator’s contributors and social friends can do that but not the average working man or woman.

That’s what unions are for.

No surprises, no exceptions

January 15, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Yesterday, I quoted Burke on the need for a legislator to vote his conscience.

Today, a new member asked me when to tell the chairman she would be doing just that.

“Don’t surprise anyone,” I responded. “Let the chairman know in advance.”

That principle is not limited to conscience votes.

Your word is your bond, whatever the circumstance.

Whatever our theology, whatever our ideology

January 14, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Speaker Busch asked me to give the opening prayer today to “set the tone” for the session.

That prayer follows:

On a special occasion, we say the Shehecheeyanu prayer.

At the start of a holiday,

When first seeing the Temple Mount or the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem.

Today is a special occasion.

For the handful of us who have been honored to serve in this body for 30 years or more;

For the many of us who will take the oath of office for the first time.

When Jesus preached in the Galilee, he said:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Whatever our theology, whatever our ideology, today is a special occasion; our task in the days ahead is to seek consensus, to make peace.

Our constituents have chosen us to represent them in this historic chamber of democracy.

Edmund Burke, a member of the British parliament, famously said of a legislator’s relationship with constituents:

Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. (“There were no women in the British Parliament when Burke said this,” I added.) It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Blessed art Thou, Eternal our God, Sovereign of all:

for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season.

Nervous then, Excited now

January 13, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I’m sure I was nervous 32 years ago today.

I was about to become a member of the Maryland House of Delegates.

Excited best describes my emotions today.

There are lots of interesting issues I’ll be working on this session – with the added challenge of enacting them into law with a Republican governor and a more conservative legislature.

In addition to the bills I introduce, I will be very involved in the changes Governor-elect Hogan seeks to make through regulations.

I’m the House chair of the committee that reviews regulations. First up will be chicken manure and its harmful effect on the Chesapeake Bay.

I found out today that I will also chair a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee.

Some things may take longer to learn.

I said hello to someone in the hallway and then said to myself, “He could be a new member.”

All the bills fit to print

January 12, 2015 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I have been accused of introducing bills after reading an article in the New York Times.

“Don’t Look to States for New Ideas” is the headline for an op-ed in today’s paper.

Justice Brandeis called the states the laboratories of democracy. The minimum wage and welfare reform are prominent examples.

Ideas grown in the petri dish of a state legislature will no longer survive in the partisan hot house of Capitol Hill, contends the op-ed’s author, an economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2010 to 2011.

I must confess, however. I’m already working on a bill prompted by a Times op-ed.

When welfare reform was enacted by the Congress in 1996, Ron Haskins was the Republican staff expert in the House Ways and Means Committee.

I met him then, when I served on a task force on welfare reform. He’s now at the Brookings Institution.

I read his Times op-ed, “Social Programs That Work,” two weeks ago. It discusses how several evidence-based policy initiatives were created and implemented by the Obama administration.

I’m working with Ron on legislation that would do the same for a pilot program in Maryland.

We will seek bipartisan support.

My Key Issues:

Author: delsandy