It's a pretty exciting time to be a Marylander. Cal Ripken Jr. is headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Ravens are headed to the playoffs, and our tax-and-spend politicians are headed to Annapolis.
Yes, it's General Assembly season -- a time for back-stabbing, pork-barreling, and constituency-screwing. And judging by past elections, we Marylanders wouldn't have it any other way.
But it's also a time of delusional hope, for there's always a chance that one of our elected officials will do something purposeful and worthwhile and that it won't backfire.
I have just a few hopes for this year's session. First, I would like to see Maryland finally pass a law like the one proposed by Sen. Brian Frosh that would allow consumers to put a freeze on their credit reports before they fall victim to identity theft.
Now would also be a good time to legalize slots here in Maryland. Why should my husband and I have to leave the state to lose our money to silly machines? It's really not so different than the Maryland Lottery or those slot machines that aren't really slot machines at bingo parlors. Hopefully without the partisan name-calling we can actually make some progress on the slots issue this session.
I would also like to see the establishment of some agency responsible for the oversight of condominium and homeowner's associations. While I know this is very unlikely and I'm generally against bigger government anyway, it really is a needed addition. The Task Force on Common Ownership Communities is expected to report back this year so we'll have to wait and see where that takes us.
And that brings me to my most important wish for this year. Special note to legislators: Please, please, please don't pass any new laws unless you have some means of enacting and enforcing them. Otherwise the bill becomes nothing more than one of our other unenforced laws and will be treated as a joke.
Oh, yeah, and please don't raise taxes.
So as we sit back and hold onto our wallets through the next three months of the session, I can only hold my breath and hope for the best. It'll all be over soon enough.
Go Ravens!
1 comment:
big government, little government.....same stuff, different dimensions. Our city passed new legislation to send the tax bills out 4 times/year instead of once, but they didn't include the cost of postage. As a result, the bills didn't go out, but the "late payment" bills did. Evidently, the appeals process is "backed up"......go figure.
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