Any chance of reforming Maryland's embarrassing legislative scholarship program lies in the hands of state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. As a leader of the conference committee that will attempt to draft a compromise measure suitable to members of both the Senate and the House of Delegates, Mr. Miller is in the crucial position of shepherding a reform that could eventually abolish the 127-year-old scholarship scam. He should make the most of this opportunity.
The conference co-leader will be House Speaker Caspar R. Taylor Jr. His colleagues have willingly voted in recent years to kill the program. The graveyard of reform has been the Senate, whose members control three-fourths of the taxpayer dollars that fund the awards. (The total amount for this year is $8.5 million.) So it is Senate President Miller who has to make concessions for the cause of serious reform. He appears willing, as even the more obstinate senators seem to have realized that the benefit they derive from personally awarding the scholarships -- often to the undeserving children of politically important people -- is not worth the mounting criticism they have drawn.
Mr. Miller already has had to twist some arms this year to gain Senate approval of a bill that would have wrested some control of the awards from the senators. Under this bill, each senator would have named four appointees to a nine-person committee overseeing the grants in each senatorial district. This was a step in the right direction. However, it fell far short of the total abolition that would remove the senators from a function in which they should not be involved at all.