Assembly Session

The Sun will offer weekly hearing schedules for the 1998 General Assembly session through SunFax. You must have a fax machine to use this service.If your fax machine can answer the phone at any time, you may have schedules delivered automatically from The Sun's free broadcast service. To sign up, call 410-783-1800 and enter code 6105 when the attendant answers. If you signed up last year, you must call this year to reconfirm.You can also retrieve hearing schedules by calling directly from a fax machine.

The Sun will offer weekly hearing schedules for the 1998 General Assembly session through SunFax. You must have a fax machine to use this service.If your fax machine can answer the phone at any time, you may have schedules delivered automatically by subscribing to The Sun's free broadcast service. To sign up, call 410-783-1800 and enter code 6105 when the attendant answers. If you subscribed last year, you must call this year to reconfirm.You can also retrieve hearing schedules by calling directly from a fax machine.

The Sun will offer weekly hearing schedules for the 1998 General Assembly session through SunFax. You must have a fax machine to use this service.If your fax machine can answer the phone at any time, you may have schedules delivered automatically from The Sun's free broadcast service. To sign up, call 410-783-1800 and enter code 6105 when the attendant answers. If you signed up last year, you must call this year to reconfirm.You can also retrieve hearing schedules by calling directly from a fax machine.

FORGET ABOUT THAT somnolent General Assembly session of 1995. The new year brings a revived legislature and a second-year governor itching to tackle hot-button issues. There will be plenty of loud controversies starting Wednesday, when the Assembly opens its 90-day session in the Annapolis State House.With a 40 percent turnover in membership last year, the Maryland legislature resembled a giant political science classroom on Lawmaking 101. But now that those freshmen have a session under their belt, they are eager to do some serious legislating.

County Executive John G. Gary told Anne Arundel legislators last night that he would almost certainly join Montgomery County in a future lawsuit to block Gov. Parris N. Glendening from sending $254 million to Baltimore schools."

There's no doubt the shining moment in this year's General Assembly session, which ends this evening, took place last Thursday when lawmakers enacted far-reaching health-care legislation designed to broaden access to medical insurance and force down the soaring cost of medical treatment. It was a monumental achievement.Doubts still loom large over the health-care measure, though. Will it prove effective in extending affordable coverage to the 600,000 uninsured Marylanders? Will it act to rein-in doctors' fees?

THE DISTANT rumble you heard was not the dome poppin off the State House but a sigh of relief that the 1993 General Assembly session is mercifully over and the memory of it is already a fading flicker.After two years of budget-busting deficits and bipartisan snarling, this was supposed to be the year of the session that could. Instead, it almost turned out to be the session that didn't. It was, in a word, a quirky get-together at best.Oh, there were some record-book successes the scorekeepers will point to -- big deals such as health care reform, the $150 million Convention Center expansion, the clean-car bill and the important lesson of learning to live within our limits at the same time the Assembly reallocated the state's financial resources.

You should excuse Gov. William Donald Schaefer if he gloats a little these days, but he's got justifiable reasons. He has just completed his best General Assembly session in at least three years. Nearly all his major requests won approval. State lawmakers suddenly found the governor cooperative and eager to meet them halfway. His strategy paid off handsomely."Partners in Prevention" sounded the theme for the 1993 Schaefer agenda. His $12.7 billion budget contained numerous initiatives to promote preventive health programs, preventive school dropout programs and preventive delinquent juvenile programs.

The General Assembly did not meet during the weekend, th 26th and 27th days of the session.Today1 p.m.: Senate Budget and Taxation Committee receives fiscal briefing on the State Reserve Fund, public debt, Office on Aging, state treasurer and Baltimore Regional Council of Governments, Room 100, Senate Office Building.2 p.m.: House Appropriations subcommittees sponsor budget hearings on higher education issues, assessments and taxation, and the Patuxent Institution, rooms 130, 406 and 431 respectively, House Office Building.

Noon -- 1991 General Assembly convenes, House and Senate chambers.1 p.m. -- House Environmental Matters Committee receives briefings on agricultural, natural resources, farm and Chesapeake Bay issues, Room 160, House Office Building.There are 89 days remaining in the 1991 General Assembly session.

Maryland's powerful liquor lobby is on track to achieve virtually all of its legislative priorities during this General Assembly session - despite opposition from the attorney general, the comptroller, public health advocates and hundreds of consumers. Legislators shot down Internet wine sales, which are legal in most of the country. They are poised to expand the definition of beer to include such items as Jack Daniel's Country Cocktail, allowing wider distribution and lower taxes for such drinks.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has spent much of his first year in office getting his way. With the support of key lawmakers in November's special legislative session, he dispensed with two issues that had become perennial bogeymen for their ability to deadlock the General Assembly: a budget imbalance that eventually exceeded $1 billion and the question of legalizing slot machine gambling. But he spent a great deal of political capital in the process. And while supporters and even critics, albeit grudgingly, acknowledge his success, on the eve of another Assembly session, many wonder whether the Democrat can persuade lawmakers to follow his lead this year and beyond.

Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr., the outspoken conservative known for his flamethrower remarks on gay marriage, immigration, abortion and other causes of the right, got a rare smattering of applause from Democrats when he stood on the House floor this year and croaked out an apology for having lost his voice. The Anne Arundel Republican was referring to a case of actual laryngitis, but he and the other members of his party on the front lines in a nasty four-year partisan war in Annapolis lost their voices this year in a more fundamental way as well.

After more than two years of waiting, construction along one of the major thoroughfares into Annapolis is set to wrap up next week in time to welcome back the General Assembly, but frustration from local merchants is tempering any fanfare. Bladen Street, closed for more than 2 1/2 years, opened its northbound lanes last week, and southbound traffic can pass through starting Wednesday. By that same day - the start of the annual General Assembly session - the $20 million Calvert Street Parking Garage at Calvert and Bladen streets will be open to state workers.

Debate during next week's planned special session of the General Assembly could expand beyond electricity rates to include tougher penalties on sex offenders. House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller have said they would be willing to take up a sex-offender measure that was nearly approved during the regular Assembly session that ended in April, as long as it doesn't interfere with crafting a BGE rate-relief plan. "I think we should do it," Busch said.

The city of Baltimore's preliminary victory in a lawsuit against the state Public Service Commission has added momentum to the push for a special session of the General Assembly to deal with utility issues, though some caution that neither the suit nor legislation would provide immediate relief from pending 72 percent BGE electric rate increases. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said the lawsuit could reveal information kept private by BGE's parent company, Constellation Energy, including executive salary plans and details of its pending merger with Florida-based FPL Group Inc. The disclosures, he said, could help build public support for the legislature to take action.

Democratic legislative leaders - and a key Republican - renewed calls yesterday to throw out the members of the Public Service Commission during a special session of the General Assembly after the regulatory agency voted to approve an electric rate deferral plan backed by the governor. Lawmakers suggested that the commission's late-night vote Thursday did little to inspire public confidence and provided the most recent example of why commissioners deserved to be stripped of their offices.

Top leaders in Annapolis promised yesterday to find a way to soften the 72 percent rate increase coming for BGE customers, despite the failure of a compromise plan in the final minutes of the General Assembly session. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. edged away from his call for an immediate special session to handle utility issues and said an agreement with officials of BGE's parent company, Constellation Energy Group, is possible without General Assembly authorization. "In a sense, we now have a more clear path to what we need to do," the governor said.

With dozens of uniformed correctional officers providing a backdrop, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. called on the General Assembly yesterday to reject recommendations to cut $35 million from his proposed budget for prisons, inmate rehabilitation and juvenile services. "Public safety is a target in Annapolis as we speak," Ehrlich said during a news conference at a state-run prison in downtown Baltimore. He urged correctional officers to lobby legislators to reject budget cuts recommended by legislative budget analysts.

NATIONAL Prescription for clarity Saturday Planting ahead Midwinter is the perfect time to be thinking about - and starting - your spring garden. IN GO TODAY ONLINE TODAY PICKS IN PLAYOFFS Baltimore Sun sports reporter Ken Murray discuss his selections in a podcast at: www.baltimoresun.com/murraynfl GENERAL ASSEMBLY For news and updates from the Maryland General Assembly session, go to: www.baltimoresun.com/politics