Committee Chairmen

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans have modified a 6-year-old rule change they once touted as a key to reforming the House of Representatives.In 1994, after voters handed Republicans control of Congress and Newt Gingrich was elected speaker, House Republicans set a six-year term limit for all committee chairmen, saying this was a way to limit the power of seniority, prevent chairmen from becoming entrenched and allow a younger generation of lawmakers a...

Legislation that would create a citizen board in Baltimore to hear complaints against police has stalled in the General Assembly and might die at the hands of two powerful committee chairmen, neither of whom lives in the city.The bill's supporters say Baltimore residents have long demanded a civilian board to provide an unbiased look at charges of police misconduct. The proposal won widespread support from the city's legislators, as well as the mayor, the City Council, the police commissioner and the police union.

Each winter, they come to Annapolis in droves -- public-spirited citizens eager to share their views on legislation that could make a difference.Little do they know what awaits them.Interminable waiting, arbitrary time limits, brusque chairmen, absent and inattentive members -- all are often part of the experience of testifying before the Maryland General Assembly.Treatment of witnesses can be so bad that Annapolis veterans say the two main unwritten laws of public hearings are:1. Hurry up and wait.

Halfway through their 90-day legislative session, Maryland lawmakers are hoping they can finally escape the glare of scandal and devote all their attention to the people's business.Having endured 45 days of embarrassing disclosures about the alleged ethical lapses of two key committee chairmen -- and their subsequent departures -- the General Assembly must deal quickly with an overflowing hopper of ambitious new programs.The menu includes an accelerated income-tax cut proposal, a bill to provide health insurance for children of the working poor, decisions about how the state's growing budget surplus will be used, and regulations meant to avoid another summer of fish lesions and closed rivers caused by Pfiesteria.

As Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller prepares to introduce a bill in the next week that would legalize slot machines at Maryland's horse racing tracks, other key senators are crafting fallback plans for assisting the state's racing industry.Miller said yesterday he intended to introduce legislation that would put slots at existing tracks, with the proceeds used both to bolster the racing industry and to make up for some revenue lost to a proposed income tax cut."It's the kind of bill most people would find comfort with," Miller said.

WASHINGTON -- In a neat bit of late 20th-century symbolism, House Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to take to the national airwaves Friday.His prime-time speech, marking the end of Congress' first hundred days, is in line with everything the new Republican majority is doing. It's bold. It's calculated. And it aspires to be historic.Since the dawn of the television age, the nationally broadcast address has been a presidential privilege. The "hundred days" itself has always referred to the start of an energetic new presidency, not a Congress.

WASHINGTON -- House and Senate Republicans, including the banking committee chairmen, united yesterday behind bills that would substantially scale back banking laws that provide for consumer protection and more lending in poor neighborhoods.The bills, introduced yesterday, would make more than 60 changes in federal laws. Some of the changes are broad, like an exemption for small and medium-sized banks from the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires that financial institutions lend in poor neighborhoods as well as in rich ones.

WASHINGTON -- The fast-paced Republican timetable for passage of the party's conservative revolution encountered its first major delay yesterday as House GOP leaders abandoned their promise to move for massive spending cuts by the end of January.Slippage of the central element of the Republican agenda might jeopardize the 100-day timetable for the House Republican "Contract with America." House leaders acknowledged that they are having more trouble identifying and agreeing upon the $200 billion in spending cuts needed to finance the contract than they had anticipated, marking the first serious setback for the newly powerful Republicans.

Sixty-one members of the House of Delegates have agreed to co-sponsor a sweeping gun control bill in the General Assembly, the lobby group Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse announced yesterday.The comprehensive bill would ban the sale of assault weapons, require a license to purchase handguns and limit handgun purchases to two a year.The number of sponsors -- which includes at least two committee chairmen -- is just 10 short of that needed to pass the legislation out of the 141-member House.

Call it a do-nothing session of the Maryland General Assembly. When the final gavel rings down on April 11, chances are lawmakers will have accomplished little of note. As a morose Governor Schaefer put it at a cabinet meeting last week, all legislators seem interested in is posturing so they can look good at re-election time later this year.If this were the only thing happening in the State House, it would be only mildly disturbing. But much more is taking place, little of it for the good.

Every year, lawmakers come to Annapolis brimming with ideas to make our roads just a little bit safer. Some of them are sound and logical. Some of them are well-intentioned but harebrained schemes. Most of them get a few minutes in the spotlight and then never see the light of day. Last week, a House of Delegates committee held hearings on a few of the less-publicized bills intended to promote transportation safety. Some of them had a great deal of merit and could make it into law. Others are sound proposals that are destined to be snuffed out in a late-night committee vote.

WASHINGTON - Freddie Mac's 13-member board raised the pay this year for its 11 outside directors by 20 percent to $60,000, said the government-chartered company, which has tried since 2003 to recover from a $5 billion accounting scandal. The board for the McLean, Va.-based company - the second-largest source of money for U.S. home mortgages - also raised directors' compensation per meeting to $1,500 from $1,000, the annual pay for committee chairmen to $10,000 from $5,000, and the annual pay for audit committee chairmen to $20,000 from $10,000.

WITH WILDFIRES raging across the West last summer, President Bush tried to get Congress to approve a new policy for thinning timber on federal lands, but lawmakers couldn't agree. No matter. Mr. Bush simply created new logging rules without them. Similarly, when Congress couldn't come to terms last year on removing barriers that prevented religious organizations from receiving federal grant money, the president eased the restrictions on his own. And as election-year pressure was building on Capitol Hill to limit patent protections -- and lower prices -- on popular medicines, the president interceded with a modest regulatory curb shortly before voters went to the polls last fall.

Maryland's campaign finance system operates more like a protection plan for incumbent politicians and the business interests who buy access to them, with corporations concentrating their investments on lawmakers who wield the most power in Annapolis, according to new studies that examine four years' worth of state elections data. Donations flow most heavily to a relatively small number of legislative leaders who seldom face serious election challenges, the studies found. Without competition, top lawmakers are often free to redistribute funds to their colleagues, cementing their positions of influence.

Maryland's campaign finance system operates more like a protection plan for incumbent politicians and the business interests who buy access to them, with corporations concentrating their investments on lawmakers who wield the most power in Annapolis, according to new studies that examine four years' worth of state elections data. Donations flow most heavily to a relatively small number of legislative leaders who seldom face serious election challenges, the studies found. Without competition, top lawmakers are often free to redistribute funds to their colleagues, cementing their positions of influence.

IN AN institution where change can be glacial, last week's developments in Congress were dramatic. They signal a desire by House and Senate leaders to set aside rigid partisanship in hopes of averting gridlock. The Senate's action was historic. Members approved a power-sharing arrangement that reflects the 50-50 split of November's election outcome. Democrats gain nearly equal clout with Republicans on committees, with the power to move their own bills to the floor. Majority Leader Trent Lott called it an exercise in "nonpartisanship."

WASHINGTON - The specter of Newt Gingrich is returning to Congress like the Ghost of Christmas Past. In 1994, newly installed House Speaker Gingrich shook up the seniority system and went over the heads of senior members to pick more ideologically compatible committee chairmen. At Gingrich's behest, House Republicans also imposed six-year term limits on committee chairmen. As a result, there is now a free-for-all among GOP lawmakers to move into those vacancies. "This place has now become energized," said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican from the Eastern Shore, predicting that rotating many of the committee chairs will produce "thoughtfulness and innovation."

Legislative leaders are considering making Maryland's State House safer by closing its historic entrances and forcing tourists, lobbyists, political junkies and ordinary folks to go through a metal detector on the ground floor. Metal detectors would also go up in legislative office buildings - and their side doors would be shut - under a consultant's proposal to clamp down on security at the state capitol. Only lawmakers and state employees with electronic access cards could continue to walk freely in and out of the large brick buildings that dominate downtown Annapolis.

WASHINGTON -- As Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt readily concedes, there's nothing subtle about the campaign he and his fellow Democrats are waging to wrest control of the House back from the Republicans they regard as usurpers. Their Web site is takebackthehouse.com. -- which blares the message: "6 seats to a Democratic majority!" Candidate recruitment and fund raising, intended to erase the Democrats' six-seat deficit, have dominated the party leaders' time for months. And with a sense of anticipation that is almost palpable, Gephardt and company are now daring to tempt fate by debating exactly how they will run the House after they take over.

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans have modified a 6-year-old rule change they once touted as a key to reforming the House of Representatives.In 1994, after voters handed Republicans control of Congress and Newt Gingrich was elected speaker, House Republicans set a six-year term limit for all committee chairmen, saying this was a way to limit the power of seniority, prevent chairmen from becoming entrenched and allow a younger generation of lawmakers a...