Joint Committee

NOW THAT the Carroll County commissioners and the Board of Education have agreed on a joint committee to plan a comprehensive performance audit of the school system, the first department to examine should be the troubled, overbudget construction operation.Members of the 10-person committee are qualified for the task, with a draft plan expected in January.While Susan Krebs argued persuasively for including a board member, preferably herself, on the committee, other members objected saying that could be seen as political interference or posturing: Carroll's five school board members are popularly elected.

A spokesman to Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller clarified this afternoon that Sen. Ulysses Currie is no longer serving on the Rules or Executive Nominations committees following a recommendation last month by the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics and vote by the full Senate. The issue arose this week because several senators were surprised that Currie appeared at the Executive Nominations panel on Monday evening and voted. Currie, a Prince George's County Democrat, was censured by the body in mid-February for failing to disclose income from a grocery chain while he lobbying on behalf of the firm to state agencies.

Conclusion of the Joint CommitteeThe Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics (Joint Committee), pursuant to the December 3, 1997 request of the Presiding Officers of the General Assembly to conduct a thorough review of recent allegations of improprieties on the part of Senator Larry Young and to investigate all aspects of the Senator's business practices as they relate to his position in the legislature, submits its report with recommendations to the president...

The General Assembly's joint ethics committee has recommended unanimously that the Senate censure Sen. Ulysses Currie, once a powerful committee chairman, for failing to disclose that he was being paid to represent a grocery chain before state agencies. In what would be the harshest action taken against a legislator since 1998, the ethics panel also urged senators to strip Currie "immediately and permanently" of all but one committee assignment and to bar him from any role in House-Senate negotiations to resolve differences over bills.

SenatorBernie FowlerDemocratMember of the Senate since 1983.Committees: Economic and Environmental Affairs, Executive Nominations Committee, JointCommittee on Legislative Ethics and Joint Committee on Chesapeake Bay Critical AreasAge: 67Profession: Self-employed businessmanHometown: Prince Frederick, Calvert CountyAnnapolis office: 210 James Building, Annapolis, 21401Phone: 841-3673DelegateGeorge W. Owings IIIDemocratMember of House since 1988.Committees: Constitutional and Administrative Law and the Joint Committee on Chesapeake Bay Critical AreasAge: 46Profession: Mortgage bankerHometown: Owings, Calvert CountyAnnapolis office: 217Lowe Building, Annapolis, 21401Phone: 841-3231

The Joint Committee concludes that Senator Young violated numerous ethical standards within the jurisdiction of the Joint Committee. Because of the seriousness, scope and consistent pattern of the violations examined above, the Joint Committee issues its recommendations for appropriate sanctions.Senator Larry Young has served in the Maryland General Assembly with legislative distinction for 24 years. In his testimony before the Joint Committee on January 6, 1998, Senator Young spoke of his educational background and stated that he is "not heavy educationally, but I attended one of the best colleges and universities of learning anywhere, the Maryland General Assembly."

"We believe full-fledged congressional hearings are in order. And the more thorough the preparation, the more responsible -- and credible -- the hearings will be."So we wrote in an editorial in April, 1993, concerning the tragic events at Waco, Texas, that winter and spring. Now the hearings are about to begin. On Wednesday, a joint committee composed of members of a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee and a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee subcommittee will start taking public testimony from witnesses.

The future of the state's Office of Sports Promotion will be determined by a joint committee of House and Senate representatives.That move was made necessary yesterday, when the full Senate passed recommendations from its Budget and Taxation Committee to cut $250,000 from the program's budget.Because the Senate legislation is different from that passed by the House, the legislation must go to the conference committee for a compromise agreement.The House previously voted to cut only $125,000 from State Games and left the OSP's remaining request for $664,000 intact.

Maryland lawmakers moved forward yesterday with an effort to undo a court decision that undercut protection of sensitive waterfront areas. They also proposed language that would toughen penalties for violations of state and local laws. The proposed legislation - reviewed by the Joint Committee on Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Critical Areas - would reverse a ruling by Maryland's highest court in favor of a wealthy landowner who built a hunting lodge and cabins on a remote Nanticoke River Island.

Marion Block Anderson,70, a peace activist who took her cause to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by crashing one of their meetings, died Dec. 7 of cancer in East Lansing, Mich. The threat of nuclear war moved Mrs. Anderson to action, said her son, Dave Anderson. In 1958, she went to the nation's capital and testified before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. On her way to a demonstration against the Vietnam War in Washington in 1970, she changed her mind and asked her taxi driver to take her to the Pentagon.

The House Judiciary Committee and the House Health and Government Operations Committee will meet jointly at 4:30 p.m. this evening to vote on Gov. Martin O'Malley's bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland. The two panels heard the bill jointly in a nearly 11 hour hearing last Friday evening. It is unclear at this point how the voting will work. Each panel could take a separate vote, or they could take one mega-vote as a joint committee. O'Malley said yesterday that he's still a few votes short of passage on the House floor, though he said that members will have to make their decisions soon.

An ethics investigation of state Sen. Ulysses S. Currie got off the ground today in Annapolis as the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics  held its first meeting of the 2012 legislative session. The committee met briefly in public before closing the meeting to deal with the Currie case and perhaps other complaints covered under confidentiality provision in state law. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had said Wednesday that the committee would take up the Currie case, which flows out of a federal bribery and extortion trial that led to the Prince George's County Democrat's acquittal last November.

WASHINGTON -- An alternative economic stimulus package picked up momentum in the Senate yesterday with new Republican support, potentially complicating the bid to pass legislation quickly to pump billions of dollars into the ailing economy. The Senate economic package - which would offer lower rebates than the House version but send them to many more Americans - won a 14-7 bipartisan nod in the Finance Committee. Three Republicans joined 11 Democrats in supporting the measure after Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member, endorsed it. The proposal could come up for debate in the Senate as soon as today as an alternative to a House plan that passed with overwhelming Republican support Tuesday.

WASHINGTON -- The "substantial" downturn in home sales has slowed the U.S. economy and "is likely to remain a drag on economic growth for a time," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told Congress yesterday. Still, Bernanke sees no recession on the horizon. The economy should "continue to expand at a moderate pace," he said, and price inflation may ease even as wages rise. "The weakness in housing and in some parts of manufacturing does not appear to have spilled over to any significant extent to other sectors," Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee, made up of Senate and House members.

Ehrlich administration officials rejected yesterday a reform proposal to merge the scattered oversight of privately run group homes into a single agency, arguing that it is better to maintain the current regulatory structure. Administration officials say they are taking firm steps to improve oversight but that consolidating the licensing and monitoring of the 500 state-funded homes in a single agency would cost too much and would be unwieldy to implement. "It is not a good idea," said S. Anthony McCann, secretary of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the agency considered the likely home for consolidating the regulatory offices.

Maryland lawmakers moved forward yesterday with an effort to undo a court decision that undercut protection of sensitive waterfront areas. They also proposed language that would toughen penalties for violations of state and local laws. The proposed legislation - reviewed by the Joint Committee on Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Critical Areas - would reverse a ruling by Maryland's highest court in favor of a wealthy landowner who built a hunting lodge and cabins on a remote Nanticoke River Island.

Marion Block Anderson,70, a peace activist who took her cause to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by crashing one of their meetings, died Dec. 7 of cancer in East Lansing, Mich. The threat of nuclear war moved Mrs. Anderson to action, said her son, Dave Anderson. In 1958, she went to the nation's capital and testified before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. On her way to a demonstration against the Vietnam War in Washington in 1970, she changed her mind and asked her taxi driver to take her to the Pentagon.

State Sen. Clarence M. Mitchell IV appeared before the General Assembly's ethics committee for almost two hours yesterday as the panel continued its inquiry into a $10,000 loan the lawmaker received through businessmen with issues before the legislature. Arthur M. Frank, Mitchell's lawyer, said the closed-door meeting went well, but he did not give specifics about the senator's testimony. "He went voluntarily," Frank said. "It wasn't a subpoena. Senator Mitchell went in to give them all the information he had on these issues."