Legislators

There is no justifiable reason for the General Assembly's extended session that began yesterday. At $20,000 per day, this is a waste of tax dollars. It boggles the mind that after 90 days in session -- and more than six months studying in detail tax and spending options -- senators and delegates still can't agree on how to balance the state's $12.5 billion budget. The legislators' disgraceful performance will not be forgotten by voters.What do legislators think they were elected to do? Party for 90 days on the taxpayer?

Many important legislative and consumer issues involving home mortgages have been reported on over the past several months, and it is time to revisit a few of them.In February, it was reported that Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, was expected to introduce a bill that would allow first-time buyers or their parents to make penalty-free withdrawals from their retirement accounts to buy a house.Mr. Bentsen did introduce the legislation a few weeks later, and an identical bill was introduced in the House of Representatives.

Wednesday night was legislative appreciation night at the Orioles' first night game, and most of the General Assembly was there.But unless fans attending the game had taken in the day's newspapers or other media, chances are they didn't know their elected leaders were present.Reason? A legislative leader asked the Orioles not to make any announcement. And the ballclub didn't, either by loudspeaker or on its computerized, center field scoreboard -- which, as usual, did note the presence of many other special groups.

The General Assembly's top leaders named a veteran legislative staff member to the newly created position of ethics counsel yesterday, giving lawmakers a full-time lawyer to help them steer clear of controversy.Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. appointed William G. Somerville special counsel to the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics after a task force recommended the creation of the position.For the past year, Somerville has served as counsel to the task force, which was headed by U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a 3rd District Democrat.

After years of political stalemate in Annapolis, the most powerful supporter of the state legislature's one-of-a-kind scholarship program says he will back a bill next year to eventually eliminate it.While details remain hazy, Sen. President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. said he expects legislation that would eliminate the program within four years or phase it out over the same time period. The pool of scholarship funds -- $7.9 million this year -- might then be allocated by the apolitical state scholarship administration or at the community level, he said.

Have legislative bodies throughout the land taken a simultaneous tumble from the turnip wagon? Has every elected official in America been born again in the church of the strictly naive?One is moved to ask because:* Two years after it was introduced in city health clinics, Baltimore City Council members have discovered the presence of Norplant and they want to know what is going on!* The U.S. Congress has learned that some wealthy Americans hire illegal aliens, pay them very low wages and don't pay their Social Security taxes.

CONOWINGO -- A suddenly conciliatory Gov. William Donald Schaefer said yesterday that he was willing to work with legislators to set up an advisory committee on redistricting that both sides can live with.Governor Schaefer, appearing at the dedication of a fish lift at the hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna River here, said he would go along with a legislative proposal to expand his proposed seven-member advisory panel to nine members, if that was what legislators wanted.House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell Jr., D-Kent, said legislators want the redistricting panel increased to nine members, or dropped to five, so that the legislative and executive branches each have the same number of representatives -- either two or four.

State legislators who helped create Baltimore's police Civilian Review Board said yesterday that they intend to amend the legislation to shorten the term of the board's first members from three years to six months. The change would counter City Council's approval Monday of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's seven nominations to the review board, created this year to monitor police misconduct.The state legislators who helped get the measure passed in Annapolis complained that Schmoke failed to open the appointment process to all residents and that three of his nominees were recommended by the police.

We owe readers an apology.In exercising our First Amendment rights to criticize editorially the performance of the General Assembly during its last session, we offended some legislators. In retribution, the assembly has slapped you, our readers, with a 5 percent tax on this and other newspapers.Toward the end of the session, legislators pointedly said they intended to take punitive action against the press for its drumfire of criticism. "You'll pay for this," was the message.Sadly, but more accurately, it is our readers who are paying, effective last Friday.

California's congressionalized legislature is struggling to repel the attack on its operations and prerogatives imposed by a popular initiative passed last fall.Led by the Assembly speaker, Willie Brown, and the Senate president, David Roberti, the legislature has appealed to the California Supreme Court to strike down the initiative, Proposition 140, which limits legislators to two or three terms, revokes their pensions and slashes their staffs by some 40 percent.The legislature claims the restrictions on terms and the cutbacks in staff and operating budgets are so severe they imperil its capacity to carry on as a co-equal branch of government.