Maryland Legislators

WASHINGTON -- Motorists across the nation would pay another nickel per gallon in federal gasoline taxes to underwrite an ambitious five-year, $153 billion transportation bill introduced by House leaders yesterday.But Maryland commuters might see little return on their extra investment.The House version of the Surface Transportation Act, which has bipartisan support, would double current federal spending on transportation. But state officials say that, while Maryland received $1.75 billion in federal highway and transit aid over the past five years, the House bill would provide only $1.7 billion over the next five.

While the recently released Maryland comptroller's report on direct shipment of wine is both welcomed and needed, it contains some highly controversial conclusions, the most important of which is that Maryland consumers ought not be allowed to purchase wine from out-of-state wine stores. The report is an important and substantial step in clearing the air and injecting a strong set of facts into what has been a long and contentious debate over consumer access to the wine market. However, it must be noted that the report's conclusion that Marylanders be deprived of access to out-of-state wine stores, as well as the published comments by Comptroller Peter Franchot that this kind of prohibition is a good thing, can only be described as anti-consumer, discriminatory and inconsistent with the results of the comptroller's survey.

Dwyer's view of Islam betrays ugly stereotypes Sun columnist Michael Olesker is to be commended for unmasking Republican Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr.'s distribution of his nephew's now-famous juvenile rant which charged that Islam is a "militaristic and violent" religion to fellow Maryland legislators ("Delegate gets holidays rolling with ill-thought slap at Islam," April 6). Mr. Dwyer appears to hold stereotypes espoused by Christian radicals who elevate themselves by marginalizing and squashing others.

Now and then, Maryland legislators go off on their own and run the show. Over the last decade or two, mini-revolts have been triggered by various crises: a failing savings and loan industry and public employee pension reform, for example. Both involved bread-and-butter issues and powerful groups of votes. This year, it was rapidly rising energy prices that drew lawmakers to fix something they had helped to create by deregulating electricity prices. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. suffered the political equivalent of a brownout.

Maryland's speeders can rest easy another year. Thanks to the tender concern of the Maryland General Assembly, they are free to race through your neighborhoods and through highway work zones without fear of being nailed by speed cameras. Gov. Martin O'Malley's modest gesture toward highway safety passed both chambers but expired when the House and Senate couldn't resolve their differences. The near-passage of the bill could be taken as a signal that the governor should try again next year.

At midnight last Monday, Maryland legislators said goodbye to The Year of the Mogul.In every year, the General Assembly is a jamboree of competing commercial and professional interests. Banks, insurance companies, utilities, the real estate industry, doctors, lawyers, acupuncturists, cosmetologists and newspaper publishers trundle into Annapolis with just the right words and commas to make the statutes read to their liking.The stakes for individual businessmen are often immense,involving not just turf but taxpayer's money, often spent in the name of economic development, present and future, quantifiable and intangible.

ANNAPOLIS -- Even as they work to conclude their busines here tomorrow at midnight, Maryland legislators are bracing for a flurry of post-session vetoes from Gov. William Donald Schaefer and preparing for an unprecedented special session called by the Assembly to override them.Under a provision of the Maryland Constitution adopted in the 1970s, the General Assembly may reconvene without the governor's approval if two-thirds of its members sign a petition. If such a meeting were called, it would be the first in Maryland's history, according to Robert Zarnoch, an assistant state attorney general, who was asked to research the issue.

Legislators may raise non-budget issues Gov. Martin O'Malley has called a special session of the General Assembly to focus on passing a large legislative package to close a $1.7 billion budget gap. But legislators can have minds of their own. Maryland legislators have filed requests for bills unrelated to the budget to be drafted for consideration during the special session - scheduled to begin Oct. 29 - which O'Malley, a Democrat, and legislative leaders...

Maryland legislators running for governor, Congress or local government offices next year have been exempted from a 5-year-old policy that prohibits General Assembly members from holding political fund-raisers during the coming 90-day General Assembly session.In a Dec. 7 letter, state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and Del. Casper R. Taylor Jr., who is expected to be chosen speaker of the House in January, said they decided on the exemption because "many members . . . would face distinct disadvantages if they were prohibited from fund raising during the 1994 session."

When John Stierhoff retired this month as top aide to the president of the Maryland Senate, legislators gave him a standing ovation. Two hours later, he left the State House with a double Rolodex the size of a toolbox -- filled with contacts he developed during his career in government.Then he walked two blocks to his new law firm, Dukes Evans Rozner Brown & Stierhoff, to begin his job as a lobbyist. Among his duties: trying to influence many of the legislators who had just given him such a rousing send-off.