Tobacco Tax

This year's General Assembly session ends tomorrow at midnight. Before the 188 senators and delegates return to their redrawn districts and start campaigning for re-election, they had better attend to business. Four major items ought to be resolved before these legislators leave Annapolis.Welfare reform. This could easily prove the most divisive issue of the final day. Two controversial provisions have inflamed passions: a cap on welfare payments based on family size and a less restrictive abortion policy for poor women on Medicaid.

Anti-smoking groups launched a State House lobbying effort yesterday to win a 70-cent per pack increase in the state's tax on cigarettes next year, a move that would give Maryland the highest such tax in the nation. Advocates said the increase, which would be the second in three years, would drive down smoking rates and raise an estimated $200 million in annual revenue. Gov. Parris N. Glendening proposed a $1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax in 1999 but was able to win only a 30-cent boost from the General Assembly, pushing the state tax to 66 cents a pack.

Lawmakers ignore menace of alcoholWhy are our politicians continuing to press for tougher legislation and higher taxes on tobacco products while ignoring the dangers of alcohol? Nicotine may be an addictive drug, but alcohol can be a mind-altering addictive drug.I have never heard of anyone being maimed or killed by a driver smoking cigarettes before getting behind the wheel. I have not heard of a case where someone was hurt or killed during a smoking rage. Has there been any case of spousal abuse caused by smoking?

Free of the acrimony that colored the budget-cutting and tax debates of the past couple of years, the Maryland General Assembly approved last night an election-year spending plan loaded with millions of dollars for public schools and the first general pay raise for state workers in three years.The Senate passed the budget 36-10 and sent it to the House of Delegates, which gave it final approval, 118-19.Lawmakers managed to put together the $13.3 billion budget for the year that begins July 1 without tying it to any new taxes or fees.

In a rare personal appeal to legislators, Gov. William Donald Schaefer asked a Senate committee yesterday to clamp down on casino nights, bingo parlors, tip jars, slot machines and other operations that make up Maryland's multimillion-dollar legal gambling industry.Mr. Schaefer visited the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee ZTC in an attempt to save a proposal to set up a state commission to license and oversee most forms of charitable gambling, as well as commercial bingo parlors."There is no question there is a problem," the governor told the committee, hoping to sway Sen. Walter M. Baker, the powerful Eastern Shore lawmaker who chairs the committee and opposes the gambling commission bill.

Snuffing out the hopes of health advocates, a Senate committee rejected legislation yesterday that would have increased the state's tax on cigarettes and created Maryland's first tax on smokeless tobacco products and cigars.The vote by the Budget and Taxation Committee effectively ends debate on the tobacco tax issue for the remainder of the General Assembly's 90-day session, lawmakers said.By the time the panel met to vote on a bill to raise the state's 36-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes by $1.50, proponents knew that the proposal had no chance of passage.

WHEN THE GREAT legislative smoking war ended dramatically one month ago with a 30-cents-a-pack tax increase, generals on both sides conceded a certain battle fatigue, a weariness sufficient to keep them off the field for a year.Sen. Christopher Van Hollen Jr., a Montgomery Democrat who leads the Senate tax proponents, said he would probably do some regrouping next year. Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who used the power of pork in his failed effort to win votes for a $1-a-pack tax increase proposal, might be inclined to rest a year as well.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer carried his campaign for a cigarette tax increase to a key legislative panel yesterday in an effort to breathe life into an initiative gasping for air.The governor said that his proposed 25-cents-a-pack tax boost would greatly reduce cigarette smoking, thus curtailing health risks, while providing $70 million for a variety of popular programs.If the increase is enacted, Maryland's tax would jump to 61 cents, giving the state the second highest levy in the nation, trailing only the 65 cents imposed by the District of Columbia.

House acts, Senate apt to balk at closing tax loophole The Maryland House of Delegates passed legislation yesterday aimed at ending what Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve called the "most gigantic tax loophole on the books," referring to a strategy mostly used by big-ticket real estate developers that critics say costs the state tens of millions of dollars. But Senate President Thomas Mike V. Miller said the measure is not likely to win passage in his chamber this year, and more likely would be considered for a broader plan to close a projected $1.5 billion shortfall next year.

The prospect that the federal government could go over the so-called "fiscal cliff" is hanging over many of the decisions that must be made on Maryland's tax and spending plans, the leaders of the General Assembly said after meeting Thursday with Gov. Martin O'Malley. House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller conferred for almost an hour with O'Malley in the governor's office in what is likely to be one of several  meetings before the General Assembly convenes for its 2013 session Jan. 9. "We had a very good conversation.