Senators come together around handful of bipartisan bills
Priorities include promoting social studies education, protecting family farms
by Sarah Breitenbach, Staff Writer, Gazette.Net, posted on Friday, January 27, 2012
ANNAPOLIS — Republican and Democratic senators gathered Thursday morning to prove that they can at least agree on some things.
Members of both parties told reporters that they would back bills to reinforce social studies education, exempt family farms from state estate taxes, protect children from identity theft, create an income tax credit for workers unable to afford the cost of obtaining a security clearance and extend the availability of a scholarship for veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
While none of the measures announced at the first-time event are particularly controversial, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. said lawmakers wanted to show that they could accomplish common goals.
The House of Delegates does not have a similar event planned, but several delegates have agreed to sponsor the bills addressed by the senators, said Alexandra Hughes, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis.
“We’re coming together as best we can,” Miller (D-Dist. 27) of Chesapeake Beach said. “We’re not going to be able to agree on everything, but things we can agree upon, we’re going to bring forward and pass and hope to solve some of our problems in our state, especially in terms of creating jobs, providing education and balancing the budget.”
The event probably doesn’t mean much politically, said Donald F.Norris, chairman of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and director for the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research.
“Maybe they, on the face of it, just want to look good,” Norris said. “The reality is on all substantive issues, the parties are miles apart.”
Lawmakers from both parties spoke about the need to focus education curriculum on social studies and civics.
Motivated by the elimination of a standardized high school government test by the state Department of Education last year, the legislation would require public school systems be held accountable for educating students in social studies, lawmakers said.
Miller acknowledged that returning the test, which was a graduation requirement, to classrooms was unlikely, but the bill would require some kind of assessment at the elementary, middle and high school levels.
“(The bill) encourages folks to know about their government, and as much as I think it’s important for science and language and reading and math, if you don’t understand how your government works, if you don’t understand the rights that you have as citizens, it’s really hard to have a free republic,” said Sen. Allan H. Kittleman (R-Dist. 9) of West Friendship.
Senators and potential congressional rivals Robert J. Garagiola (D-Dist. 15) of Germantown and David R. Brinkley (R-Dist. 4) of New Market both spoke to reporters about eliminating estate taxes for people who inherit family farms.
They said their districts struggle with the issue because for many landowners, selling land to developers is more cost effective than paying estate taxes to keep farming.
The legislation, which was sponsored by Sen. Ronald N. Young (D-Dist. 3) of Frederick and Del. Kathryn L. Afzali (R-Dist. 4A) of Middletown last year before being shelved in the committee process, would eliminate taxes on family farms that are inherited and worth less than $5 million, as long as descendants agreed to maintain the land for agricultural use.
Taxes on properties worth more will be reduced from 16 percent to 5 percent, lawmakers said.
Afzali already has introduced a version of the bill in the House of Delegates, and Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) planned to include a similar bill as part of his legislative package.
“The best farm preservation program we can have is anything that enables the farm to be profitable,” Brinkley said. “Some of the returns are risky at best and sometimes then even marginal, but it’s a lifestyle choice and anything we can do to enable the orderly transition of the family farm to later generations is going to improve farming.”
Lawmakers also are planning to pass a bill that would allow parents to create a credit report for their child to prevent the opening of fraudulent accounts with the child’s information and to safeguard against the theft of a minor’s identity or Social Security number.
Del. Craig J. Zucker (D-Dist. 14) of Brookeville, who spoke on behalf of 30 House colleagues who have co-sponsored the bill, said 140,000 children become victims of identity theft annually.
“This is an opportunity for us to let our children in the state of Maryland start with a clean slate to ensure they have every shot of being successful,” Zucker said.
Two other pieces of legislation discussed Thursday would create an income tax credit worth up to $3,000 to offset the cost of security clearances for people who are qualified for work with federal contractors and extend a scholarship program for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families, which was scheduled to expire in June.
sbreitenbach@gazette.net
