With the 2016 General Assembly session approaching, the East County Times reached out to members of the Baltimore County state delegation to discuss their plans and priorities.
For Delegate Bob Long, a Republican returning to Annapolis for his second year, the main priority is home ownership.
“We are going to work in the Baltimore County delegation to help promote homeownership with tax incentives to help homeowners revitalize their homes,” he said. Long said he plans to introduce a bill about the homeowners’ tax credit and create a program to provide tax breaks for homeowners who are fixing up or improving their houses and property.
He said the overall state of the economy is an important factor in people’s decision to buy a home, so he will focus on lowering taxes and attracting good-paying jobs to the area.
“I know that sounds like a campaign stump speech, but it’s important. If people have good jobs they can afford to buy a home,” he explained.
Long also noted that his job is not just about proposing his own legislation, but also about voting on bills proposed by others.
“I’m down there to fight bad bills and ensure they don’t get passed, or do what I can to make a bad bill better,” he said.
Long also said he wants to work to address the issue of abandoned boats, as well as re-introduce legislation from last session to create a tax-free shopping week for college students and their families to purchase textbooks.
Now a returning delegate, Long says that the relationships he built last session will help him to be more effective this time around.
“We’ve built a mutual respect,” he said. “Your word means everything in Annapolis and people know my character now. They know they can county on me and trust me.”
Long, along with his fellow District 6 representatives, plans to hold a town hall meeting to discuss more of their plans and goals for the upcoming session. It is scheduled to take place on Monday, Jan. 4, from 6 - 8:30 p.m. at the North Point Library.
In District 7, the full slate of veteran lawmakers will return in January, among them Senator J. B. Jennings, (R), who also serves as the Minority Leader for the legislature’s upper chamber.
“As Minority Leader a lot of my concern is going to be working with Governor Hogan to get his agenda passed, to promote and protect his office and his agenda,” Jennings said.
He predicts that the governor’s proposals will include more tax reductions and reviews of state agencies, which fall under the General Assembly’s purview.
“We’re going to try to clean up different state agencies and be a little more efficient on the state level,” he said.
Jennings also said he will be working to prevent the legislature and its Democratic leaders from overreaching its powers in its effort to fight the governor.
Jennings’s individual priorities outside of his role as leader will deal mainly with 2nd Amendment rights and other gun issues, he revealed.
He plans to push for the passage of his bill allowing National Guard soldiers to carry their guns on base. As reported in the East County Times in August, the bill was pre-filed in response to the Chattanooga, Tenn., attack on armed forces recruiting centers on July 16.
“We want our men and women in uniform to be safe,” Jennings said.
Another bill would make the purchase of gun safety equipment like gun locks and gun safes tax-exempt as an incentive for gun owners to use those items and increase safety.
Overall, Jennings said he is confident in the governor’s agenda and looking forward to the session.
“It’s gonna be fun, like every other session,” he declared.
Another longtime Republican legislator, Del. John Cluster from District 8, disagreed with that assessement.
“I believe it’s gonna be ugly,” he said. “I was there during the Ehrlich days, it seems like it’s gonna be like that again. [The Democrats] are going to go after the governor any way they can.”
Cluster feels that the biggest point of contention will be the projected budget surplus. “The first thing Democrats want to do is spend it. But the governor wants to put that money away to deal with the structural deficit in years to come.”
In addition to gearing up to support Governor Hogan in that fight, Cluster has drafted several bills he plans to introduce during the session. He is working with Long and the rest of the county delegation on the issue of foreclosures, specifically the fact that many foreclosed houses fall into disrepair and negatively impact the neighborhoods they are in.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to at least make them presentable,” he said. The delegation is looking to other states to see what legislative solutions have worked, whether that it by going after the banks or the prior homeowners.
His other major priority is safety and the security of law enforcement officers state-wide, Cluster said.
“We need to protect out law enforcement officers,” he asserted. “Everyone seems to be coming down on them, and we need to help protect our Law Enforcement Officer’s Bill of Rights.”
Cluster wants to add several additional protections, including a stipulation that all internal investigations be completed within 90 days and a provision called Final Order, which states that a chief or commissioner cannot override the decision of the Trial Board.
“Why even have a trial board is the chief can go and change its decision?” he opined.
Cluster also plans to continue his push to put school resource officers, who are trained police officers with full powers, in every school in the state.
“With all the gun violence perpetrated in schools, it’s important to have a police officer there,” he said.
And a fifth provision that Cluster will propose is an animal rights bill that would allow a citizen who sees an animal locked in a car, in visible distress, to do whatever they need to to free that animal without fear of any civil or criminal charges.
The General Assembly session officially convenes at noon on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016.
