Maryland lawmakers, cautious throughout this election year session, played it safe to the end last night, preparing to pass a bill to make it tougher on violent criminals but threatening to kill or water down virtually every other important measure that might offend one interest group or another.
Showing no mercy for Gov. William Donald Schaefer in his final legislative session, the lawmakers killed or appeared ready to kill three of his major proposals: bills to regulate gambling, to raise the tax on cigarettes, and to speed up the death penalty appeals process.
Two other administration bills -- a welfare reform proposal and another to limit the liability of landlords in lead-paint poisoning suits in exchange for their renovation of older rental units -- were still in limbo, being picked apart by opponents as the session steadily ticked toward a midnight adjournment.
Midway in their final 14-hour day, House and Senate conferees reached agreement on a legislation that would require violent offenders to serve at least half of their sentence before they could be paroled, rather than the current one-fourth. State officials have said about 500 of Maryland's 20,000 inmates would remain in prison longer.
The measure -- still awaiting a final vote late last night -- also would attempt to make Maryland's parole commissioners accountable for their decisions by forcing them to open parole hearings if requested by the victim.
The legislation also would create a new two-time-loser law that would require criminals to receive a minimum mandatory 10-year sentence on their second conviction for a violent crime.
The changes would be expected to add an estimated $29 million a year to state prison costs, and require construction of a $92 million prison by 1998. But Sen. Nancy L. Murphy, the Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the state has little choice. "I think the public wants protection from crime and they don't mind paying for it."
The fate of the governor's welfare-reform bill also was in question in the session's final hours. Lawmakers were trying to determine they could delete a contentious, bill-threatening provision that would penalize welfare mothers who have additional children while on public assistance and still put into place a meaningful reform program. Tied to the so-called family cap was a move to lift restrictions on when the state's Medicaid program may pay for abortions for poor women.
"It's a deadlock right now," one of the conferees, Sen. James C. Simpson, a Charles Democrat, said last night.
Earlier in the day, the six negotiators agreed to beef up job training and family-assistance provisions to assist women participating in a pilot program that would require them to find work or perform community service after 18 months on the rolls.
Although the governor said last week that the bill was "not effective" without the cap on grants to recipients who have more children, key House and Senate members insist that a number of other provisions, including the proposed rules regarding work, would make passage of the measure an important achievement.
The pilot program, which would affect selected applicants in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties, also includes provisions to encourage two-parent families and to permit a larger accumulation of assets than normally permitted welfare recipients.
Even without the cap, Mr. Schaefer's bill was similar to legislation President Clinton has promised to deliver to Congress this spring in that it would expand job training for persons on welfare and require those still unemployed after a time to join a work program.
Maryland would thus be testing in three jurisdictions ideas that the president is looking to impose nationally.
Legislation to establish a statewide commission to license and regulate slot machines, tip jars, casino nights and other forms of legal gambling by veterans groups, fraternal clubs and volunteer fire companies was defeated by the Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee yesterday morning before the full House and Senate had even convened.
Two other measures, one to repeal the General Assembly's scandal-tinged legislative scholarship program and the other to require lobbyists with multiple clients to provide greater disclosure of the meals and gifts they lavish on lawmakers, died without ever coming up for a vote in the Senate's Economic and Environmental Affairs Committee.
The tax proposal linking the state-and-federal cigarette taxes, a substitute for Mr. Schaefer's original 25-cents-a-pack tax increase, was opposed by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and by other legislators who wanted no part of raising taxes in a year in which they will later meet voters at the polls.
A bill heavily lobbied by doctors that would require health-maintenance organizations to pay part of the cost for patients who seek medical care outside of their HMO network also appeared headed for defeat last night.
A passionate mini-filibuster by Sen. Decatur W. Trotter derailed the governor's proposal to speed up appeals in death penalty cases.
The Prince George's Democrat, who opposes capital punishment because it is used disproportionately against blacks, held the floor for more than an hour -- an eternity on the final day -- quoting verses from the Bible and speaking of righteousness.
Even as so many key pieces of legislation ran into trouble, lawmakers found time to pass bills making square dancing the state's official folk dance and to make the diamondback terrapin the official mascot of the University of Maryland.
They also debated whether one day next year or one day every year should be set aside to honor a retiring state senator from Calvert County, Bernie Fowler.
The final night of the term ended a session in which the General Assembly enacted no new taxes or fees, gave state employees their first pay raise in three years, banned a list of 18 assault pistols, and set aside more than $100 million to build schools.
For the first two-thirds of this year's 90-day session, it seemed as if the lawmakers would never get to such issues.
All their attention was being devoted to one topic: How to make peace between Governor Schaefer, who was still trying to lure a National Football League team to Baltimore, and Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, who was threatening the governor's plans by trying to move his NFL team to Laurel.
The controversy pitted Washington area lawmakers against those from Baltimore, and for two months the dispute seemed to paralyze the General Assembly. Finally, on March 9, they struck a compromise. The governor agreed to welcome the Redskins to Laurel (although the words never passed his lips), and legislative leaders agreed to give Mr. Schaefer the rest of his final year in office to find a team for Baltimore.
More important politically, the deal put off until sometime after this fall's elections the necessity for legislators to decide whether additional taxpayers' money should be used to help either stadium project.
Freshman House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr., who was instrumental in forging the compromise, said that without it the session "would have gone downhill rapidly. The stakes were so big to both power bases of this state."
That out of the way, lawmakers turned their attention to an array of big issues piling up in House and Senate committees.
Maryland's tireless, 72-year-old governor, in his eighth and final year in office, refused to stand by and let the General Assembly drift through the last year of the four-year term without taking a few hard votes.
"Our work is not finished," he had reminded the members in his January State of the State address. He pressed lawmakers once again to take up the divisive issue of gun control.
He put the controversial welfare reform proposal on the table. He pushed the quarter-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax, saying it would keep youngsters from smoking.
Despite his own misgivings, the governor even urged lawmakers to support Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's plan for an experimental needle-exchange program to prevent city drug addicts from spreading AIDS to fellow users.
Fighting for gun control for the fourth consecutive year, the governor succeeded in persuading the legislature to ban 18 types of assault pistols. He did so with the help of Senate President Miller, who took the politically risky step of bypassing one of his own committees just to get the measure considered.
Typical of the cautious approach lawmakers took to many issues, supporters and opponents alike claimed a bittersweet victory.
"We've had an election year session true to form," said Del. D. Bruce Poole, a Democrat from Hagerstown. "We haven't done anything too crazy but we haven't done anything too significant, either."
With re-election campaigns for many of them already under way or about to start, there was little incentive for them to grapple with anything else that was too controversial, and motive aplenty to pass bills that appeared to do more than they actually did. Mostly, they played defense, fending off scores of bills that might offend constituents or some powerful special interest group that, in turn, might retaliate by targeting them for defeat once this year's September primaries and November general election roll around.
Fearful of offending veterans groups, fire and rescue squads, or fraternal clubs, for example, a Senate committee bottled up and finally killed the legislation to slap statewide controls over legal gambling by such organizations.
Afraid they might lose a perk that could help them be re-elected, another Senate committee ignored pleas to repeal the program that lets senators and delegates hand out millions of dollars in scholarships to their constituents. Lawmakers even passed TC proposed constitutional amendment to guarantee the rights of crime victims despite the fact that opponents called it a "feel-good" measure that would do little for anyone, and even ardent defenders admitted it was mostly symbolic.
They glossed over complaints from Hispanic, Chinese and other ethnic groups who said legislation to make English the state's official language was a subtle form of immigrant-bashing, partly because backers of the bill admitted that it would probably have little effect and was not really necessary.
Not wishing to penalize farmers, they killed a Chesapeake Bay cleanup bill designed to stem agricultural runoff.