ANNAPOLIS -- Gov. William Donald Schaefer vowed today to continue trying to institute a so-called "family cap" on Marylanders who receive welfare payments -- despite a General Assembly that in its final hours last night killed the measure.
The governor, obviously tired from a legislative session that treated administration proposals roughly, also said he might veto the welfare-reform bill that Assembly members did pass.
The welfare reform legislation was a key piece of administration agenda, and the resulting bill was a sharp reduction of what the governor had sought.
In the waning hours of the legislative session last night, lawmakers pulled out of a reform bill a so-called "family cap" provision that would have denied additional payments to women who conceived and bore more children while on the welfare rolls.
"I'm going to push as hard as I possibly can," the governor said today, to achieve the same end through procedures available under federal welfare requirements. Such steps have been available all along, but the administration sought legislative approval before applying the controversial measure.
Mr. Schaefer said the surviving components of the administration's bill that legislators passed were just improvements on the current system.
"The key was the cap," Mr. Schaefer said. "That's where the country is going."
Surveying the results of his final legislative session today, Mr. Schaefer found some solace in a handful of victories, but largely focused on the many defeats. Gone was the combative and defiant attitude he sometimes took toward the legislature during his eight years. Instead, his tone today was replaced by a resigned disappointment.
"So many of the bills I had an interest in went down the drain," the governor said. "We did not get many of the bills that would have made it a really excellent session."
AThe governor cited some victories. After three previous tries, he finally got the legislature to pass a ban on 18 types of assault pistols. Lawmakers also passed a bill that would put to a referendum this fall a constitutional amendment on crime victims' rights.
But after watching many of his initiatives either weakened or killed in the final hours last night, the governor dwelt largely on the defeats. One by one, he ticked off the dead bills: one that would have made it easier to adopt some foster care children, another that would have set up a statewide gambling commission, a third that would have imposed a cigarette tax.
Losing those bills, "is a sad commentary on all of us," the governor said.
He also criticized the General Assembly's powerful committee system, where chairmen can easily kill bills by just refusing to bring them up for a vote. That is what happened to a scholarship reform bill in the Senate that would have transferred the decision to award millions of dollars in college scholarships from legislators to an independent body.
"That's not the way the legislatoure or Congress should be run," the governor said. "That's wrong."
Lawmakers, cautious throughout this election-year session, played it safe to the end last night.
Governor Schaefer was not the only one unhappy with the welfare bill that was approved.
"You don't have a bill of substance without a family cap. . . . You're modifying some things, maybe putting a Band-Aid on," state Human Resources Secretary Carolyn W. Colvin told conferees.
The welfare bill as approved by the legislature still creates a pilot program for selected applicants in Baltimore and in Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties. This provision is similar to legislation President Clinton has promised to deliver to Congress this spring in that it expands job training for persons on welfare and requires those still unemployed after 18 months to join a work program.
Another administration bill to limit the liability of landlords in lead-paint poisoning suits in exchange for their renovation of older rental units was approved last night after being weakened by amendments favoring the landlords. One reduced potential fines against them from $5,000 to $250, and another gives them more time to repair problems that expose children to lead paint poisoning.
Last night marked the end of a session in which the General Assembly enacted no new taxes or fees, gave the state's 80,000 employees their first pay raise in three years (3 percent or $800, whichever is greater), banned the sale of 18 assault pistols and set aside more than $100 million to build schools.
Midway in the final 14-hour day, a separate group of negotiators reached agreement on legislation to 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 -- later approved by both houses -- also attempts 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 contains a new two-time-loser provision requiring 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."
Other measures
On a different issue that pitted trial lawyers against doctors, the lawyers scored a big victory last night when senators and delegates agreed to place a $500,000 cap on jury awards in all future wrongful death and personal injury cases, with a maximum aggregate award to all plaintiffs in such cases of $750,000.
Doctors were worried about potentially huge medical malpractice claims without a cap on wrongful death cases, but ** lobbyists complained the new limit will still force malpractice premiums up as much as 30 percent or 35 percent.
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 proposal to increase Maryland's cigarette tax every time the federal tax went up, 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 have required health-maintenance organizations to pay part of the cost for patients who seek medical care outside of their HMO network also was defeated 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.
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.
With unusual haste, they pushed through legislation to name a new passenger pier at Baltimore-Washington International Airport after Governor Schaefer. And they 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.
Continuing their get-tough-on-crime theme, the assembly enacted on its final day a bill to send juveniles charged with any of a list of violent crimes directly into adult courts. They also voted to make the State Police a separate cabinet-level department, breaking it out of the department that also oversees prisons, parole and probation and the state fire marshall.
Sidetracked by NFL
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 told members in his January State of the State address. He pressed lawmakers once again to take up the divisive gun control issue.
He put the controversial welfare reform proposal on the table. He pushed the 25-cent-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. Gun control opponents knew they had succeeded in defeating more meaningful provisions, such as required gun licensure or monthly limits on purchases.
But lawmakers eager to put in their campaign brochures that they voted for gun control hailed the measure as a step forward, even if the banned guns have been involved in only a small percentage of crimes.
'True to form'
"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.