When Maryland's General Assembly ended its 90-day session Monday night, it was as if lawmakers consciously tried to capsulize their four-year term in one long, final day.
They killed any bill too complicated or controversial. They buried anything that might interfere with their re-election plans. They passed a handful of "feel-good" measures that neither did much nor hurt anyone.
When the midnight adjournment arrived and confetti was dumped on the presiding officers, an epitaph for members of the legislative class of 1991-1994 could have been written: "They treaded water."
Even though they dealt with vexing, often politically explosive issues -- abortion, taxes, budget cuts, redistricting and gun control, to mention a few -- lawmakers did not substantially alter the direction of government or improve the welfare of most Marylanders during the past four years.
They did pass two far-reaching reforms of health care and the parole system, but their impact will not be known for months or years.
A landmark 1993 law aims to make health insurance more available to employees of small companies, many of whom are uninsured. No one will know how successful the program will be until long after it is first offered July 1.
Nor will it be clear for a few years whether this year's parole reforms will make streets safer by forcing violent criminals to serve more time and making parole commissioners operate more openly. That's assuming Gov. William Donald Schaefer does not veto the bill as too costly.
The soon-to-be-completed term was born of the voter unrest of the 1990 election, which sent an anti-tax, anti-incumbent shiver down the spines of the old-timers and ushered in more than 40 newcomers.
The election was a demarcation between the flush budgets and spending excesses of the '80s and the retrenchment and leaner realities of the '90s.
Or so it seemed during the depths of the recession.
The state chopped programs and local aid by more than $1 billion over three years. Lawmakers reluctantly raised taxes in 1991 and 1992 -- to keep government services afloat while they came up with long-term solutions, they said.
Legislators spoke boldly of rethinking the fundamental relationship between government and citizens. What should government do and how should it do it? And who should pay for it?
It was heady stuff for Republicans and conservative Democrats.
But first, there was a budget to balance and, despite legislators' political fears, taxes to be raised.
Almost all Marylanders pay higher taxes today than they did in 1991, when the first clouds of the recession appeared and legislators made their first foray into tax territory.
The governor opened the term by presenting them with a mammoth proposal: an $800 million tax and spending program recommended by his tax commission, headed by Montgomery County lawyer R. Robert Linowes. But such a plan was anathema to lawmakers fresh from the election, and it was dead on arrival.
Just to get the budget in balance, however, they were forced to approve $95 million in new levies on cigarettes, capital gains and carryout foods, among other things.
By 1992, when the economic storm broke, lawmakers found themselves unable to avoid a huge tax increase. Tugged kicking and screaming, they passed a half-billion-dollar tax plan that affected everyone who buys gasoline, cigarettes, snack foods or newspapers, registers their car or uses car phones, or frequents a salad bar at a supermarket.
They gave Baltimore and the 23 counties the power to raise local income taxes, and they set up a higher, temporary tax bracket for the wealthiest Marylanders.
Raising those taxes was so politically and personally difficult that the 1992 session ended without a budget for the first time this century. Legislators were forced to stay in an embarrassing extended session to finish their work.
Even then it was not enough. As the state's financial problems continued, lawmakers did not interfere when Mr. Schaefer dreamed up a new lottery game to keep from having to raise taxes again. Hello, Keno!
Lawmakers attacked the problem through budget cuts as well, some of them permanent. They ended a welfare program for about 28,000 destitute single adults and reduced welfare grants for families so much that a 2 percent increase this coming year will only restore them to 1989 levels.
To save money, state employees were forced to take furloughs, work longer hours for the same pay, go without cost-of-living raises for three years and pay more for health insurance. Some were simply laid off.
'Let's move on'
The legislature even permanently axed a couple of large aid programs for local governments.
By January 1993, with the worst of the recession over, House Majority Leader D. Bruce Poole of Washington County warned that lawmakers needed to restructure state government before good times made them forget the bad.
"If the water rises," he said then, "and the boat is no longer banging on the bottom, people will say, 'Let's move on to something else.' "
Which, of course, is what happened.
For all the political convulsions and hand-wringing, overall state spending actually grew 15 percent -- from an $11.6 billion budget for 1991 to $13.3 billion thus year -- in during the four-year term. Much of that growth was fueled by massive increases in #F Medicaid, welfare and prison spending. The General Assembly also poured millions of dollars into increased state aid for schools.
To pay those bills, lawmakers in effect had to cut back on other health, environmental and social programs, at least temporarily.
Maryland is one of only a handful of states able to retain the best-possible triple-A bond rating for the state to borrow money, a testament to the way lawmakers handled the financial crisis. But the long-term budget outlook is not good.
Legislators never addressed a major problem haunting the budget -- state laws requiring increased spending on certain programs regardless of the economy.
The costs of public schools, Medicaid, welfare and prisons continue to grow faster than state revenues. Budget advisers to the legislature already predict that by next year the state could be in the red again, and by the following year the deficit could be as high as $275 million.
It may be self-serving, but legislators say it was hard to cut spending under a governor who always had another program he wanted to add.
H. Furlong Baldwin, the chairman of Mercantile Bankshares Corp. and a citizen member of the legislature's advisory panel on spending, said Maryland government avoided some of the basic restructuring many major corporations imposed on themselves during the recession.
"An economic downturn gave us a chance to do something, and we missed it," he said.
Without money, legislators spent their time debating issues without financial implications.
Early in the term, they ensured that abortion would be legal in Maryland regardless of what happened in the Supreme Court.
They required motorcyclists to wear helmets, a safety measure that supporters said would save money otherwise spent caring for motorcyclists with head injuries. They cracked down on "deadbeat parents" whose failure to pay child support sometimes forced their families onto welfare rolls.
Finally, this election year, after refusing to do so for the previous three sessions, they banned assault pistols, even though supporters acknowledged it would have little real impact on crime.
But they avoided some difficult issues. This year's pile of rejected proposals includes one that would have changed the way the state distributes money to local school systems and another denying welfare increases to mothers who keep having children.
The "system" -- the politics of the 1990s -- makes it extremely difficult to make dramatic changes in one term. "People are nervous about making big changes," said first-term Del. John A. Hurson, 40, a Montgomery County Democrat and a lawyer and businessman. "You only reach consensus in relatively small steps."
Increasingly sophisticated interest groups, aided by an expanding army of professional lobbyists, have learned how to force almost any issue into legislative gridlock.
Committees, which act as doorkeepers for legislation, contain a mix of people from different regions and ideologies who find it hard to agree. Many legislators arrive with positions staked out in advance, often oblivious to new information or debate. With hundreds of bills to consider, they sometimes lack the time to iron out differences and react to controversial bills by killing them.
Old habits
Proving in another way that fundamental change is hard to achieve, the legislature reverted to old spending habits as the term came to its end. When lawmakers headed home last week to ask constituents for another four years, many of the programs decimated during the depths of the recession had been restored to their pre-recession levels or were safely on the road to recovery -- or new ones were being added.
In fact, by Monday night, it was back to business as usual in the State House. As the recession receded in their memories, legislators passed three bills that are typical of the type that will make it harder for future governors to cut spending.
One sets up yet another new Cabinet-level department, this time for state police. Another forces the next governor to put at least $3 million in the budget for tourism. The third insulates the Maryland State Arts Council from future budget cuts: No matter what the economy brings, the governor will have to put at least $8 million in the arts fund.
The arts measure, plus a fat list of building projects approved Monday, pushed Republican Sen. F. Vernon Boozer of Baltimore County to his limits. "I was really disgusted the last night of the session. We haven't learned our lesson if we keep doing things like that."