Like school students on a field trip, 38 freshmen legislators embarked yesterday on a five-day tour to learn about the state they are about to help govern.
Traveling by train, by bus and by boat, the freshmen will visit almost every region of the state before the trip ends in Baltimore on Thursday. Along the way, they will see parks and hospitals, a sewage treatment plant and a prison, universities, a farm, an inner-city school and a variety of other government facilities and historical sites.
The tour is the brainchild of House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. With 43 percent of the General Assembly seats changing hands next month, the Allegany County Democrat thought freshmen needed to see the places and understand the issues they will be discussing in Annapolis beginning next month.
"There are 61 new members just in the House, many of whom are totally unfamiliar with the public-sector issues outside of their own region," Mr. Taylor said.
The trip began with a series of briefings over breakfast at the Camden Club, the private restaurant in the old B&O; Warehouse that overlooks Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Inner Harbor.
Even before the newcomers boarded a chartered three-car train at Camden Yards and headed for Cumberland and then to snowy Garrett County, they were inundated with issues briefings. Ten people spoke during breakfast alone, including presentations about the University of Maryland Medical System and the Baltimore Convention Center expansion.
On board, the briefings continued on transportation, tourism, natural resources and economic development. At the old train station in Cumberland, there was a briefing on one of Mr. Taylor's pet projects: a multiyear, multimillion-dollar plan to turn the old C&O; Canal there into a park and major Western Maryland tourist attraction.
It did not take long for any of the freshmen to sense the double-edged nature of the tour: While it will undoubtedly be educational, it gives state agencies and other interests a chance to make a case for their respective projects and programs.
Among the briefings:
* Crown Central Petroleum Chairman Henry Rosenberg, chairman of the Baltimore Convention Center board, told the freshmen in Baltimore about the $150 million expansion under construction, but warned that "not one dollar has been appropriated so far for marketing."
* Transportation Secretary O. James Lighthizer told the lawmakers-to-be aboard the train that they could get through 1995 without raising the gasoline tax, but warned that by 1996 they will have to choose between "raising revenues or cutting projects."
* George Williams, head of the state's tourism office, emphasized on the train how Virginia, Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states were outspending Maryland in efforts to attract visitors.
"The pitch is 'spend, spend, spend,' " said Democratic Howard County Delegate-elect Shane Pendergrass. "And then we hear from the Chamber [of Commerce] to fund everything adequately, but try to cut the budget and taxes." Those seemingly contradictory messages, she said, were the theme of the 1994 elections, and "what this next legislature is going to be about."
The freshmen got a send-off from retiring Gov. William Donald Schaefer, who urged them to open their eyes to the needs of citizens in other parts of the state, and not to vote against proposals by the next governor just because he is the governor.
He also urged them not to conclude that all the public wants is for them to cut spending and slash government programs.
But Mary Roe Walkup, a freshman Republican from Kent County, said that when she heard that, she resisted the temptation to jump up like a teen-ager and shout, "Not!"
The Democrats in Annapolis, she said, "have been outspending the taxpayers' ability to keep up with it, [and] I'm sick and tired of it."
Some freshmen questioned the wisdom of using taxpayers' money for their tour.
Sen.-elect Patrick J. Hogan, a Montgomery County Republican, said that when he first heard about the trip that he thought it sounded like "a boondoggle."
But Mr. Hogan was on board yesterday, saying he was convinced by the intensive, issue-oriented itinerary that the trip would be worthwhile, not to mention politically defensible. Not only would he learn about parts of the state he has never seen, he said, but he hopes other freshmen will learn something about his county as well.
"I want people to come to Montgomery County, to see the streets aren't paved with gold, to see we have needs, too," he said.
No one knows precisely how much the trip will cost, in part because much of the expense will be borne by local governments along the way and by the University of Maryland System. Aides to Mr. Taylor said they doubted that the total would exceed $50,000.
"Clearly, it is worth the money it is going to cost because it will give a very large group of state legislators some firsthand foundation on which to formulate decisions and judgments that they're going to be asked to make this winter," Mr. Taylor said.
The freshmen lawmakers began arriving at Camden Yards before 8 a.m. on a cold, blustery Sunday, and ended their first long day at Herrington Manor State Park in Maryland's snow-covered westernmost county. There, they were housed in groups of four in cabins built during the Depression.
Today, the group will begin working its way eastward, stopping in Frostburg and at Rocky Gap State Park and Frederick en route to the University of Maryland.
The tour next goes to the Washington suburbs and Southern Maryland, across the bay aboard a 100-foot boat Wednesday morning, up the Eastern Shore and finally back to Baltimore on Wednesday night and all day Thursday.
The trip will conclude with tours of the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School for juvenile offenders in Baltimore County, Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the port of Baltimore and a public school in the city.
"I think it is really a good concept," said Ms. Pendergrass. "You have to see it firsthand. You have to see how it relates to what's around it."