Forget raising taxes or legalizing slots. State lawmakers wrestled yesterday over whether to name the soybean Maryland's official crop.
They debated legislation that would expand Black History Month to January and February, and proclaim Pollinator Week in June to shed light on the plight of the honeybee. And perhaps most vexing, they discussed separate bills to designate walking as the state exercise and to dub Smith Island cake the official dessert.
Like any good politician, Del. William A. Bronrott offered a politically expedient reason to support both the walking bill he sponsored and the dessert measure. "You can have your cake and eat it, too," the Montgomery County Democrat said, eliciting a round of applause from fellow lawmakers.
The joke punctuated a hearing before the House Health and Government Operations Committee on a raft of legislation that would create state holidays and anoint new state symbols. While the levity of the hearing and the lack of opponents - no one signed up to testify against the proposed legislation - might foreshadow an easy road to passage, such bills have failed before.
Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, a Republican, vetoed the walking bill in 2003, calling it "silly." And a committee voted down a resolution last week to recognize Ronald Reagan Day in Maryland, a predominantly Democratic state.
For the record, Gov. Martin O'Malley's spokesman, Rick Abbruzzese, said the Democrat would sign the walking bill if it reached his desk. O'Malley also supports a bill to designate the Friday after Thanksgiving as American Indian Heritage Day, and he would be open to an extra month for black history and to crowning the soybean. The governor has not taken an official stance on a state cake or the other bills.
Many State House observers questioned whether lawmakers would be in the mood to tackle anything controversial after a difficult special session late last year when they narrowly approved a budget-balancing package of tax increases and a measure putting the legalization of slot-machine gambling to voters in November. At yesterday's hearing, the answer seemed to be that lawmakers are in no mood for policy clashes.
In fact, everyone, it seemed, was a comedian.
Del. B. Daniel Riley, a Democrat representing Harford and Cecil counties, saw his opening for bee humor when pitching his Pollinator Week bill. "I will b-e-e very happy if you support this bill," he told the committee at the end of his testimony. "Will there b-e-e any questions?"
Riley said he decided to raise awareness about the disappearance of honeybee colonies after a meeting with farmers in his district. The phenomenon is known as colony collapse disorder, the cause of which is not fully understood. He also has introduced a bill that would set aside $150,000 a year to increase the availability of seed and native plants that are pollinator-friendly.
There were some serious moments with other bills that would commemorate a Juvenile Diabetes Day and a month for Dandy-Walker Syndrome, a congenital brain malformation, and hydrocephalus, a condition characterized by fluid retention in the brain. Another bill would proclaim a Maryland Charter Day; this year marks the 376th anniversary of King Charles I granting the charter for the colony.
Maryland has several commemorative days and months, including Asian Lunar New Year Day in January and Women's History Month in March. The state also has a number of state symbols already on the books, including the square dance as the state's official folk dance and the skipjack as the official boat.
But students at St. Michaels Elementary School noticed that Maryland does not have an official crop. Several of them testified at the hearing yesterday that they chose the soybean because of its versatility (it's not only used in foodstuffs but also in shampoo and candles) and because it's one of the state's biggest crops (465,000 harvested acres were dedicated to the bean in 2006).
Smith Island cake proponents had serious reasons to lobby for the bill as well. They said the cake would help drive tourism to the lower Eastern Shore, which has been hurt by a decline in the oyster and crabbing industries. The complicated confection consists of eight to 10 layers of cake separated by frosting. Usually it's yellow cake and chocolate icing, but it's also made in other flavors such as coconut and strawberry.
And walking should be promoted to combat a growing obesity epidemic, proponents argued. The bill would make Maryland the first state in the nation with a state exercise.
Will Smith, who is now 14 and a freshman at Montgomery Blair High School, first brought the idea for a walking bill to Bronrott as a third-grader. It failed in committee in 2002 but passed the next year, only to be quashed by Ehrlich's veto.
Smith, who blended right in with the legislature's suit-and-tie set yesterday, said he's still not sure what he wants to do when he grows up. Perhaps computers, he ventured. But what about a career in government? Perhaps, he said. And what does he really think of politics?
"Some of it is pointless," he mused, "and some of it is necessary."
Well said.
laura.smitherman@baltsun.com