It's not every day County Council rejects a bill

In Washington and Annapolis, bills are voted down on a regular basis.

But not in Ellicott City, where voting down a bill — as the County Council did last week when it rejected Council member Courtney Watson's swim club tax credit proposal — is a rare occurrence.

The last time a council bill was voted down was in 2009. That year, the council unanimously rejected a zoning regulation amendment proposed by a developer that would have allowed people under the age of 55 to fill up to 20 percent of housing in age-restricted communities.

Before the swim club bill vote, the last time the council voted down a bill introduced by a council member was in 2008, when the council's four Democrats voted against Fulton Republican Greg Fox's proposal for more stringent reporting requirements by the county's personnel officer on new and vacant positions.

The reason such rejections are rare, Fox said, is because council members so often communicate with each other before introducing bills, to see if they have enough support to get them passed.

"If it's been introduced by us, we have all usually talked about it and stuff," he said. "There's usually been some discussion and compromise before the bill's been put out there."

Watson said she knows some council members try to ensure they have at least three votes — the minimum needed for passage — before introducing a bill, but she didn't do that with the swim club proposal because she thought it should be debated in public.

Council Chairman Calvin Ball said the fate of bills that don't have support from at least three council members is up to the sponsor.

"There are some folks who feel that a vote is really important, (and) some who feel that tabling is more appropriate," he said.

Watson said "the easy way out is to let it die on the table."

That has happened to a few bills in the past few years, including the Veterans Commission bill Fox introduced last September. Though it died on the table last December, Fox reworked the bill to address other council members' concerns and reintroduced it earlier this year. It passed unanimously.

Watson said she did not want to let the swim club bill die on the table.

"The pool people (swim club representatives) deserved a vote on this bill and they deserved to hear their (the three members who voted against it) rationale on it," she said.