As dismal as the Harford County legislative delegation's performance was in the 2008 Maryland General Assembly session that concluded at midnight Monday, the overall results from this year's session call into question why the 47 senators and 141 delegates bothered to meet at all.
We'll have plenty to say about the locals' effort, or lack thereof, in later posts, but let's first cast an eye on the whole body of work. All you need to know about this session is it became dominated by the 5 percent tax on computer services which was approved in last November's $1.3 billion O'Malley tax-a-thon special session. Opponents of the computer tax marshaled their forces for a repeal and, although the governor and the house speaker and senate president were dead set against it, the anti-tax forces proved to me formidable than the taxocratic state leaders realized.
Thus it came to pass that with the end of the session drawing near, the taxocrats capitulated. O'Malley said he be amenable to substituting another half-percent income tax on millionaires and, viola, the deal was signed, sealed and delivered by a majority of the legislature.
O'Malley, in his inimitable whining style, said he saw no reason why the millionaires shouldn't want to make another "small contribution" to making the state greater, or some palaver like that. As a pitchman, W.C. Fields he's not, but the governor seems to get what he wants, regardless.
Most of us aren't millionaires and, frankly, we pay a much higher percentage of our incomes in state and local taxes — especially those of us living in Harford County — than do the really rich folks. Still, you wonder how much people can take, especially since most obviously are in a position financially to pick up and move somewhere else, or at least do the legal work to get their primary residence changed to a state which doesn't keep raising taxes every time it elects another taxocrat the governor's mansion.
With the session drawing to a close, O'Malley was on the airwaves again, this time doing his usual scaremongering that if taxes aren't increased, education will be the first to feel the cuts. Do you really think you are getting a fair result for your tax dollar from your Harford County Public School System? We'll wager most of those millionaires, who undoubtedly send their kids to private schools, would most certainly reply in the negative.
There's never any talk about cutting back on the number of state bureaucrats, consolidating a dozen or so state-sanctioned police forces, reviewing the state employees pension system which is outsized compared to what's offered in the private sector and, above all else, eliminating the bureaucratic duplication foisted upon us by the Maryland State Department of Education.
Ah, but we can leave those rants for the next governor we elect, because this one's priorities are well understood: We will tax you until we say it's enough.
On the positive side, if you can call it that, the legislature failed to mess with the death penalty, except to approve another between sessions study, which unfortunately means very little in the end because O'Malley has placed using it on indefinite hold, anyway. But, the Senate and House did fail to agree on the speed camera legislation, which means a reprieve from that for another year — unless they need to call a special session to try to pass it, and you never know.
Believe me, we're all for more speed enforcement, but the cameras were just a way to collect oodles of more money for the state and the counties without having to it do through the trouble of having a cop stop somebody and write an ticket and have the district court decide the case. Oh, excuse us, isn't that why we have traffic cops and traffic courts? Our mistake there, Guv Zeroes.
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