The long-simmering, barely concealed feud between Maryland’s Republican governor and Democratic-controlled General Assembly boiled over Wednesday, when the Senate attempted to ramrod through legislation that would take the annual “beg-a-thon” for school construction money out of the hands of the Board of Public Works.
The legislation, approved by the House of Delegates and put on the fast track by Senate leaders, would move control of as much as $400 million out from under the Board of Public Works – the state’s three-member spending panel of the governor, comptroller and treasurer – and place it under a new nine-member Interagency Commission on School Construction.
The legislation was seen as an unabashed play to remove Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot, a Montgomery County Democrat frequently allied with Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr., from the board and strip the governor of direct power over school construction money each year.
“It’s politics, and it’s a personal vendetta against my colleague, the comptroller,” Hogan said Wednesday at a meeting of the Board of Public Works, postponed from last Wednesday because of snow.
Meanwhile, a floor below, on the first level of the State House, the Maryland Senate was readying itself to take up the question of House Bill 1783, which the House of Delegates had sent over after a 92-48 vote Tuesday.
The trouble was, the House bill was still in the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday morning; so the legislation was quietly referred to the Budget and Taxation Committee on the floor by Rules Chairwoman Katherine A. Klausmeier (D-Baltimore County).
Click here to read the rest of the article written by William F. Zorzi over at Maryland Matters