ANNAPOLIS (AP) — House Democratic leaders yesterday challenged Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to work with them to develop a revenue package — including slot machines and taxes — that they said is necessary to avoid crippling cutbacks in state services and local government aid.
“What we’re trying to do is fund the budget. Slots do not fund the budget,” said Delegate Sheila E. Hixson, Montgomery County Democrat. “You have to have another source of revenue.”
With 12 days left in the session, there are no signs of a break in the stalemate over slot machines and taxes involving the governor, the Senate and the House.
Mrs. Hixson and other House leaders said Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, needs to exercise more leadership to break that stalemate, which has stalled work on a state budget that is supposed to be completed by Monday.
The comments came at a news conference at which House leaders displayed a state budget book with a big hole drilled in it. They said the hole represents deficits of $1 billion or more the state faces in future years without new revenue sources.
Mr. Ehrlich responded quickly, telling reporters that he would not agree to accept increases in the sales and income taxes in order to win legislative approval of his bill to authorize 15,500 slot machines at up to six locations.
“If they want to kill slots, they kill slots,” he said.
The governor noted that the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is balanced and appealed again for passage of his slots bill, which he said would go a long way toward eliminating projected budget deficits in future years.
The House passed a $670 million tax plan that includes an increase in the sales-tax rate from 5 percent to 6 percent and a temporary increase in the income-tax rate for affluent Marylanders, but it has not voted on Mr. Ehrlich’s slot-machine bill.
The Senate, which passed the governor’s slots bill more than a month ago, approved a much more modest revenue increase of about $100 million in fees and taxes.
Mrs. Hixson, who said she does not know when her committee will vote on the slots bill, said it would have to be tied to a tax increase to pass the House.
“In our opinion, we need both,” she said.
Mr. Ehrlich’s key environmental proposal of the 2004 legislative session appeared to be in deep trouble yesterday after a dispute surfaced over whether homeowners with septic tanks should help pay for $1 billion worth of sewage-plant upgrades.
Mr. Ehrlich’s plan to charge residents $30 a year on their water and sewer bills easily cleared the House of Delegates earlier this month with a vote of 143-5. The amended legislation included a plan to charge septic owners an indirect fee.
Senators on the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee also approved the bill but changed it to include a more direct, $30 annual fee for homeowners with septic tanks.
Sen. Paula Colodny Hollinger, Baltimore County Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate committee, was told by Ehrlich aides yesterday that only two of the Senate’s 14 Republicans would vote for the bill, which was scheduled for a vote this week.
“I feel like I have been jerked around,” said Miss Hollinger, whose committee held long sessions last week to rework the bill.
Mr. Ehrlich still is committed to working toward a “reasonable bill,” said one of his spokesmen, Henry Fawell. But Miss Hollinger wouldn’t give similar commitments late yesterday.
Mr. Ehrlich’s bill to raise sewage fees, which Democrats call a “flush tax,” charges homes with sewage lines a $2.50 monthly fee. The House amended it to include an indirect fee to the 400,000 homeowners with septic tanks. It would charge sewage haulers 8 cents more per gallon to dump the waste at treatment plants.
The version passed by the Senate committee instead calls for charging septic owners $2.50 a month. The state Department of the Environment would have to identify the state’s 400,000 homes with septic tanks and bill them.
The Senate yesterday killed legislation that would have made it a separate crime to harm a fetus during an attack on a pregnant woman.
Opponents of the bill relied on an unusual parliamentary maneuver, a motion to “postpone indefinitely,” to cut off further consideration of the bill this year. The motion was adopted on a 25-22 roll call.
The bill by Sen. Leo E. Green, Prince George’s County Democrat, would have allowed prosecutors to file separate charges for injury or death to a fetus at least 20 weeks old resulting from an assault on a woman. Twenty-nine states have an unborn-victims law, and Congress has passed a comparable law, but it would apply only to prosecutions under federal law. Most crimes against pregnant women would be prosecuted under state law.
Opponents said the bill was really an attack on a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.