Despite a Republican filibuster attempt in the Senate, the General Assembly successfully passed legislation that would implement a stormwater pollution fee to raise revenue to cleanup the Chesapeake Bay.

Approved by the Senate and House of Delegates minutes before the end of the legislative session, the bill requires nine counties and Baltimore City to establish a watershed protection and restoration program.

Local governments would charge property owners a fee based on the amount of pavement on their property. It would be at the jurisdiction of the local governments to determine the size of those fees.

Counties and municipalities would take various steps, such as planting trees, to reduce watershed pollution caused by stormwater runoff.

Sponsored by Del. Tom Hucker, D-Montgomery, survival of the bill was questionable as it became bogged down in the Senate on Monday. Debate on the bill was delayed several times as the Senate considered various conference committee reports on the budget package.

Pipkin offers dozen amendments

Republicans, who have labeled the bill a $6 billion tax on counties based on the projected funding needed over 13 years, launched prolonged debate of the bill by proposing a number of unfriendly amendments.

Senate Republican Leader E.J. Pipkin proposed 12 amendments, none of which were adopted. Pipkin said the bill was essentially an attempt to tax rain water.

Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George’s, argued Republicans should like the bill, noting it gave power back to the counties to determine the fee and held them responsible for pollution caused at the local level.

Democrats broke the filibuster by approving a motion to limit floor debate to 20 minutes per side. The chamber approved the bill 33-14 to applause from the gallery, which was quickly stifled by Senate President Mike Miller who was eager to move onto other issues on the agenda.

Although Republicans were unsuccessful in their attempts to amend the bill, an amendment proposed by Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, was adopted by the Senate. Raskin’s amendment excluded properties owned by state or local governments and volunteer fire departments from being subject to the fee. Raskin argued the amendment was part of the “public-private principal” and that it did not make sense for the government to tax itself.

With only 20 minutes remaining before adjournment, the amended bill was sent to the House, which approved the legislation 91-45. Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to sign the legislation into law.

Republished from the Afro: http://www.afro.com/sections/news/Baltimore/story.htm?storyid=74680

Maryland is now the first state in the nation to officially ban Roxarsone, a product added to chicken feed to prevent disease and produce fatter chickens. Senate Bill 207/ House Bill 167 was one of many bills passed over the weekend as the Maryland General Assembly rushed to complete work by the end of the 90-day session at midnight on Monday.

“We’ve been adding about 30,000 pounds of arsenic to both our environment and our food supply every year since 1946, when the drug was approved,” said Del. Tom Hucker (D-Md.) of District 20, who sponsored the house version of the bill.

“Arsenic is a terribly deadly substance which only a few micrograms of which can give you cancer, heart disease, or diabetes.” The use of Roxarsone was suspended last July when the FDA conducted a study on 100 broiler chickens.

The report, released last February, shows that when fed products with food grade arsenic, chickens retain a small portion of the toxin in the liver, producing inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen harmful to humans. Much of the substance is expelled in chicken waste, which in turn creates another problem for the Chesapeake Bay, its tributaries, and farmlands of Maryland’s Eastern Shore that use chicken manure as fertilizer. “Arsenic laced rain water washes off into the bay. When it’s not raining, arsenic binds to the soil and then builds up in the soil.

We’ve found that some of the fields in Maryland are beyond remediation. They can’t be improved in any way,” said Del. Hucker. Though some might conclude that consuming meat from a chicken with a carcinogen in its liver could potentially lead to human deaths, Curtis Allen, a spokesperson for the FDA says that reasoning would be “jumping to conclusions” because that “implies it happens right away.”

The final bill recommended by the senate was a watered-down version of what was originally proposed by members of the House, but an agreement was made between the two chambers. Changes made to the bill at the Senate level included the addition of a clause that lifts the ban should the product later be found safe for humans and the environment. The legislation was also amended to allow the use of histostat, another drug containing arsenic and not much different from Roxarsone, used to treat disease in turkeys.

“The agency continues to work with the drug sponsor to fully investigate the issue and, as part of this effort, FDA is conducting some additional confirmatory testing to address some remaining scientific questions.” said Gloria Sánchez-Contreras, a bilingual public affairs specialist for the FDA. “The suspension of sales will remain in effect as this work is completed.” Those in opposition to the ban say the legislation will cost Marylander’s farm industry jobs, as well as discourage investment in the industry.

According to reports published by the DelMarva Poultry Industry, which monitors the industry in the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, proceeds made from the broiler chicken in Maryland accounted for nearly 40 percent of all income made from cash farms. In 2009, the farms that raise broiler chickens netted about $640,303,000, making it 9th in the country for the payout connected with the broiler chicken industry within the agricultural sector. The state ranks 10th for the overall production of broiler chickens in the state, processing more than 1.4 billion pounds of broiler chicken every year.

Although few argue that human trafficking shouldn’t be punished, one Maryland legislator has found out not everyone agrees on the appropriate penalty.

For the past three years, Del. Kathleen Dumais (D-Dist. 15) of Rockville has introduced some version of a bill that would allow police to seize money and property from convicted human traffickers — a bill that never has been introduced for a vote by the House Judiciary Committee, on which Dumais is the vice-chairwoman. Although the bill was popular among lawmakers in the 2011 session — 41 delegates sponsored it that year — a handful of delegates, led by Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr., likely will keep the current bill from a vote this year.

“At least according to the criminal defense attorneys on the committee, it doesn’t always work perfectly,” Dumais said of asset forfeiture laws. “… If you’re seizing all the property in the room, and it’s not just cash, how do you know the house was purchased using ill-gotten gains? … There is a process to determine that, but again, that is the concern.”

In spite of the bill’s support among other lawmakers, Vallario (D-Dist. 27A) of Upper Marlboro, as the committee chair, can effectively block passage by simply refusing to introduce the legislation, Dumais said.

“In fairness to Del. Vallario, he’s the chairman of the committee and those kinds of decisions are within his prerogative,” Dumais said.

Vallario did not return multiple calls for comment, but other committee members with criminal defense backgrounds, including Del. Luiz R. S. Simmons (D-Dist. 17) of Rockville, are hesitant to approve asset forfeiture laws in general, not just for human trafficking cases.

Simmons, who introduced a successful bill last session allowing police to use wire-tapping technology in human trafficking investigations, has said he would rather look at asset forfeiture as a general issue rather than approving such laws for specific crimes.

Maryland criminal law currently allows asset forfeiture to be considered only in drug and gambling-related cases.

The seizure of assets is not the only bill related to human trafficking being considered by state lawmakers this session. Six bills dealing with human trafficking laws were introduced this year, said Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force volunteer Nancy Winston, a former board member of Shared Hope International, an anti-trafficking nonprofit organization.

“We need more laws in place to evaluate how big the problem is here,” Winston said at a Feb. 15 advocacy event in Annapolis.

The bills would: Expand the definition of child abuse to include human trafficking; allow victims of human trafficking to claim compensation as crime victims; change the abduction of a child younger than 16 from a misdemeanor to felony; and bar people accused of sex with a minor from claiming they did not know the victim was under age as a legal defense, Winston said.

A sixth bill, introduced by Del. Tom Hucker (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring, would require owners of bus stations and truck stops in the state to post signs with the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline number.

“Even once law enforcement has recommendations, it’s hard to educate all the members of the Maryland General Assembly about why this is needed on top of laws we already have,” Hucker said. “The mill grinds slowly here; unfortunately … this really has expanded greatly in just the last few years.”

As more and more laws pass allowing police to address human trafficking as a separate crime from prostitution, arrests for human trafficking offenses are on the rise, even as the number of victims remains relatively stable, Penrod said.

Last year, the Polaris Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to serving victims of prostitution and human trafficking served 82 victims in 2011, about the same as they served in 2010, said Carolina De Los Rios, director of Polaris’ client services.

“But we get a lot of our referrals from law enforcement officers so sometimes it varies from year-to-year depending on what the goals of the particular police agencies are that year,” De Los Rios said of the nonprofit’s caseload.

So although groups such as the human trafficking task force call for new laws to address the issue of sex trafficking and state lawmakers come to grips with the concept of human trafficking as a crime, the police officers who enforce the laws often are left on the sidelines, said Sgt. Kenneth Penrod of the Montgomery County Vice and Intelligence Unit.

“As human trafficking comes more to the forefront in Maryland, how long is it going to take to give us the tools we need to address the crime? Is it going to take some tragedy?” Penrod said. “But we’re going to keep doing these cases anyway; whether there’s asset forfeiture or not, whether it’s expensive or not, we’re going to do them.”

Many consumers voluntarily buy more than one type of insurance from the same company so they can get a discount on premiums.

But what if an insurer wouldn’t sell you a homeowner’s policy unless you also purchased auto insurance from it, too?

Some insurers are doing just that.

The Fayetteville Observer reported early this year that Allstate was canceling the homeowner’s policies of nearly 46,000 North Carolina customers because they didn’t buy auto insurance from the company, while N.C. Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance was taking similar steps with about 28,000 policyholders.

Another report, in Online Auto Insurance News, revealed that Allstate wasn’t renewing about 4,000 homeowners’ policies in Arkansas unless those customers also bought auto insurance with the company.

Laxton adds that the agency, which supports the Maryland legislation, hasn’t received consumer complaints about mandated bundling. But the agency has heard from about a dozen consumers complaining of raised deductibles that can be lowered if customers buy multiple lines of insurance from the same carrier, she says.

Steven Weisbart, senior vice president and chief economist with the Insurance Information Institute, says such bundling isn’t “forced” because consumers have a choice.

“You can walk. You’re free to go,” Weisbart says. “The market is and remains highly competitive.”

Insurance providers that require bundling do so as a marketing strategy to build stronger ties to customers, Weisbart says.

“The more contact, the more relationships you have with a provider, the more likely you are to stay with that provider, to feel good about being with that provider,” he says.

But Allstate dropped tens of thousands of customers in North Carolina. Surely, that’s not good for business?

“It’s possible to be too successful,” says Weisbart, adding that some insurers want to reduce their exposure in certain areas. If a company sells all the homeowner policies in a region that’s then hit by a disaster, the company could be devastated.

“Many of them truly are assessing whether they are too concentrated” and need to spread their risk, he says.

Bundling isn’t bad — if it’s voluntary. In fact, you can usually save 10 percent or 15 percent off your annual premiums by getting auto and homeowner’s policies from the same place.

But mandated bundling isn’t good for the consumer who wants to shop among insurers for the best deal on different policies. Legislators here should pass the bill so Marylanders can maintain their right to choose.

Check out the photos from Ed Kimmel here.

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