By Matthew Mosk and Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 1, 2006; A01
Republicans in the Maryland Senate unplugged their computers, picked up their belongings and marched out of the chamber yesterday afternoon in protest of a frantic push by Democrats to pass a stack of hotly contested bills.
Infuriated members strode up the marble State House staircase to the offices of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), who applauded them for the rare walkout and declared that four years of "monopoly frustration has come to a head."
The display came on the tensest day of the 2006 General Assembly session, with just 90 minutes remaining for Democrats to get legislation to the governor's desk and still leave time for a future override vote, should Ehrlich choose to veto the bills.
Just minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline, Democrats passed the last in a series of controversial measures, which included a legislative takeover of the board that oversees electricity rates in Maryland, a bill to block a state takeover of 11 Baltimore schools, one to ban state university regents from political fundraising and one to alter election laws to put early voting stations in urban -- and largely Democratic -- precincts.
Other bills, including one aimed at reducing smokestack emissions from coal-fired power plants and one blocking tuition increases at state universities, just missed the deadline. A legislative aide said that when two Senate clerks arrived at the governor's legislative office with bills in hand, they found the doors locked. The clerks slipped photocopies under the doors, but it will be left to lawyers to determine whether that qualifies as delivery.
None of the measures passed smoothly. There was a failed filibuster on the schools bill, a bitter parliamentary challenge of the House speaker on the measure to reconstitute the state's Public Service Commission and a seemingly endless succession of procedural contortions over the others. But it was the highly partisan election measure that prompted the walkout by the dispirited GOP caucus, which holds just 14 seats in the 47-member chamber.
"We know we're outnumbered, votewise. We know we have no control. Now they won't even let us participate," Sen. Nancy Jacobs (R-Harford) said after leaving the chamber. "I'm ready to go home."
Democrats paused briefly after the walkout. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) had an aide ring bells in the cavernous State House foyer to alert them that voting would continue. Then the Democrats passed the election bill on a vote of 29 to 3 as a cluster of the chamber's red leather high-back chairs sat empty.
To many, the walkout was the product of long-simmering unrest between Democrats, who exert strong control over both legislative chambers, and Republican legislators emboldened by the 2002 election of Ehrlich, the first governor from their party in nearly 40 years.
"You did the right thing," Ehrlich told the senators as they huddled in his ornate reception room. "It's a shame it had to happen, but it did. Minority rights have been discarded, overridden and ignored for too long."
Less than an hour after the walkout, Republicans returned to the floor. Miller compared the protest to the theatrics that in past years have arisen on the General Assembly's final day, when even a single member can employ delay tactics that will sink a bill.
"The other side made a determined effort to keep us from getting those bills to the governor's desk," Miller said. "But we had to move them."
Former senator Barbara Hoffman, a Baltimore Democrat who served in the chamber for 20 years, said she could not recall a previous walkout and attributed this one to the increasingly poisonous relations between the two parties.
"Things have gotten so polarized," she said. "It just had to reach a boiling point."
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said two issues were ratcheting up the heat yesterday.
One was the effort to block the State Board of Education's decision to seize 11 low-performing schools in Baltimore, a takeover announced just three days ago. The legislation was drafted and rammed through so fast that a Senate committee wound up holding a public hearing last night, after both chambers had passed it.
Speeches on the bill consumed three rancor-filled hours, with Democrats voting at various points to suspend the rules and to cut off debate when it appeared Republicans were poised to filibuster. Miller, who is the nation's longest-serving Senate president and prides himself on maintaining firm control of the chamber, pushed through a motion to limit debate, over Republican objections.
"Senator, you have 15 minutes to talk," he barked at Minority Whip Andrew P. Harris (R-Baltimore County). "Talk."
After that bill passed, the Senate took up the election bill, which spells out where voters would be able to cast ballots for five days before the upcoming election and would shift more control to the state elections administrator, who was appointed by a Democratic governor.
Republican senators said they were stunned that Democrats had undertaken a major rewriting of the bill in a conference committee, which in this unusual instance included only Democrats. Minority Leader J. Lowell Stoltzfus (R-Somerset) said Democrats were trying to "shape things to their extreme advantage" by picking locations convenient for Democratic voters and inconvenient for Republicans.
When the bill arrived on the floor, Republicans protested that they had not had time to review the changes. They asked for a one-hour delay. Democrats said it was a procedural tactic, and the request was denied.
"I'm appalled and shocked," said Sen. Sandra B. Schrader, a moderate Republican from Howard County who sometimes votes with Democrats. "To not allow us the courtesy of even an hour, I just don't understand how someone would do that."
Similar unrest roiled the House, as Republicans tried to attach amendments to bills that, if accepted, would have forced a return to the Senate for additional votes. On a measure to remove the governor's appointees to the Public Service Commission, for instance, Del. Jeannie Haddaway (R-Talbot) proposed changing the word "chairman" to "chair."
Still, the House approved two bills responding to looming electricity rate increases -- one to force Constellation Energy Group to return $528 million to customers and a second to effectively replace the utility commission.
Signs of the hurried effort were everywhere. The chief clerk in the House, Mary Monahan, had to run the bills from her first-floor State House office up to the governor's legislative staff and collect a signed, time-stamped receipt to verify that it had arrived.
"I'm too old for this," she huffed as she made her final climb of the day, just before 5 p.m. Shortly after she left, an aide to the governor closed the door and turned the lock.
Staff writer John Wagner contributed to this report.
