O'Malley Vetoes Bills on Handgun Sales, Parole Rules

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley vetoed two crime bills yesterday, one that would have made twice-convicted drug dealers eligible for parole and another that would have allowed police to sell used handguns back to manufacturers.

Calling drug dealing "a violent crime," O'Malley (D) said he disagreed with supporters of the narrowly passed bill who argued that current law unfairly punishes low-level dealers by imposing the same sentences on them as on larger-scale distributors.

The governor said he feared that the gun bill, which passed the Democrat-led Senate and House of Delegates unanimously, would put more weapons on the street. Under current law, police must destroy the guns, transfer them to other agencies or sell them to a current or retired officer.

"Marylanders are all too familiar with the tragic effects of gun crimes," O'Malley said in his veto message to legislative leaders.

The vetoes brought to three the number that O'Malley has issued after a legislative session that ended April 9 in which lawmakers sent him almost 800 bills. O'Malley's only other veto, issued Tuesday, came after he learned that lawmakers had inadvertently passed the wrong version of a bill altering the operations of a state dental examiners board.

O'Malley is scheduled to hold his final bill-signing ceremony today. Among the measures he will sign, aides said, are bills to ban smoking in restaurants and bars statewide, take away driving privileges for repeat truants, toughen penalties on sex offenders and require paper receipts on voting equipment.

The drug-sentencing bill was one of the session's most divisive, passing the House by just five votes. Under the bill, drug dealers convicted a second time who did not commit violent crimes would have been eligible for parole 2 1/2 years into their mandatory 10-year sentences. The bill was a priority of the Legislative Black Caucus, whose members have expressed alarm at the number of African Americans in jail on drug charges. Many low-level drug dealers are themselves users, selling to feed their habits, caucus members said.

"We don't believe the people this bill was intended for are threats to society," Herman L. Taylor Jr. (D-Montgomery), vice-chairman of the caucus, said yesterday. "There's a narrow line between who is a user and who is a dealer."

O'Malley acknowledged that his veto would not be well received by some in his party, but he said in his veto message: "We know all too well that somewhere along the chain of drug production and distribution lives are lost, families are devastated and communities are destroyed."

He said the bill "does nothing to expand drug treatment. . . . I absolutely am committed to increasing the availability and effectiveness of drug treatment and drug treatment funding."

He said existing law provides an "avenue" for judges to divert nonviolent offenders from prison into treatment. But judges and public defenders have complained that the demand for long-term care far exceeds the supply.

The other vetoed bill would have repealed a provision of existing law that required law enforcement agencies to destroy old guns or transfer them to another police force.