MoCo General Assembly Delegation Priority Hearing
I testified and asked our delegation to please work on 3 issues:
1. Strengthen the Open Meetings Act. Now, if the Compliance Board find a violation the law says its opinion is merely "advisory." If public officials hold unlawful secret meetings the law should allow orders to correct the situation, such as voiding all actions resulting from the secret meetings.
Also, as in other states such as Michigan, public officials who violate the law by having secret meetings should be subject to fines of $1,000.
And, the Open Meetings Act now only requires one person to be trained about open meetings (the training is online, takes about 2 hours, and is excellent), and that one person can be staff, all members appointed to public bodies should be required to take this training or be removed from office.
2. Our Annapolis delegation should take the lead in repealing our awful state song. All other states have songs that sing the praises of their land an people. Maryland alone has a song that calls its people cowards for not joining Virginia is seceding from the U.S., and praises those who murdered U.S. soldiers.
3. Our delegation should take the lead on what are sometimes called "women's issues" but are really human rights issues. Convicted rapists should not have any parental rights. It is horrible to even consider that, yet it's now in the law. The law should be clarified to say that the moment a woman says "no" to further sexual activity, no matter what has come before, if the man continues then the act is rape. And of course there should be equal pay for equal work regardless of gender.
State Delegates Ben Kramer, Marice Morales, and Kathleen Dumais, and State Senator Jamie Raskin have been working on these issues and deserve praise for their efforts.
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