ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The word of the day in the Senate Chambers was override.
A lot of the package of bills that were included in the override have to do with law enforcement and quelling violence.
“The bills that we moved forward create a comprehensive approach towards dealing with violence,” said Senate President Bill Ferguson. “Investing in programs that are evidence based, that we know work, and that are the right way to be approaching the complexity, as the minority Whip said the epidemic of violence.”
Republican Senator Justin Ready voted against the vetoes largely because of their price tags and the fact that they don’t come with other key parts of an original bill package.
They passed all the spending, all the hand outs to different community groups and spending on a lot of social programs,” Ready said. “Which again I voted for because they were part of a package. The part of that package the key part was also really cracking down on crime and making sure we are putting people away that want to hurt people.”
A big topic of discussion of course were bills currently in the house or that will be up for a vote at a later time.
Including overriding the Governors veto of the Kirwan Commission's plan.
“If this bill goes through it will set the stage for budget deficits in the future and possibly massive tax increases,” Ready said. “Instead we should sustain the Governors veto, go back to the drawing board and look at ways we can perhaps increase spending on education but we got to look at the new way we are doing it too. We’re going to need things like tutoring and other types of resources to help parents.”
Ferguson said that the plan is over ten years and is far from outdated.
“Because of the pandemic the gaps that existed prior to the pandemic have only been exhauster-bated and a plan for public education is more important now than it has ever been,” Ferguson said. “There will have to be adjustments.”
The house isn’t expected to be back physically in the Statehouse until February.
All of the committee and sub committee meetings will be done virtually in the meantime.
