From the office of Del. Kathy Szeliga:
Dear Friends,
There have been 2,296 bills introduced in both the House and Sente so far. Fortunately, not very many have passed yet!
Hot Off The Press!! Gay Marriage Update
At 2:30 today, the House Judiciary Committee passed the gay marriage bill by a vote of 12-10. This bill will now go to the entire House of Delegates for a vote, most likely on Tuesday.
If you would like to encourage your family and friends to weigh-in on this measure, feel free to forward my email to them.
LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!! Contact your members of the House of Delegates and tell them to VOTE NO ON GAY MARRIAGE!
To find your elected officials, click on the following link:
http://mdelect.net/
click on “find your federal and state elected officials”
The first group of elected officials on the page will be your “Delegates.” These are the people you need to get in touch with!!
Click on each name and either send an email or call their office.
As you know, I will be voting against gay marriage – no need to contact me!
Once this bill passes, we will have our work cut out for us. We will need to gather thousands of signatures on petitions to get the measure on the ballot. Once we get past the petition signature hurdle, we will have to get voters to the polls to vote for marriage between one man and one woman.
Stay tuned….. I will keep you updated on this issue.
Republicans Offer Budget Proposal
I was proud to be an integral part of the Republican Budget Proposal in the House of Delegates. We worked very hard to craft a thoughtful and useable plan that balances the budget without raising taxes. We have a plan to resolve the state’s structural deficit and helps get us to a small less intrusive government. This plan was given some good coverage from the Washington Post and the Baltimore Business Journal. You can link to those articles below:
Biz Journal – “Md. GOP wants to cut more from budget”
Washington Post – “They weren’t asked to, but for a second straight year Maryland House Republicans on Tuesday released their own “alternate” budget to Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed spending plan.”
You can also link directly to that plan here:
Alcohol Tax and Gas Tax:
There is a move afoot to raise the alcohol tax in Maryland. HB 121 was heard in the Ways and Means Committee on Thursday and I’m not sure if it will pass.
This new tax is supposed to fund six new programs. I do not think we need any more taxes in Maryland. The $35 Billion Maryland budget is enough! We need to make government more efficient and effective.
The Maryland alcohol tax which is being marketed at “a dime a drink,” will impose a whopping increase of 569% for liquor, 640% for wine & 1,189% for beer. This tax would be added to the wholesaler’s cost and ultimately built into the retail price, on top of which, Maryland customers would have to pay 6% sales tax. In practical terms, this means that roughly an additional $4.00 in taxes will be levied on each 1.5 liter bottle of liquor and $2.50 on a case of beer – and then add your 6% sales tax on top of that.
There are a few ideas floating around to increase the gas tax. If you would like to sign an online petition to help stop the gas tax, click on the link below:
I will be voting NO for the alcohol and gas taxes.
This week, the Cat in the Hat visited Annapolis!
Thanks for your continued support and encouragement. I am humbled and honored to be representing you and your family in Annapolis.
Kathy Szeliga
Maryland House of Delegates
I agree any new tax is a bad tax.Taxes were originally proposed for the common good. Now they mostly go to special interest groups. How does giving illegals a free education and health care etc, paying people to have kids they can’t afford and raiding the trans. trust fund to pay for various social programs help the general public?
Tax the poor to feed the rich.
I remember the year when the Chevy Corvette and the Ford Thunderbird were first introduced to the public in 1955. That was a banner year for car buffs and, as it turns out, for the alcohol industry. This was the last time Maryland raised taxes on hard alcohol (beer and wine have been free of new taxes since 1972.)
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse , “…alcohol abuse and alcoholism cost an estimated $148 billion, while drug abuse and dependence cost an estimated $98 billion.” That is almost 50% higher. Alcohol is the leading drug problem for young people and causes 33% of deaths among the 10-20 year old cohort.
Our Republican led delegation are constantly whining that the state does not have the fiscal resources to provide services we desperately need and yet they overlook this source of income. They are using furloughs, layoffs and other means to balance the budget on the backs of middle class workers instead of doing what most Marylanders prefer. We the people must remind the Harford County politicians that “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization .” It is ludicrous to not raise taxes on alcohol from the time when a new Corvette cost $3600.
Del. Szeliga,
Just curious who the “we” is you say has their “work cut out for us”? Certainly not the LGBT citizens of your district that are being discriminated against. By distributing this letter in such a public forum you seem to be addressing all your constituents but at the same time targeting a select few.
Same-sex marriages have taken place for years now in 6 different jurisdictions across the country. As far as I can tell, the world has not ended and no harm has been done to “traditional” marriage. Given the divorce rates in this country, it seems to me that your time and energy would be better spent on finding ways to help couples stay together rather than trying to keep them from marrying in the first place.
One last thing, you placed your hand on a Bible to defend the constitution, not the other way around. Please don’t inject your religious bias into a legal and civil rights issue. The government issues marriage licenses, not the “Church”.
Why should we need the governments permission to marry?
The government should not decide who may marry whom. It does, however, need to register the marriages.
Judges are required to settle cases involving probate, child custody and support, divorce, and hundreds of other legal issues that depend on marriage.
Marriages need to be registered so that a judge may know, without question, whether a particular person is married, and if so, to whom.
The terminology of a marriage “license” is wrong. It should be a “registration”. But, other than that one word, the paperwork would be just about the same.
I agree Steve Hansen. Who should decide who can conduct a marriage ceremony, should that be the government if it is necessary to have the marriage registered?
I only wish there was a gas tax on the Delegates pontifications. We could balance the budget.
She asks that our voices be heard as long as we are against gay marriage. I’m against homophob Delegates who, if remembered at all, will be remembered for yet another embarrassing moment in our history.
On Del McDonough alone we could run a surplus!
I would love to see the calculations that came up with those unbelieveable percent increases!
I second that emotion. Please, Delegate, explain how those percentage increases were calculated.
By my calculations, if a 10-cent tax increase is a 569% increase on the current tax rate for a drink of liquor, the current rate would have to be about 1.76 cents per drink.
Increase % = ($ increase) / ($ current)
5.69 = $0.10 / ($ Current)
($ Current) = $0.10 / 5.69 = $0.01757…
You were voted in to represent your constituents, not to vote on par with your misguided religious beliefs. For a representative of the taxpayers you should be voting for what THEY want and not what YOU want.
For those who are actually interested, the dime-a-drink tax is being proposed to help pay for mental health services in Maryland, which are woefully underfunded. Clinics everywhere are closing because there is simply not enough money to keep them open, and direct care staff is paid so poorly that in most places they qualify for food stamps.