Apr 04, 2008  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Bills that would benefit gay Marylanders were advancing during legislative “crunch time” this week, gaining momentum as the session neared conclusion.

Measures granting gays new hospital visitation rights and certain tax breaks were slated for floor votes this week. Activists are pressuring lawmakers to pass the measures before adjourning Monday.

“We’re down to crunch time,” said Carrie Evans, policy director at Equality Maryland. “So things will move quickly and hopefully get to the governor’s desk.”

Awaiting votes at Blade deadline were the Health Care Facility Visitation & Medical Decisions bill, and bills to grant domestic partners exemptions for recordation, transfer and inheritance taxes.

Senators last month passed the health care bill, which would grant gay Marylanders the right to visit a partner in the hospital and make certain medical decisions for them.

Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, said this week the bill was expected to see a House vote before the session ends.

He said House members also were expected to vote on a bill that would add domestic partners to a list of blood and legal relatives that are exempted from recordation and transfer taxes. Senators passed the measure in March.

“Things are looking favorable for both of those,” Furmansky said. “We’re just trying to make some important but subtle changes to the language to get the best possible bills.”

But a bill to exempt domestic partners from inheritance taxes, which activists last week touted as viable, saw no movement in either chamber at Blade deadline. Neither chamber had touched the bill since March 6.

Furmansky said the onus apparently was on House lawmakers to save the measure.
“The message that we’ve been given,” he said, “is that it has to come out of the House because the Senate took the lead on moving the two other domestic partner bills.”

Del. Sheila Hixson (D-Montgomery County), the bill’s lead House sponsor, said she was negotiating this week with her Senate colleagues to “work out some language that might be acceptable” so the bill could see a vote.

At issue, she said, was how to write the passages that would identify with certainty the benefiting partner.

“The committee is 100 percent for this, we just don’t want to take this to the floor and have it die,” Hixson said. “We’re trying to work it out beforehand.”

Should the hospitalization rights or tax benefits bills pass the General Assembly, Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to sign them.

Christine Hansen, a spokesperson for O’Malley, said this week that the governor supports all three bills.

Furmansky welcomed the support, but questioned why “the governor’s staff is willing to publicly support all three bills to a gay publication” when a spokesperson last month told the Baltimore Sun that O’Malley was “still reviewing” one of the tax benefits bills.

“The LGBT community deserves stronger, unequivocal support from our governor,” Furmansky said, “not late-in-the-game proclamations of support to a primarily LGBT audience.”

Passage of the piecemeal bills would represent some good news for Equality Maryland, which asked lawmakers this session to enact marriage rights for same-sex couples.
Those bills died in committee after they failed to muster sufficient support to reach a floor vote.

Activists noted that efforts to constitutionally ban such unions, though, also fizzled. Evans said a growing number of moderate lawmakers are opposing efforts to ban same-sex marriages or unions.

“It’s a good exercise for those people,” she said. “So it continues to be helpful with delegates who can take these little steps — and eventually we’ll get them to vote for the marriage bill.”

Evans said Del. Don Dwyer (R-Anne Arundel County), who’s made the constitutional amendment a perennial offering, probably would introduce the bill again next session, but legislators likely would bat it down.

“Maybe one of these years, Del. Dwyer will say it’s not worth it and he won’t introduce it,” she said. “That’s of course after the heavens part and Jesus comes down and says, after all this time, that he was a gay man and that his father, God, is the president of PFLAG in Heaven.”