The fate of Marc Norman and his union buddies’ petition drive to place CB58 on the ballot was debated in a senate hearing in Annapolis yesterday. According to this article by Larry Carson in The Sun, an emergency bill sponsored by Senator Ed Kasemeyer got a “warm reception” at the hearing.
“Local election boards have been using a looser standard for decades, and Kasemeyer and his backers said the court-imposed rules, adopted by the state election board last week, are too strict and are unfair.
"We are going to change it," State Sen. Roy Dyson, the committee vice chair told one witness who supports the bill.”
The tricky question surrounds the retroactive piece of the bill. Norman needs the emergency bill to be retroactive in order for his petition effort to derail the Harris Teeter supermarket in Turf Valley to survive. A few senators, including Senator Alan Kittleman, have a problem with this. They believe it could potentially open a huge can of worms.
If the bill is made retroactive for Marc Norman, Ruth Jacobs think it should be made retroactive for her as well. It was her petition drive in Montgomery County that resulted in the Court of Appeals ruling that started all this.
The question is where do you stop? If Jacobs has her way the bill would be made retroactive to 2007 instead of the December 2008 date that Mr. Ed has proposed.
What’s to keep someone from arguing that it should be pushed back even further?
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