Explains why marriage equality is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue but a civil rights issue--an American issue.
Showing posts with label Allan Kittleman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Allan Kittleman. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Sen. Allan Kittleman on Marriage Equality
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Kittleman Breaks with GOP Caucus
The Maryland Politics Blog at the Washington Post says:
Sen. Allan H. Kittleman (R-Howard) parted ways with fellow Senate Republicans on Tuesday as they voted as a caucus to oppose a same-sex marriage bill pending in the Maryland General Assembly this year.The Gazette has more on Sen. Kittleman's plans during the session and his decision to step down as Republican Leader.
In an interview, Kittleman said he thought the caucus position was wrong and would announce his intentions in coming days.
Update: Sen. Kittleman has said he will support the bill to bring marriage equality to Maryland:
As a strong proponent of personal and economic liberty/freedom, I simply could not, in good conscience, vote against SB 116," Kittleman wrote in a explanation of his decision.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Dems Call GOP Bluff on Budget
Maryland Republican legislators have been yapping up a storm about Governor O’Malley’s budget proposal, which relies almost as much on one-time transfers as it does on cuts to achieve balance for the year. So the Democratic budget chairs replied, “You don’t like it? OK, guys – you deal with it!”
The Governor’s FY11 budget proposal proposes $913 million in transfers and $1.014 billion in cuts to resolve a $1.95 billion deficit. That continues what has become an annual tradition of using band-aids to deal with current deficits and postponing more lasting fixes until next year or beyond. The Gazette carried quotes from the Republican leaders in each chamber of the General Assembly who complained about the practice:House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell (R-Dist. 29C) of Lusby called that method of budgeting unwise.
So the Chairs of the two budget committees – Senator Ulysses Currie and Delegate Norm Conway – sent a letter to Kittleman and O’Donnell, noting that GOP legislators had voted for $2.5 billion in spending cuts in the Spending Affordability Committee. Currie and Conway want to know where the GOP would find these cuts. We reprint the letter below.
“We’ve got to stop taking their money from them and do the spending reductions that we need to do,” he said. Republicans got a separate briefing from the governor.
Miller and Busch have said the legislature will not pass any tax increases in 2010, an election year. Senate Minority Leader Allan H. Kittleman (R-Dist. 9) of West Friendship raised the specter of future tax increases.
“They’re going to borrow and beg and steal from fund balances to do whatever they can to get through this year, and you and I and all the citizens of Maryland are going to get socked next year,” he said.
The GOP does not have an easy task. Eighty-five percent of the $13.2 billion general fund (which is smaller than in former Governor Ehrlich’s last year in office) goes to education, health and public safety. It is virtually impossible to implement large budget cuts without touching those items.
So to be consistent with their statements and record, the Republicans would have to run on a platform of cutting schools, health care and police. Good luck with that!
Monday, October 19, 2009
E-ZPolitics
The Maryland Senate Republican Caucus has sent out two letters to the Governor and the state’s chief judge seeking to capitalize on the free E-ZPass issue. But the GOP’s cheap shot reeks of both myopia and hypocrisy.
The caucus website contains this letter from Senate Minority Leader Allan Kittleman (R-9):October 2, 2009
Kittleman sent an identical letter to Chief Judge Robert M. Bell.
Dear Governor O’Malley:
I am enclosing a letter sent to Senate and House Members from Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and Speaker Michael Busch dated September 29, 2009 regarding non-revenue E-ZPass accounts. The presiding officers have decided to terminate the non-revenue E-ZPass program for the legislative branch.
According to an article in Thursday’s Baltimore Sun, about 15,000 of these non-revenue E-ZPass accounts exist for government employees, including the executive and judicial branches. Does the executive branch also have plans to terminate the non-revenue program?
Respectfully,
Allan H. Kittleman
Senate Minority Leader
Let’s remember exactly what the free E-ZPass story was about: a minor, but unjustified and annoying, perk for politicians. Let’s also remember who has them besides state legislators. The Maryland Transportation Authority told us that recipients include police officers, fire fighters, ambulance drivers and highway maintenance employees. What reasonable person would suggest that an ambulance driver responding to an emergency call should have to stop at a toll booth on the way there? That seems to be exactly what Senator Kittleman is suggesting.
And the Senator conveniently omits the fact that we caught fifteen Republicans with free E-ZPasses, including one member of the GOP Caucus (Senator J. Lowell Stoltzfus) and House Minority Leader Tony O’Donnell. This is truly a perk without a party, and any attempt by Republicans to grandstand on the issue is drenched in the oozing muck of hypocrisy.
If the Republicans really want to get serious, they should make a list of the remaining perks for legislators, give them all up and challenge the Democrats to do the same. Failing that, they should stand down and save the drivel for next year.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Maryland GOP is its Own Worst Enemy
Normally, one of the few advantages to being a minority party is greater unity. Party leaders in those circumstances can sometimes put aside their differences to rally behind the common goal of seizing power. But that is far from the case with Maryland’s Republican Party.
In September, the House GOP released a fiscal plan calling for tax cuts, a spending freeze and a slots license auction that they claim would raise more money than would the slots referendum. Democrats criticized them for not being specific about their spending cuts. However, in a March 2008 budget proposal, House Republicans did offer a few specific cuts which we reproduce below:
A few notes on the acronyms. OPEB refers to “other post-employment benefits,” which are primarily comprised of health benefits for retirees. The Government Accounting Standards Board recently required state and local governments to report the value of their unfunded liabilities, prompting many governments to establish contribution schedules to minimize them. The Republican proposal would delay the state’s plan to fund its OPEB liabilities. (One wonders if that would impact the state’s credit rating.) GCEI refers to the “geographic cost of education index,” a component of the Thornton state education plan that channels money to jurisdictions with higher education costs. The primary beneficiaries of GCEI, which was partially funded for the first time by the O’Malley administration, are Baltimore City, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County. Because none of those jurisdictions are represented by Republicans, it makes a sort of self-serving sense for them to target those areas for cuts.
And so, here are some real spending cuts suggested by Republicans. The problem is that they are opposed... by other Republicans. When we pointed out in a prior post that new Senate GOP Leader Allan Kittleman denounced spending cuts proposed by the Governor, Senator Kittleman commented in part:Governor O’Malley’s proposal to now cut one-quarter billion dollars from a budget only three months old will wreak havoc to state employees and those who depend upon state services for their livelihood. We are distressed at the prospect of drastic cuts that could have been avoided if the Administration had opted for restraint in new spending over the last two years...
In addition, the silence of the Senate GOP to the House GOP’s plan is deafening.
Maryland’s employees are facing job losses or furloughs in addition to cuts to other resources that will hamper their abilities to perform their jobs. This did not have to happen if wise budget decisions had been made earlier in the formation of the budget.
State employees are dedicated, hard-working public servants who do not deserve this personal crisis in their lives due solely to misguided budget policy of the current Administration.
Maryland’s Republicans have two inter-related problems. First, their House and Senate delegations cannot work together. That is exacerbated by disagreements within each caucus. Speaker Mike Busch and Big Daddy are licking their chops over this because these coordination problems make it that much easier to roll over the GOP.
But secondly, and much more seriously, the Republican Party cannot figure out what it stands for. Is it a Democrat-lite party as represented by Senator Kittleman’s comments? Is it a conservative party in line with Senator Alex Mooney and Delegate Don Dwyer? Or is it just a rag-tag bunch of dead-enders united only by the “R” next to their names and a common resentment of Governor O’Malley? The party is avoiding these questions and is instead bogged down in tactical and personal debates, such as whether to get rid of its current state chairman, making accusations of "arrogance" against Congressional candidate Andy Harris and gleefully indulging in scratching, hissing cat fights.
My advice to the GOP is to be true to itself and follow the path of Red Maryland. In line with the state’s conservative bloggers, the party should advocate for 1. drastic spending cuts, 2. paying state workers the minimum wage, 3. privatizing transportation projects, 4. spying on groups with a “shady past,” 5. the notion that man-made global warming is “sheer utopian nonsense,” and 6. wishing for a Bradley Effect to stop Democrats. They might not get a lot of votes with these positions, but at least they’d stand for something!
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Are You Kidding Me?
New Senate Minority Leader Allan Kittleman (R-9) issued an amazing statement today decrying the Governor’s upcoming spending cuts. You have to read this to believe it.
According to PolitickerMD, Kittleman said this about the cuts:Governor O'Malley's proposal to now cut one-quarter billion dollars from a budget only three months old will wreak havoc to state employees and those who depend upon state services for their livelihood.
Many liberals might agree with such a statement. The problem is that Allan Kittleman himself would disagree with it – at least, before he apparently became a liberal.
Way back in 2002, when Kittleman was running for a Howard County Council seat, he offered this view on government spending to The Business Monthly: I support a smaller government that lives within its means. I firmly oppose increasing property or income tax rates. I would make up budget shortfalls by reducing expenditures in areas that are not primary functions of government and by eliminating government waste.
Once he was in the Maryland Senate, Kittleman opposed the special session’s tax increases and advocated spending restraint. Capital News Service reported his views before the special session began:Kittleman said Maryland has “a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” noting that state revenues continue to increase "1 to 2 percent a year.
Kittleman advocated spending restraint again according to the Baltimore Daily Record:
The Senate minority whip believes the state should simply limit its spending to the receipts it collects.
“If you can't afford your mortgage, don't build a garage,” he said.Republicans on Tuesday called for O'Malley to revisit local aid when dealing with the budget deficit. Senate Minority Whip Allan H. Kittleman, R-Carroll and Howard, said the deficit could be solved by slowing state spending increases.
Kittleman then joined a lawsuit to overturn the special session’s tax package that was subsequently thrown out. One of the principle objections by the plaintiffs to the special session, of course, was that it focused on tax increases and not on spending cuts.
“We can frankly resolve this problem not by having tax increases and not by cutting any programs,” he said.
After all this, Kittleman is now worried that spending cuts will “wreak havoc to state employees and those who depend upon state services for their livelihood.” So is the Senate Minority Leader a liberal, a conservative or someone who cannot make up his mind? You decide!
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