League of Women Voters of Maryland

from the STATE BOARD LETTER, NOVEMBER 2007 The Special Session of the General Assembly is taking place as I write. We don’t yet have information about just how long this session will last. I wanted to offer you some tips and information about how to keep current with what’s going on during the Session. The Maryland General Assembly website - http://mlis.state.md.us/ - is the best place to start. This site has links to all the legislation, including fiscal notes, amendments, and status towards passage. There is also a link on this page where you can listen to proceedings of the Senate and the House of Delegates. I encourage each of you to listen, if only for a little while, to one of the sessions. For those of us who don’t often get the opportunity to attend a session of the entire Senate or entire House (many of us attend hearings of the individual committees) it’s an ear-opening experience to listen to how they work. The testimony that has been presented by LWVMD for this Special Session is available on our League website. A good analysis of what many believe are necessary state services that are not being funded adequately – the issue being addressed in this Special Session - “Left behind in the budget debate” was prepared by the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute and is available at their website: http://www.marylandpolicy.org. And I urge you to read the message elsewhere in this SBL about receiving LWVMD Action Alerts. It’s important. Lu Pierson