Kevin Spradlin
Cumberland Times-News
— CUMBERLAND — It’s not often that you see Delegate Wendell Beitzel team up with Delegate Barbara Frush to support the same side of any legislation.
The fact that it happened on a hunting-related bill is nearly astounding. And the fact that House Bill 636, which would have authorized the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to suspend a hunting license for up to five years for a person convicted of a state or federal hunting violation, passed the House unanimously by a vote of 136-0, but failed to get to the floor in the Senate was, by all accounts, disappointing.
Beitzel is a Republican and an avid hunter representing all of Garrett County and western Allegany County. Frush is a Democrat and represents Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. Annually, Frush can be counted upon to introduce legislation that would end Western Maryland’s bear hunt. To counter that, Beitzel offers his “share the bear” bill that would authorize wildlife officials to relocate nuisance bears into jurisdictions other than Western Maryland.
DNR supported the bill. Beitzel said that could have been part of the bill’s downfall in the Senate’s Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, which gave it an unfavorable report on Tuesday.
“I think one senator over there has a problem with giving DNR more authority,” Beitzel said, declining to name the elected official.
Beitzel said the bill even had the reluctant support of the Allegany-Garrett Sportsmen’s Association. The group wasn’t “overly enthused with it” but, Beitzel said, understood the desire to police hunters who couldn’t follow the law. Beitzel also is co-chair of the Maryland Legislative Sportsmen’s Causus, and as a body, “we supported it. Being co-chair, I obviously had to support the bill. It will probably be out again next year.”
In Maryland, officials can suspend a hunter’s license for one year. In other states, Beitzel said, the suspension can last five years.
Frush, Beitzel said, “has always been so anti-hunting and pushing to not allow the bear hunt … We kind of came to a meeting of the minds … This year, she didn’t put the bill in to take away the bear hunt. I didn’t have to put the bill in to share the bear.”
Other legislative updates from the General Assembly’s final full week in session, which adjourns midnight Monday, included:
• Turkey can now be hunted on the last Sunday in April and the first Sunday in May in Allegany County, except in years in which those Sundays fall on Easter. Garrett County was added to HB 245, which passed both chambers.
• Lawmakers approved HB 246, which authorizes a person in Allegany and Garrett counties to hunt for deer on private property with a bow and arrow during open season on the last three Sundays in October and the second Sunday in November.
• Efforts to plan and design an Oakland Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Oakland will be supported by bond bills totaling $200,000 equally split between the Senate and the House.
• The Allegany County Museum project in downtown Cumberland will receive a combined $150,000, significantly less than the requested $600,000.
• An effort to reduce the distance from a natural gas drilling wellhead from a neighbor’s property to 500 feet from 1,000 feet failed despite its origination from the Maryland Department of the Environment’s Ed Larrimore and the support of Sen. George Edwards. Beitzel said the initiative “wasn’t supported by the administration.” However, “we’ll come back to that one next year,” Beitzel said.
• HB 733, which passed both chambers unanimously, auth-orizes the creation of an Emergency Services Board to assist in the distribution of funds to local volunteer fire and rescue departments.
• Beitzel’s “Made in America” bill, HB 1465, received unanimous support in the House but Senate action by Sunday morning wasn’t available. The bill, requested by Fechheimer Manufacturing in Grantsville, would require state and county government entities, including school systems, to purchase uniforms, furniture and safety equipment from items made in America.
The fiscal note attached to what Beitzel called an important “jobs bill” would have a “potential significant increase in local government expenditures … beginning in Fiscal Year 2012. Expenditure increases may be at least 15 percent of current costs but will vary based on the extent to which local governments do not already purchase or rent American-made items and on the availability of comparable American-made products. This bill imposes a mandate on a unit of local government.”
At least 20 states, including Maryland, already have some form of Buy American purchasing preference.
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