County delegation to take up haul seine bill Friday
Days before the Maryland crossover deadline, the Anne Arundel County delegation will take up a bill that would allow watermen in Anne Arundel County to fish using a large net called a haul seine with limited restrictions.
House bill 843, in this exact form, is in the legislature for the first time. But sponsor Del. Seth Howard, R-West River, tried a similar bill last year. It passed the House of Delegates and didn’t make it through the Senate in the coronavirus-shortened session.
Howard could not be reached for this story.
The delegation will vote on it Friday morning alongside an amended version of House Bill 933, which would allow real estate transfer tax to flow into a special housing trust fund to bolster affordable housing in the county. The delegation meets at 8 a.m. Friday via Zoom. Members of the public can stream the meeting live by visiting the Maryland General Assembly website, clicking on the “Meetings” tab and clicking the red “Live” button next to the Anne Arundel County Delegation meeting.
If the bills pass in the delegation, they are likely to be ushered along in the process. Both still require a majority vote of support from both the House of Delegates and the Senate. Delegates and senators of other counties often defer to local lawmakers when bills only affect specific areas of the state, though it doesn’t guarantee passage. This is often called “local courtesy.”
A vote of support from the delegation will increase the chances that the bill will cross over to the Senate by Monday’s “crossover deadline” — procedural deadline lawmakers aim to get their bills to the opposite chamber by. Bills that cross chambers after the deadline have to go through extra hurdles.
Advocates of the watermen say the bill is especially during the pandemic because of tumult in the oyster and rockfish markets, that allowing them to capture other fish would be beneficial in helping them stay financially afloat. Opponents say these nets have the ability to wipe out large groups of fish quickly. He said environmentalists have spent years working to protect and restore county waterways that would be impacted by the bill.
The transfer tax bill, sponsored by Delegation Chair Sandy Bartlett, D-Maryland City, is enabling legislation that would enable the County Council to raise the real estate transfer tax for properties worth more than $1 million to create a housing trust fund that would subsidize low income or affordable housing.
It has the support of Democrats, County Executive Steuart Pittman, Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley and Melissa Maddox-Evans, executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis. The delegation’s Republican members have expressed concerns about the bill because of the possibility of increased taxes.
Legislators will also receive a presentation from CEO of Anne Arundel County libraries Skip Auld; President and CEO of the Annapolis Maritime Museum and Park Alice Estrada; and Office of Policy Analysis’ legislative manager Hiram Burch.