MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, where foreign and independent films fit into the American cinematic eco-system. We get ready for this year's edition of Filmfest D.C.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut first, we sign off on this year's legislative session in Maryland. Lawmakers in Annapolis worked late into the night on Monday passing several sweeping bills in the process during the session's final hours. From the first hike in the state's alcohol tax in a generation to a proposal that grants in-state college tuition benefits to undocumented immigrants.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut many will remember this year's legislative session for the bills that did not pass on issues like same-sex marriage and offshore wind power. Joining us to explore how this new wave of laws may affect those who live in Maryland and across the region is Charles Robinson. He's a political correspondent for Maryland Public Television. Charles Robinson joins us by phone from Annapolis. Charles, thank you for joining us.

MR. CHARLES ROBINSONGood morning, Kojo, what a -- oh no, it's afternoon. I can't remember...

NNAMDINo, you can't remember. You were up too late last night.

ROBINSONYes. I was up late.

NNAMDICharles, the General Assembly worked right up until the final bell last night passing two bills that drew a particularly large amount of attention, a hike in the state's alcohol tax and the Maryland Dream Act, a bill that grants in-state tuition benefits to undocumented immigrants. What were the political forces at work during the final days and moments of the session?

ROBINSONWell, part of it was that you had this confluence of events. I think on the in-state tuition , the key was a new senator who was elected and that was Senator Ramirez. And he basically became a force to make this piece of legislation go because up until this point, most of the time that legislation had died in committee. But he was able to get some additional individuals to come around on this idea and, you know, he brought a number of folks down here to actually lobby on behalf. A number of students were there when they actually passed the bill.

ROBINSONThe alcohol tax was a really big issue because it kind of also brought together this confluence of folks who weren't necessarily for or against it. It started out as a bill to help the developmentally disabled. Then it turned into how are we going to aid education in places like Prince George's County, Baltimore City and Montgomery County to the detriment of some of the smaller counties of the state on the Eastern shore and West of Maryland.

NNAMDIYou mentioned Senator Ramirez. We did talk with Victor Ramirez of Prince George's County at the beginning of the session when he introduced the bill. Joining us now by telephone from Annapolis is Thomas V. "Mike" Miller, president of the Maryland Senate. He's a Democrat whose district includes parts of Calvert and Prince George's Counties. Senator Miller, thank you for joining us.

MR. THOMAS V. "MIKE" MILLER JR.Glad to be here.

NNAMDIGovernor O'Malley told reporters yesterday that the Assembly, quoting here, "choked" on a couple of big pieces of his agenda for the year particularly on his offshore wind energy plan. But before you respond to that, give us your own analysis of how the senate's session went going into the late night yesterday.

JR.It was, you know, fantastic. I've been doing this for over 40 years and there really was nothing left undone that needed to be done. All the signature items that could be passed were passed. The budget was balanced. We provided cuts. We provided revenues. Maryland State is of a middle temperament. You know, unlike our sister states, we're not firing teachers and making drastic cuts. We're far better off than New York and Illinois and California and Florida and most of our sister states. And we're number one in education for three years in a row.

JR.And we've done what we should do. I mean, the illegal immigration bill is hard to explain because you say there is illegal immigration and your constituents are against it. You say those two words and they're against it. But when you explain in paragraphs that they're already here. We paid for their education from K through 12 because we have to and it's the right thing to do. The federal government says you have to do that. And they're on the path to citizenship. And we require three years of income tax. We require them to register for the draft. And if all these requirements are met, then we say you're eligible for a community college.

JR.This is the same bill that was signed into law by George Bush when he was governor of Texas. It was the same bill that was signed into law when Governor Huckabee was governor of Arkansas. Maryland is now the 11th state to recognize these people are here. Let's educate them. Let's make them a positive force in our environment and it's the right thing to do. It's hard to explain, but it's the right thing to do. And when people get used to the idea, they're going to accept it and we're going to move on.

NNAMDIMike Miller is president of the Maryland Senate. If you'd like to join the conversation, you can call us at 800-433-8850 or send e-mail to kojo@wamu.org Send us a tweet at kojoshow. Now, on to Governor O'Malley's assertions that the General Assembly choked on his offshore wind energy plan and his plan to limit construction of most new septic systems to reduce pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. How do you respond to that, Mr. Senator?

JR.He had good year. He had a good year. He proposed a couple of bills that were not ready for prime time. You know, the governor is from Montgomery County. He was mayor of Baltimore City and now he lives in Annapolis.

JR.I don't know that he fully understands Western Maryland, the eastern shore and the south of Maryland where there are no sewer lines, where it's, you know, it's septic tanks. And to say ban septic tanks in the future means you ban all construction in those areas. I mean, that's a hard pill to swallow for local county commissioners in these rural areas.

NNAMDIIt's my understanding that you and your colleagues felt like you were caught off-guard at the State of the State Address when the governor announced that plan to limit the construction of new septic systems. Was your reaction more about what he was asking for or how he went about asking?

JR.I think he just kind of threw it out in the State of the State speech as a goal. It's a very laudable goal and in the future that is where we need to be. I mean but it's a far-reaching goal and, you know, he wants to preserve and protect the Chesapeake Bay and that's the largest estuary in the United States and we need to all be there and this is where he's headed but it's not something you do in a year. You've got to -- you spend political capital. You've got to develop public opinion. You've got to go to the rural areas and explain the alternatives and where we need to be. And it's just not quite ready at this time, but it's something that's going to have to happen in the future.

JR.Perhaps an intermediate step would be to say any future septic tanks would have to have the facility to ban nitrogen from getting out into the estuaries, to ban nitrogen from escaping into the ground. That's possible. They're a little more expensive, but it's a good first step, rather than saying no septic tanks whatsoever. I mean, in the rural areas, you know, we're only 50 years removed from outhouses, quite frankly, you know, as are all rural areas in the United States. So they had septic tanks. And now, just to ban septic tanks means you ban construction and ban new houses. You ban development on family farms. We don't need to take that step at this time.

NNAMDISenator Miller, I'm so glad you said you've been doing this for about 40 years right now because I can't think of anybody in a better position to assess where you think the governor is right now in terms of his political capital in Annapolis at the end of the session.

JR.Very high. I mean, he ran for re-election against a former governor and, you know, he won by 6 percentage points the first time and when he ran the second time, he won by 14 percent in a strong Republican year.

JR.Republicans were winning all over the United States taking back the Congress, taking governorships elsewhere and he won by 14 points over a well-liked former Republican governor. So he's well-positioned. Again, his strong strength is in Prince George's, Montgomery Counties, Baltimore City, Charles County and Howard County and he's working the rest of the areas quite well. I'm not sure what's in store for him in the future years, I assume a U.S. Senate seat, but he definitely is looking to do something in the future politically.

NNAMDICharles Robinson, your own assessment of how the governor did in this session in Annapolis and maybe you have a question for Mike Miller, too.

ROBINSONI do have a question for Mike Miller.

NNAMDII knew you would.

ROBINSONI wanted to talk about the structural deficit. And I know you had to make some tough choices, specifically as it related to pensions in the state. As you know, some state employees said that you basically tried to balance the structural deficits on their backs. How do you answer that charge?

JR.Well, you know, I'm involved in politics nationwide. I've been president of what's called the DLCC, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is legislators, the Democrats nationwide, for six years. I haven't been for the last two years, but I'm still on the board. I'm the past president of all the senate presidents nationwide. How we've handled it has been very modestly compared to our sister states.

JR.I mean, states like, you know, actually every state including Cuomo in New York, a thing you'd expect better of. You know they're bouncing the backs on -- the pension on the backs of the employees. What we did, we said, look, this is not sustainable. We're picking up the cost of these pensions and it's not sustainable. You know, even when the budget doesn't grow by 0 percent, we're supposed to put in a 7.5 percent increase in the pensions. So what we had to do, we had to make some adjustments. The governor made some adjustments.

JR.We brought down our structural deficit. Our state teachers, our state employees were a little bit angry this year, but they weren't furloughed. They've all got their jobs and their pension is going to be there when they retire. That's very important. Some of these states can't say it.

ROBINSONI know you have had some very contentious debates, specifically in your chamber. And the one that I think that a lot of folks watched was the in-state tuition issue for immigrants. When you sit up on that chair and you watch that debate, what do you see out there when you see your colleagues go back and forth?

JR.What I see is Victor Ramirez. I see a quiet, gentle soul who is -- his family is from El Salvador. He did everything the right way. He's a lawyer. He went to Frostburg State College. And he's from the northern part of Prince George's County, Mount Rainer, and I saw him work his colleagues and explain his situation and explain the situation to his colleagues in the Senate. And they began to understand and appreciate so he lobbied from the inside. And I saw Senator Richard Madaleno.

JR.Richard Madaleno is a gay parent. He's got a partner and he's got two young African-American children that he and his partner have adopted and he is our friend. He's a sub-committee chair. He's one of the brightest members of the Senate. He graduated from Georgetown Prep. You know, he was brought up in the Catholic faith, but the Catholic faith sort of disowned him because of what he has become and what he stands for. But at the same time, you see someone like that in that type of relationship and so therefore it made the gay marriage bill, even though I voted against it, a positive force in the Senate so it passed the Senate. It died in the House.

NNAMDIIndeed, Charles Robinson, dying in the House, it seemed that at the beginning of the session, the major hurdle for same-sex marriage would be in the Senate, which ended up passing out a bill that would have allowed marriages, same-sex marriages, to be formed in Maryland. But Charles, the bill essentially died in the House. What happened there?

ROBINSONI want to tell you that that was probably one of the most riveting debates I have ever heard with personal stories going back and forth. And it became anti-climatic with the bill actually going back to committee, essentially killing the bill for the session. I can tell you it took a lot of wind out of the House and, you know, a lot of folks, especially those of us who cover it, could see this kind of -- this build-up of tension and then it, you know, it kind of dropped on us. And as we moved forward, you know, everything else seemed kind of mundane, if you will.

ROBINSONI do need to ask the president one more question as it relates to the alcohol tax. A lot of folks beginning the session said that tax didn't have a life. But it got a life and then it had a lot of deals with it. What do you say to constituents who are going to say, hey, you raised taxes during this session?

JR.I don't have any problem with it at all. As you know, some of you know my family is in the alcohol business. My grandfather started the store in 1913. It's a large retail store. My father, my brothers and now my cousin owns it. I don't have any interest in the store itself, but I know the industry. I mean, I worked there from the time I was ten to 24. I voted to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21. My daddy said, look son, we don't need to sell whiskey to teenagers or beer to teenagers.

JR.You know and just -- it was the right thing to do. I voted to raise the beer tax in 1972 when I was a member of the house delegates. It was the right thing to do. It hasn't been raised for a long time. But what was initially proposed was a 10 cent -- so called, 10 cents a drink. Which sounds good, but it actually raised the tax, like, almost, like, eight fold. So it made us non-competitive with Pennsylvania and Virginia and Washington, D.C. It was imposed on the wholesale level.

JR.And when you impose on the road -- wholesale level before you get to the distributor, before you get to the retailer, you get a couple more mark ups in-between. And so what we came up with, a solution rather than having this drastic increase in alcohol, is that we imposed it at the retail level and we make it modest, one percent a year for three years, which is still lower than the District of Columbia. Washington, D.C. was carved for Prince George County in 1791. Prince George County wraps around Washington, D.C.

JR.So even with this increase, you know, it's still lower than Washington, D.C. and keeps us competitive with the Virginian and Pennsylvania.

NNAMDII'm afraid all -- that's all the time we have in this segment. Mr. President, Senator Miller, thank you for joining us.

JR.It's always a pleasure. Charles, go VCU, okay?

ROBINSONThank you, sir.

NNAMDICharles -- Thomas V. "Mike" Miller is President of the Maryland Senate. He's a democrat whose district include parts of Calvert and Prince Georges Counties. Charles Robinson, I'm assuming you attended Virginia Common Wealth?

ROBINSONYes, I did. It's one of the greatest stories of this year.

NNAMDICharles Robinson, who was watching the Final Four with baited breath, sorry about the loss. Charles Robinson is a political correspondent for Maryland Public Television. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll talk with the minority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. Delegate Anthony O'Donnell. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're talking about the Maryland general assembly wrap up last night with Charles Robinson. He's a political correspondent from Maryland Public Television. Charles, Washington Post columnist Bob McCartney wrote, during the final weeks of the session, that despite all the uproar about Pepco's poor performance, that the legislation produced by the general assembly seemed to be rather tame. What ultimately happened on this front, the push to impose new accountability standards on Pepco?

ROBINSONAs you know, a number of counties around Washington, D.C. and Maryland had a lot of service problems. And the biggest problem was how to assess to get that money back. In other words, if you had a problem, they didn't fix it immediately. The state legislature wanted to impose a penalty on them. And what ended up happening, they couldn't figure out the formula of how to figure out that number. And at the end of the day, they got a little bit, but they didn't get all that they wanted.

ROBINSONIn other words, so, you know, when you don't pay your bill, you know, they turn off the power on you. Well, I think residents were revolting and saying, if you don't come fix our power, maybe we shouldn't pay you. It's, you know, one of those weird bills that starts out as an idea and as it continues to move through the legislative process, it gets a little muddy.

NNAMDIJoining us now by telephone from Annapolis is Anthony O'Donnell. Delegate O'Donnell is the minority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. He's a republican whose district includes parts of Calvert and St. Mary's Counties. Delegate O'Donnell, thank you for joining us.

MR. ANTHONY O'DONNELLKojo, it's always good to be on your show.

NNAMDIFrom the perspective of your party, what grade would you give the assembly for this year's session?

O'DONNELLI would give it a D.

NNAMDIWhy?

O'DONNELLThe reason I would is because we have a significant problems that we have not addressed including -- and I heard your discussion with Senator Miller about the pension underfunding liabilities. We have underfunding in the billions of dollars. We have retiree health care benefits in the billions of dollars. And we have a structural deficit in the operating budget that continues because we haven't made the tough decisions to reconcile our spending plans with our revenue realities.

NNAMDIDelegate O'Donnell, governments at the state and local level have gone on cutting sprees this year. But I read a story where you said that the budget passed out of the Maryland state house this year, still doesn't help the state meet its long term challenges. What fixes do you think should have been on the table to address those problems?

O'DONNELLYeah, Kojo. That's a great question. A lot of people talk about how much the state has cut. In reality, our budget is $1 billion larger than the previous year, which was $1 billion larger than the previous year. Our budget grows, on average, $1 billion a year and has not really been cut at all. And so that spending growth is not sustainable over the long term. The house of republican caucus submitted a plan. It's a tough plan and it wasn't -- it's tough medicine. But sometimes when you have a -- an entrenched illness, you got to take the medicine that doesn't necessarily taste so good, but it's going to make you healthy in the long run.

O'DONNELLWe propose the $621 million of additional cost reductions in constraints in the growth of the budget and really that's what we're talking about, is constraining the growth. If we would do that for a couple years, we could put ourselves on a path of really being solvent over the long term. But it takes some tough decisions up front. I'll admit that.

NNAMDICharles Robinson, back to the issue of Pension reform. It seems that Governor O'Malley was treading very carefully this year when it came to that issue because it became politically explosive in several states. Talk a little bit about the pension reforms that ultimately came out of the assembly and what they mean for O'Malley's political fortunes and then I'd like to get back to Mr. Minority leader. But first, you, Charles Robinson.

ROBINSONWell, the thing that I think was really important was they got him to start paying a little bit more for everything from health care. And they changed the way the contributions are for pension and there now having a two tiered system for new employees and it takes longer for you to become vested in the pension system. And those who aren't invested in the system, they're going to keep their same pension, but they'll have to pay a little bit more.

ROBINSONI wanted to ask the minority leader a question because they were able to stop some initiatives that were coming down the pipe. And I wanted to talk to him about the invest Maryland initiative. The governor had asked for a, what was it, $100 million and we cut that down. How did you make that argument, minority -- Tony? Did you have to say, look, you just can't keep spending and spending?

O'DONNELLWell, in the end, you're right. We scaled it back a little bit. But, you know, many of us thought that this bill was still going to come due someday. We're going to spend, basically, $100 million to get a $70 million return. And by anybody's math, that's not a good investment. And philosophically, you have the state government now stepping into the shoes of private enterprise. So this could've been done without political strings attached to it. We believe that these grants and funds still will have political strings attached.

O'DONNELLSo when they hand them out and when they distribute them through the Maryland Department of Economic Development or the other organizations that they've set up to do this, that they're going to be political considerations given similar to what many of us feel was being pushed with this wind farm bill. And the political ties that were associated with the companies looking to benefit from that initiative.

ROBINSONI know the other thing that you were able to be backed, was this gasoline tax. I thought that was -- I think everybody said, why would you raise a gasoline tax as gas prices are going up? Was that the argument that you had to make?

O'DONNELLWell, absolutely twofold. The prices of gas for the average Marylander are going through the roof. Why in the world would we pile on and why in the world would we send additional revenues to a transportation trust fund that has been continually rated? In another words, why would we continue to feed the bad habit? Because we haven't fixed our structural deficit. It causes these folks then to go into this transportation trust fund and raid the money.

O'DONNELLWhy would we, you know, say we're going to infuse more money into transportation when we know it's going to be raided because of the structural deficit hasn't been fixed? So both of those arguments are the two to push that back. But I read just a comment the other day from Senator Miller, President Miller and Rob Garagiola, the senate majority leader, who said, when we come back in the fall to do redistricting, they're going to be pushing for a gas tax again.

NNAMDIDelegate O'Donnell, the same sex marriage debate was expected to be successful in the House and not so in the Senate. It was the other way around. Where do you see that debate headed in Maryland between now and the next session?

O'DONNELLWell, I'm sure that the proponents will continue to formulate strategies to effectuate passage and the opponents will, of course, continue to marshall their resources. It's a very emotional debate, of course. I think, ultimately what people didn't understand was the impact of the election in the house of delegates where, you know, there was a shift to give us some momentum. And then, what people didn't also understand is the strength of the African-American churches in the state Maryland, who came out very, very strongly opposed to this.

O'DONNELLThose two things, the pick up of six seats by the republican caucus and the African-American churches and ministers putting on very expensive pressure into the legislature, caused the house of delegates to say, no, not this year. The way that plays out in 2012 is yet to be seen. It's a Presidential election year. And that could have an impact as well.

NNAMDIDelegate O'Donnell, thank you so much for joining us.

O'DONNELLGood to be with you, Kojo. Charles, take care and go BCU next year, how about that?

ROBINSONYeah, all right. That'll work.

NNAMDIAnthony O'Donnell is the minority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. He's a republican whose district includes parts of Calvert and St. Mary's Counties. And Charles Robinson is a political correspondent for 1Maryland Public Television. Charles, always a pleasure.

ROBINSONOh, thank you so much, Kojo.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll be talking with Tony Gittens of Filmfest D.C. and Washington Post Film Critic Ann Hornaday about foreign films in general and those at Filmfest D.C. currently in particular. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.