{"id":7814,"date":"2017-04-07T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7814"},"modified":"2017-04-07T01:07:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T05:07:47","slug":"barkley-blasts-annapolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7814","title":{"rendered":"Barkley Blasts Annapolis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Delegate Charles Barkley (D-39) has just given the most astounding interview by a member of General Assembly leadership ever seen by your author.\u00a0 In it, he broke the most important rule of Annapolis decorum there is: never throw your superiors under the bus.<\/p>\n

Barkley is the Chair of the House Economic Matters Committee\u2019s Alcoholic Beverages Subcommittee<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 In theory, that makes him the proximate point person on alcohol bills in the House.\u00a0 Some think of the alcohol industry as one industry, but in fact it is several, with the manufacturers, distributors, retailers, restaurants and several individual companies hiring their own lobbyists and making tons of political contributions.\u00a0 That makes for complicated politics which, among many other things, has produced the much-criticized bill punishing craft breweries<\/a>.\u00a0 That bill has already caused one potential brewery owner to bail on the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The anti-brewery bill<\/a> passed the House on a 139-0 vote.\u00a0 One source tells us, \u201cWhen a bad bill passes on a vote like that, someone f____d up.\u201d\u00a0 In an incredible interview<\/a> with Maryland beer blog Naptown Pint, Barkley placed the blame on his superiors, specifically Economic Matters Committee Chair Dereck Davis and Speaker of the House Mike Busch.\u00a0 The whole interview is a massive scoop and a must-read, but the key passages are this:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t know what was in the bill until the day it came in front of our committee for the vote,\u201d Barkley answered. But was that due to the rush of the process, or was it an intentional screen being put up around the bill\u2019s contents?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they were trying to give out too many details,\u201d he commented\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly thought we were moving in the right direction with Nick Manis [MCA], Steve Wise [MSLBA legal counsel] and [Jack] Milani [MSLBA, Monaghan\u2019s Pub in Baltimore]. We thought we were making progress, and we had the guys talking to us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Barkley then paused for a moment.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, they quit talking to us,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd then the [Economic Matters Committee] Chairman [Dereck E. Davis] said, \u2018This is what we\u2019re doing.’\u201d\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

I asked him his thoughts on some of the statements by House members who voted in favor of HB 1283 that they now know it was a bad bill or that they were misled on the contents ahead of the committee vote that pushed HB 1283 over to the Senate.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI would say absolutely they were misled. [The House] thought we worked out a compromise and this was it. We hadn\u2019t,\u201d he stated.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cUp until this point, I ran the subcommittee and I kept my chairman [Davis] informed. But this one left my hands. I\u2019ve never had this kind of intervention before, until this year. I thought [Manis, Wise and Milani] were meeting with us. But I think we were getting too close to stuff they didn\u2019t want. So I think they met with the Speaker and got things changed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is a sub-committee chair describing a major bill as a backroom, secret deal involving lobbyists, a powerful committee chair and the Speaker in cahoots to deceive the full House membership.\u00a0 Your author has never seen a state legislator entrusted with leadership responsibility go on the record in this way before.\u00a0 It is an almost certain firing offense.<\/p>\n

Barkley has always been something of a maverick.\u00a0 Once a Vice-President of the county teachers union, he has not always been their best friend in Annapolis.\u00a0 In 2009, he was famously kicked off the Appropriations Committee<\/a> and lost a subcommittee chair for defying leadership on the millionaire tax.\u00a0 In 2012, Barkley was one of a handful of MoCo Delegates to vote against the immensely damaging teacher pension shift<\/a>, a top priority of Governor Martin O\u2019Malley and the presiding officers.\u00a0 After losing the first vote, he introduced a floor amendment to the budget which would have cut the shift in half<\/a>, which also failed.\u00a0 Considering this record, it\u2019s surprising that Barkley acquired the alcohol subcommittee chair at all.<\/p>\n

Barkley\u2019s candor is likely aided by his apparent decision to leave Annapolis and run for County Council<\/a>.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what the future holds, but we will say this: given Barkley\u2019s iconoclastic ways, he would make an interesting County Council Member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Delegate Charles Barkley (D-39) has just given the most astounding interview by a member of General Assembly leadership ever seen by your author.\u00a0 In it, he broke the most important rule of Annapolis decorum there is: never throw your superiors under the bus. Barkley is the Chair of the House Economic Matters … Continue reading Barkley Blasts Annapolis<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,119,355],"tags":[1545,1445,1606],"class_list":["post-7814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-alcohol","category-charles-barkley","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-alcohol","tag-charles-barkley"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-222","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7816,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7814\/revisions\/7816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}