“It was a great session,” Gov. Larry Hogan said about the just closed 90-day meeting of the Maryland General Assembly. “This is the way government is supposed to work…. This was all about compromise.”
“It was a session we can all be proud of,” House Speaker Michael Busch, sitting next to Hogan at a bill signing ceremony Tuesday morning. “This year your staff did a great job.”
House Minority Leader Nicholaus Kipke, R-Anne Arundel, told Capital News service that “despite the partisan efforts to kind of drag us into the D.C. post-election theater, we were able to pass some meaningful bills.”
Despite its many battles, Kipke said the 2017 session was the “most bipartisan” he has seen since he took office. Hogan concurred, telling reporters that 2017 was an “incredible, bipartisan session.”
It was so bipartisan that as Republican delegates talked the clock out on a bill expanding medical marijuana licenses, it was Kipke who made the motion to “adjourn sine die” at midnight, a role typically reserved for the House Democratic majority leader. This partially reflected bipartisan distaste for how the bill was written and forced on them by the Senate.
