I wrote in November about a law change that resulted in hundreds of car salespeople not getting manufacturers’ incentives for their sales. Those connected with the law called it an unintended consequence that they promised to address as soon as possible when the General Assembly reconvened in January.

An amendment to the law is now Senate Bill 18, and a hearing will be held Jan. 21 before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Aides to Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, the bill’s sponsor, are confident it will ultimately pass through both the Senate and House of Delegates with little problem.

You can see a copy of the proposed legislation here; the new law would allow manufacturers to directly give incentives to salespeople, but the incentives must be disclosed to the dealerships.

The dealer and manufacturer associations have signed off on the changes, according to Raskin’s office. Also supporting the bill is Honda, the only manufacturer not to adopt an interim solution to the incentive problem.

Stay tuned for more news next week following the hearing.

Welcome back from the long weekend! Just four days to go until the next one! Until then, here are some law links:

• John Bratt calls the 4th Circuit’s decision in the Sparrows Point LNG case a win for Baltimore County.
• There aren’t a huge number of lawyers in the General Assembly.
• “The criminal justice system wasn’t a good system with a few cracks,” Page Croyder writes. “It’s been a giant mud hole in which the wheels of justice spin without going anywhere.”
• Facebook is not actually encouraging people to cheat on their husbands and wives, but it is making it easier for them to be caught at it. Via Maryland Divorce Legal Crier.
• This is kind of a weird lede on this ABA Journal story about wrongful convictions, implying that the guy did something wrong: “Barney Brown should have listened to his mother that fateful day in 1970 when she told him to stay home while she was at work.”

As if this article about the challenges being made against a “post-theist” councilman in Asheville weren’t interesting enough, there’s also the Maryland connection. As the story notes, Maryland is one of a handful of states with a constitutional clause requiring “a declaration of belief in the existence of God” from state office-holders (see Article 37 of the Declaration of Rights).

Rest assured, the Free State hasn’t tried to enforce the requirement since 1961, when the U.S. Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in Torcaso v. Watkins, a case involving a Maryland notary public. In 1978 — a mere 17 years later – the wording of the oath of office was changed in response to Torcaso, but Article 37 has never been amended to delete the requirement itself. That’s understandable, given the difficulties of amending the state constitution. Can you imagine getting 60% of the state’s lawmakers to back the idea of excising God from anything, let alone the Declaration of Rights? My guess is that it would have been easier back in the ’60s.

Regular readers of The Daily Record may remember our coverage during the legislative session of a bill aimed at closing a “loophole” in Maryland’s sex-offender registry law. Sex offenders who committed their crimes before either 1995 or 1997, depending on the offense, but were not in prison or under supervision in 2001 were not required to register.

Key supporters of the bill to require these offenders to register were Elizabeth Gilchrest and her husband, Allen. Elizabeth’s father pleaded guilty last year to abusing her when she was a child. He avoided jail time and supervised probation but agreed to register as a sex offender. After the plea, his lawyer realized that because of the timing of the offense, he was not required to register; the issue of whether he will stay on the registry is still being litigated.

But Elizabeth’s lawyer, Cathy Chen of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, said Elizabeth’s father will now be required to register anyway, since the governor signed the bill into law Tuesday. Allen Gilchrest e-mailed the following from his wife yesterday:

“My father said in court that he wanted to do whatever was best for me. I don’t feel this is true because I wanted him to register as a sex offender, but he fought to have that taken away, on a technicality in the law. He took advantage of me as a child, when I could not fight back. He was supposed to protect me, instead he harmed me. Today,  he tried to take advantage of the law, but now I am old enough to fight back. Now, thanks to the Maryland [legislature], he will be required to be a registered sex offender…”

The new law takes effect Oct. 1.

Del. Norman H. Conway, D-Wicomico and Worcester, readily admits he was the lawmaker who added language to the state’s budget requiring the Maryland Disability Law Center to submit financial documents before receiving funding. (The funding was untied from the reporting requirement in the final version of the budget passed by the General Assembly.)

MDLC was the only legal services organization targeted, raising alarms in the legal services community. Conway, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said MDLC was selected because he had not seen an audit from the organization recently. (Virginia Knowlton, MDLC’s executive director, has noted that her organization undergoes financial audits at both state and federal levels to receive grant money, and Conway has access to those.)

Conway also points out that the documentation requirement is not uncommon. ”Throughout the budget, you’ll see all types of reports that are requested from a list of organizations and state agencies,” he said.

Scanning through the budget (PDF), I discovered more than a dozen similar documentation requirements. The Maryland Higher Education Commission and the state’s historically black institutions, for example, have to submit a report showing the effectiveness of programs to increase graduation and retention rates before receiving $1.5 million for that purpose. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is asked to submit a report on the “proposed closing of state-operated beds” at the Walter P. Carter in Baltimore City before receiving $10 million. And the Maryland Insurance Administration is to report on “an agreed upon practice for forecasting and tracking the premium tax” before receiving $100,000.

An analyst with the Department of Legislative Services confirmed the frequent use of documentation requirements for funding, and said the unusual thing here is that MDLC succeeded in getting them untied .

Conway indicated that the selected organizations are not being accused of or being investigated for wrongdoing. Rather, it’s a way for the legislators to make sure state funds are being used appropriately, particularly in the current economic climate.

“I like to focus on what the activities are,” he said. “The committee needs to understand these different expenditures.”

Whatever Conway’s motives, MDLC and other legal services agencies see it as a shot across their bow, according to this commentary by Legal Aid’s Joe Surkiewicz. What do you think?

I was a student at the University of Maryland a few years ago when “Deep Throat” was shown at the Hoff Theater on campus. While I was surprised 530 students attended (The Apex on South Broadway probably would kill for that kind of turnout), I didn’t think much else of it.

So when I read Hoff was going to screen another porn earlier last week, I wasn’t too shocked. But then a funny thing happened: the movie became a political cause in more ways than one. Legislators threatened to withhold funding from the university if the film went on as planned, and an on-campus political party hosted a screening of part of the film days before the Student Government Association election. Today, the state Senate thankfully rejected a silly budget amendment that would have withheld construction funds at state schools unless they developed a porn policy. Not since Mary Carey ran for governor of California have porn and politics been so closely tied together. 

As an alum, however, what bothers me most about this whole episdoe was the university’s decision to cancel the screening in the first place. The independent campus newspaper The Diamondback, in a spot-on editorial, summarized my feelings about university administrators:

They have encouraged short-sighted state legislators to make empty threats to meddle with the very information the university distributes. We simply don’t believe state legislators would shut down the most productive source of education, a gem of the state, because Hoff showed some bouncing breasts. But potentially worse, administrators have declared in unequivocal terms they don’t need student input before regulating the content supported by this university.

The apparent endgame to this is the University System of Maryland, which oversees the public institutions in the state, will now develop a porn policy for all state campuses. A USM official called the porn controversy a “tragedy.” I call it a self-inflicted wound.

As I wrote in today’s paper, the Court of Special Appeals has held that a man who claimed to be the father of a child born during his marriage, despite evidence to the contrary — including his vasectomy — remains responsible for child support even after a paternity test proved otherwise.

The court reached this decision in part because the presumed father had waited almost 13 years to contest paternity. Citing the doctrine of laches, the court held that the man had “slept on his rights” by waiting for so long to claim the child was not his.

The court’s opinion mentions that other states have, by law, limited the time a presumed father can challenge paternity. The “small but growing number of states” include Colorado (within a reasonable time but no later than five years after the child’s birth); Delaware (no more than two years after the birth of the child); Illinois (within two years of obtaining “knowledge of relevant facts”); and Wyoming (no later than five years after the child’s birth), to name a few.

Do you think the intermediate court was trying to send a message to the General Assembly that Maryland should have a similar time limit on the books?  Or do you think the doctrine of laches is clear enough to bar similar challenges?

CHRISTINA DORAN, Assistant Legal Affairs Editor