Take comfort.
The 2008 Maryland legislative session has ended.
Also, take some little comfort in the fact that only two of three bills of astonishing unimportance will make it into law.
House Bill 1267 proposed designating soybeans as the official state crop.
House Bill 315 proposed designating Smith Island Cake as the official state dessert.
And House Bill 1311 proposed designating walking as the official state exercise.
All of this was on the legislative docket even as legislators pondered how to save the Chesapeake Bay, or the Maryland dairy industry, or how to rein in rising health care costs, or offset the impact of the mortgage crisis on the state’s economy. Stuff like that.
For the record, Smith Island Cake will be the official state dessert and walking will be the official state exercise. Both cleared the House and Senate by rather impressive margins — the House liked the cake idea, 128 to 13, for example — and Gov. O’Malley is not expected to object to either bill.
House Bill 1267, however, didn’t make it. Soybeans will not be the official state crop. The bill couldn’t even get past the House Health and Government Relations Committee.
Bills like this pop up in nearly every legislative session. Remember the squabble between lacrosse and jousting proponents as to which of their sports should be official? It was finally settled, by compromise, when lacrosse was declared the official state team sport, as opposed to jousting, which maintained its official state sport status.
There are a total of 21 Maryland state “symbols,” as they are called, ranging from the obvious (Bird: Baltimore Oriole) to the not-so-obvious (Insect: Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly).
In case you were wondering, the State Drink is milk, the State Cat is the Calico and the State Horse is simply the Thoroughbred.
This sort of General Assembly nonsense simply amuses the citizenry. It does not impress thc citizens, nor inform them, nor improve their quality of life. We doubt whether the legislation wins for its sponsors any votes they would not have had anyway. We wonder at the purpose of it all.
However, we must point out that in the case of HB 1267, the soybean bill, it got some constituent support from St. Michaels Elementary School students who, as part of a class project, testified in Annapolis that it deserved attention as the state crop because of the multiple uses of the bean, its protein and its byproducts.
They are to be applauded for their studies and certainly for their appearance before the House Health and Government Operations Committee.
That, no doubt, was an educational adventure that they will long remember.