MCC Legislative Activity for Non-Public Schools Announcement - Part II

As mentioned in my last posting, the Maryland Catholic Conference (MCC) issued a statement on lobbying our legislators for a number of items in the upcoming session.

My take on it is that this is nice but really ineffective. Let's look at the "cast of characters" as they say.

Sen. Madaleno is living in a homosexual relationship. He may not advertise it like Ellen DeGeneris or Elton John, but he does not hide it. He is a member of the LGBT group in the Maryland Assembly. So, do you really think he is going to support funding for Catholic schools.

More importantly, about two or three years ago, I attended one of these town hall style meetings in which the MCC invites legislators to meet with parents of non-public school children. (Note that anyone can attend, this is not restricted.) The sessions usually leads off with a PowerPoint slide presentation reviewing how much money private schools save the state and what other states are doing to support private schools. At this particular session, Madaleno attended. At the time, he was a delegate.

That night, he was asked about using tobacco money (the settlement money from lawsuits against the cigarette manufactures) for non-public schools. He stated that the did not like to use money that would be spent on reducing tobacco deaths and health care for this issue. When pressed further, he was asked if tobacco money was not involved, would he still feel the same way. Realizing that he had been caught, he admitted that he was against the entire idea of giving back money to private school parents. Since we have the option to send our children to public schools, and we did not, then that is our decision and the public schools should not suffer because of that.

In addition, he was asked if he knew that parents who home schooled their children received a textbook credit, so why couldn't Catholic schools get the same? Since he did not know this, he wanted to check more into it. I wrote to him on three separate occasions about this. No reply.



More in Part III