The Monocacy Monocle

The Arena
Delegate Brian Feldman-Teamwork Matters
By John Clayton

District 15 Delegate Brian Feldman was kind enough to drive to the upcounty to spend some time with the Monocle for this article. Listening to him speak, I got the impression that he was meant to become a Maryland State delegate, and he certainly has developed more than substantial credentials for the position. As he discussed his training and his work in the general assembly and as a university professor, his passion for all he does came through loud and clear.

Brian Feldman was brought up in Pittsburgh but has been in the Washington, D.C. area since 1982 when he took a job with Price Waterhouse Coopers as a tax attorney. His background as both a lawyer and a certified public accountant gives him a unique blend of qualifications, particu1arly in the Maryland State House where a remarkably small number of the members, contrary to popular belief, are even lawyers. Mr. Feldman subsequently worked at the Department of Justice, litigating federal tax cases in courtrooms across the nation. He met his wife in the DOJ cafeteria, and when they married, they moved to Montgomery County into the same house in Potomac that they live in today

A "confluence of events" and a life-long interest in politics led him to get more involved in local politics and he found time (part-time) to add a Master's degree in Government and Politics from John Hopkins where he now teaches as an adjunct professor in state politics. He said his completion of his graduate studies back in 1997 and 1998 led him to think more and more about local politics and the prospect of actually running for office, and he became president of the District 15 Democratic Club. After twelve years with the Department of Justice, he moved to the private sector with a law firm that he felt would give him the flexibility to contribute. At about this time, Mark Shriver and Richard Levay each vacated their District 15 delegate seats, leaving two open, “which doesn’t happen very often.”

We asked him if being a legislator was what he expected. He said that most people underestimate, as he says he did, the time commitment. The session lasts ninety days (usually), but the reality is you have an office in Annapolis for twelve months a year, and a huge district with 110,000 people, "many of whom have e-mail," and aren't afraid to use it. "In the old days, it wasn't so easy to get in touch with your legislators in Annapolis, now with technology..." Mr. Feldman made it clear this is all for the good, and he enjoys and values the contact and interplay with constituents.

Mr. Feldman also discussed the, Maryland assembly's strong committee system, where most of the actual work of the legislator is done. In his committee, the House Economic Matters Committee, he is the only attorney among twenty-four members. He said this gives him a little more influence and clout for a freshman in terms of framing issues and questioning witnesses. He knows he has learned a lot in his first term, and experience does count as there is a steep learning curve for the first-term member. He says being in the public eye is a unique and rewarding experience. “If you can get something done...if at the end of it you feel you've made a contribution, you've had some bills that passed, some successful bills," then the time and effort has been worthwhile.

Over the past four years, he feels the District 15 delegation has been effective with a good working relationship among its four members which include him, Delegates Jean Cryor and Kathleen Dumais, and Senator Rob Garagiola. He cited examples of "good case studies of a pretty effective delegation" such as the Healthy Air Act, the winery bill which supports the operation of small wineries, bond bills that supported the Poolesville Town Hall and the Barnesville Town Hall, the emergency medical facility in Germantown, and the MARC train debate. As Ms. Dumais noted in an earlier issue of the Monocle, the District 15 delegation is perceived as a pretty unique and bipartisan situation with Kathleen, Jean, and Brian sharing an office suite. Most delegations do not-share a suite, let alone a bipartisan team. He thinks they work together well through different roles, different committees, and different niches that they've formed, with different areas of expertise and influence.

Mr. Feldman also discussed his championing of Montgomery County's biotechnology and life sciences industry, an issue with which he is often identified. During the 2005 session, he introduced and gained passage of the Maryland Biotechnology Investment Incentive Act, and worked further in the 2006 session to maintain its funding. BIO, an international biotechnology organization, gave him their state legislator of the year award for the whole country. He noted the unbelievable potential in this area for biotech with NIH, Johns Hopkins, and NIST all on the I-270 corridor. What legislation addresses, however, is that there is a shortage of venture capital available to keep companies alive during the long lifecycle of development, testing, and approval of new drugs.

There is now a fifty-percent tax credit for Marylanders investing in Maryland-based small biotech companies. Other states such as Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are competing just as aggressively. He said the governor put six million dollars in the budget for this year, and if the credits exceed that, he will ask for more funding in January. Mr. Feldman wants to look out for the small companies that are just trying to get started but typically" die on the vine" because they don't have enough capital to keep going to make their innovations pay off.

Working on pro-business legislation such as the biotechnology industry tax credits is one of the ways he has tried not to pigeonhole himself or be the typica1 Montgomery County legislator with a limited range of interests. He feels that many legislators become typecast in one area of expertise, so he has tried to show he can work with the governor and "people on the other side of the aisle" on a wide range of issues. One of the important tasks for a new legislator is to establish yourself as a credible player, a serious legislator that can get a lot of different things done, working with different legislators from both parties and different regions. I asked about the working relationship between the two parties, and he acknowledged that the rancor between the governor, senate president, and house speaker gets the headlines, but that there were 1600 or 1700 pieces of legislation to work on in the house each year, and another 1100 bills in the senate. The rancor everyone reads about probably affects about a half dozen or so bills. Veto overrides certainly get a lot of press, but very few bills overall, and certainly in his committee, break down along party. He acknowledged that with this year being an election year, there was more tension, particularly among the aforementioned governor and leadership, which caused an “unfortunate level of disfunctionality." When you look at the big picture, however, there is tremendously more cooperation than fighting going on.

When asked about the early voting bill which had been in the news, Delegate Feldman acknowledged that it was a more partisan issue, but "that it shouldn't be." He continued, “All we are saying here is that, like thirty other states, we want to make it easier to vote. We know that in this country, voter participation is a problem. You go to Western Europe and a lot of other places, and voter participation is over ninety percent. In this country, we're lucky if we get half our people voting for presidential elections." He said that for working people in particular, the ability to get to your voting-spot on one specific day within a1imited time is harder than it is for people who don't work or have more flexible schedules. "Things that make it easier to get to the ballot box are a positive thing." He said that critics of this program have said that Democrats have put the early voting sites in predominantly Democratic areas. The problem with that is that since Montgomery County is predominantly Democratic. "Where could you possibly put them where that would not be the case?" He discussed the petition drive that challenged early voting on the basis of fraud and said that would make sense if we were the first or second to be doing this, but it has been used in thirty states, some with voting as much as two weeks before election day, and there is no evidence or even a claim of fraud in those states. He stated that he did not think these facts have been presented by the proponents of the petition. In his case, he said that no one has explained where the fraud has occurred or the types of problems anyone has experienced. "Until someone points this out, I really don't get the other argument. I don't get it." Delegate Feldman also noted that they changed the rules to allow on-demand absentee ballots, so that "unlike the past, when people had to lie about their sick aunt in Seattle-you don't have to do that-again, another mechanism to make voting easier."

In closing, Mr. Feldman highlighted his interest in environmental issues, specifically the Healthy Air Act which he cosponsored and worked on extensively to get passed. A similar bill had failed to get out of committee in 2005 under a different name. (Yes, the name may have made a difference.) He added that this area (the upcounty) is very mindful of environmental issues and he' sits on a committee that ''has pushed the ball forward these past four years," especially with regard to Healthy Air and the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, which requires a certain percentage of energy use to be from renewable sources. He also noted the huge increase in funds to Montgomery County for Project Open Space, twenty-four million dollars, and a constitutional amendment question which would prevent the governor from selling parkland without input from the general assembly as examples of environmentally sensitive legislation.