Imagine being a pro basketball player that follows every rule of the game and makes a clean shot destined to go in with a swish. While the ball is midair, the referee immediately conspires to change the rules with the NBA and extends the court and the basket to be 3X further than where it was at the time of the shot. Impossible right? It’s not impossible in Maryland.
Did you know that the State of Maryland has a system to bypass the legislature in order to create and change COMAR regulations on the fly, and without the entire General Assembly or a legislative bill?
This is done through a committee of the General Assembly called the JOINT COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE, EXECUTIVE, AND LEGISLATIVE REVIEW (AELR).
Establishment
The Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review (AELR Committee) was originally created in 1964 as a joint standing committee known as the Committee on Legislative Review. It was reconstituted as a statutory committee and renamed in Chapters 400 and 699 of 1972.
Membership
The AELR Committee is composed of 20 members – 10 senators appointed by the President of the Senate and 10 delegates appointed by the Speaker of the House. Each political party is represented in approximately the same proportion as its membership in each house, and each major standing committee of the General Assembly is represented on the committee. There is a Senate chair and a House chair of the committee who alternate each calendar year as the presiding chair.
Principal Function – Generally
The AELR Committee functions as the watchdog of the General Assembly in overseeing the activities of State agencies as they relate to regulations. The committee’s primary function is to review any regulations that are proposed for adoption by a unit of the Executive Branch of State government to determine whether the regulations conform both with the statutory authority of the unit and the legislative intent of the statute under which the regulations are proposed.
You can read more about the AELR here:
Although a governor can execute regulation without the AELR, their existence is an illusion of formality. The abuse comes when a proposed regulation is declared as an EMERGENCY when there is no emergency.
Hellbound and Down 