Insider sources are telling me that Mike Busch has lost control of the House Chamber.
You will note today that at 3:53 PM the Senate went into session, and stayed in session for five minutes. Busch adjourned the House because he looked around the room and realized that he didn’t have the votes to get the Senate slots bill passed.
It was after that around (as reported here via WBAL) 6:15 that House Majority Leader Kumar Barve started saying that they had the 85 votes to pass slots.
When they went back at 7:06, Busch tried to pull a fast one and pass the House bill instead of the Senate bill. Minority Leader Tony O’Donnell tried to Special Order the bill until tomorrow, since Delegates had prepared amendments to the Senate bill, but not the House bill. The Speaker said no, which prompted Democratic delegates to start booing and hissing until the Speaker relented.
As I said, Mike Busch has lost control of his chamber. He is not handling the stress put on him by the O’Malley folks very well because he is making poor judgment calls and can’t keep his own Democrats in line.
