SOMETIMES THE REAL WORLD INTRUDES

Annapolis during the legislative session is a very insular society. Bill after bill is heard before small committees with the same professional lobbyist class in attendance. These lobbyists and legislators work together on some bills, and against each other on other bills. The issues change, but to an astounding degree the players remain the same.

Each player needs to compartmentalize every subject, and nothing can be taken personally, because today’s opponent is tomorrow’s ally. "Go along to get along," relish your victories, move past the defeats, do your job. It’s not personal.

Except when it is.

SB317/HB647 was up for a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee. It was one of nine bills to be heard that afternoon. The usual chatter was occurring as lobbyists whispered, spectators read or answered e-mails on PDA’s, legislators move in and out of the room, and a woman – not of the insular Annapolis world – moved towards the witness table.

Five sentences into her testimony, the PDA’s were no longer in use. The chatter in the room stopped. Legislators were no longer looking at their laptops. All was quiet as the woman, calmly and strongly recounted her story. Here is a part of it:

Her neighbor came to her door one morning. He rang the bell, she answered, and let him inside. He showed her her morning paper that he had kindly picked up on his way up her walk. She thanked him, and turned briefly away. As she turned, he removed a hammer and butcher knife he had hidden in the newspaper. He knocked her to the floor with a blow to the back of her head. She struggled to escape, and was hit again and again. Beaten, she fell to the floor in a pool of her own blood. There, in her own home, he held the knife to her throat, sexually assaulted her, and told her he was going to kill her and then himself.

Thankfully, the brave victim talked the assilant down from his rage and he fled without carrying out his threat. The police came, the assailant was caught, and the woman ultimately had her home cleansed of the physical after effects of the attack. That service cost almost $10,000. Her insurance company paid for the clean-up, and then surcharged her policy for making a claim.

SB317/HB647 stops this practice. It makes it illegal for a homeowner’s insurance company to use information that an individual was the victim of a violent crime in deciding to cancel or surcharge a policy.

This bill will pass. For a few minutes that day Annapolis stopped, the real world came in, and it got personal.