This new session of conversations is with the members of the Frederick County Delegation. We extended an invitation to each of our representatives for a focused conversation on their passions and priorities with the hopes of providing valuable information and insight to the Frederick County community. The work of our Legislative Delegation during the annual 90-day Maryland General Assembly session impacts all of us, our lives, our families and our businesses. Hear firsthand from our legislators as they share their priorities and plans to deal with Maryland’s most pressing issues.
In this interview Delegate Ken Kerr discusses:
[2:13] Experiences as a Delegate
[4:00] Constituent Needs
[7:30] Legislation
[13:05] Craft Beverage Industry
[18:01] Prescription Drug Monitoring
[22:02] Leadership in the General Assembly
Transcription edited for readability:
Introduction from Chamber President and CEO, Rick Weldon:
Hello Chamber Members! Welcome back to our unique approach this year of introducing you to our Frederick County delegation members. I have to tell you we’ve recorded five of them and I enjoy these so much more than just getting two-minute snippets from our Delegates and senators.
Today I’m thrilled to be able to host Delegate Ken Kerr who represents the best district in all of Maryland- legislative district 3B. Delegate Kerr was sworn in January of 2019; and before running for House of Delegates Dr. Kerr was an elected member of the Frederick County School Board. Much of his career- with a slight deviation in information technology- was spent in higher education including several years as the Chair of the English Department at Frederick Community College. Ken serves on the House Health and Government Operations Committee and I have a personal connection that goes back two decades with Delegate Kerr and that’s on stage! When I was struggling through the solos as Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas at The Weinberg Center, the great house band included Delegate Dr. Ken Kerr.
Ken, welcome to Chamber Conversations!
Delegate Kerr: Thanks, Rick it’s good to see you!
Rick Weldon: So let’s talk about your experience as a State Delegate because it is kind of unlike any other state delegate’s first term. Nothing about your term has been normal and this year more than any other has been abnormal. Could you talk about what this year has been like for you?
Delegate Kerr: Well you know the first year we had the speaker who was very ill and unfortunately died the day before the last before sign. Then of course this year we had Covid to deal with and we adjourned nineteen days early. Now we are going to have a year coming up where half of us will be in the House Chamber and the other half of us will be in the Baltimore County and Montgomery County Delegation Rooms- so we will be socially distanced there. All of the committee meetings will be done virtually- if someone comes to see us at the low building we have to meet them and escort people to our offices and then back out of the building again. So a lot of it is going to be-perhaps meeting people off sight It’s going to be difficult and challenging.
My first interim last summer was very quiet, this interim though I have had to do delegate stuff every day- seven days a week. The constituents are just in need of so much help on a variety of things. The biggest is the unemployment issues, some people have been waiting five weeks and still haven’t heard anything on their claim. Or they will be receiving payments for a few weeks and then all of a sudden the payments stop and it says their account has been suspended. So we are able to get them some attention if they contact our office- we can submit their name and request that their account be reviewed. Still, it is taking a long time and then in the middle of this, they changed the BEACON system to a new software and a lot of data got lost so it has just been really difficult for a lot of people.
Other things we are helping people with are evictions and motor vehicles. A lot of people can’t get out to the MVA and they need to get their car registered or on the road. Of course, we also have people with food insecurity and just in need of some cash assistance. We have been able to connect them with some community resources to help them through it but there is a lot of desperation out there and it has been very challenging.
Rick Weldon: Yeah we see this a lot with our small business Members- some Mom and Pop businesses that are struggling to try to keep the doors open. They didn’t have a real robust virtual marketplace before this hit and to make that transition is really tough.
I have to imagine this is hard for you because I know you and I know how much you feed off of personal interactions with your constituents, you know- going to Rotarian clubs and being around your constituents in personal interactions. Now you are going to have a session where that highly valued three minutes on the microphone in front of the HGO committee is virtual. Those three minutes are so important for those who some of these issues aren’t just the legislative policy debates that occur in Annapolis-it affects their lives directly and they want to communicate with you.
So it must be tough for a guy like you that highly values that human interaction to know you’re going to have to legislate without it or in a different way.
Delegate Kerr: It is. When people email us or phone the office, a lot of times they think because it’s not a personal interaction it’s discounted somehow. I want people to know that we do read all the emails and all the letters that come in. It is effective to communicate with us virtually. It is not as enjoyable- or meaningful interpersonally- but I want people to know that their voices will be heard this session and that they can be assured that we will pay attention to phone calls, emails, and written correspondence.
Rick Weldon: So while you’re doing that- and I know you do A LOT of that- you are also working really hard on some really important legislation that has bubbled up to you through people you have served. Issues like family rights and protections, consumer protections, you’ve done a lot of work in the craft beverages industry based on our burgeoning brewery, distillery, and winery businesses here in Frederick County. Will you talk about those legislative issues that you’re working so hard on?
Delegate Kerr: Well I had one bill that got through both chambers and was enacted into law last year and that was to change the definition of what a family is for FMLA- family leave. We had a constituent who cares for an intellectually limited adult man, and he got cancer and needed to be taken to radiation treatments. The married couple who are his guardians were unable to use FMLA to get time off of work to take him. Of course, the man does not have a license and is incapable of getting himself to the doctor and the spouse of the legal guardian was not covered by FMLA and so we got that changed.
People just wanted to take responsibility for that man who was incapable of taking care of himself and then they were being penalized for doing so, so we got that sorted out last year.
Another one we got through both Chambers but the clock ran out before it could cross back over into the house had to do with escheatment. That is when a bank account or financial instrument does not have any activity for three years and it becomes considered abandoned property. I had a constituent who had one hundred thousand dollars in an account- and being in his early 50s he was saving it for retirement and wasn’t planning on touching it for another 10-15 years. So he ignored the money knowing it was safe in the bank. When he was doing his taxes the next year he realized an account was missing- his hundred thousand dollars was considered abandoned. All the banks had to do was attempt to contact one time by first class mail. The bill we put in said that if an account has over $10,000 then it has to be a certified mail return receipt. The Attorney General liked the bill and requested we lower the amount to $1,000- it got through the house that way. We went over to the Senate and the Maryland Banking Association got involved and asked the Senate to put it back to ten thousand. The Senate put it back to ten so we were unable to get a conference committee- which I assume probably would have compromised at the $5,000 level. So that one is coming back and I think that it will have a good chance.
Another one that had two really good hearings had to do with a safe school seizure law. 25% of people who get epilepsy are fourteen and under and every year between 25 and 40,000 people experience their first seizure. So the likelihood is that the first seizure very well could happen in school. This act was just saying that there would be a thirty-minute professional development that the National Epilepsy Society would inform people what to do to make this less frightening. The best way to counter fear is with information. So that had a really good hearing in both Chambers and Senator Young cross-filed but then it got hung up in committee. Even though there was no testimony against it during the bill hearing there were objections to the bill behind the scenes and there was no time to work it out.
So we are working out those things before the session starts so that they can go through this year.
Rick Weldon: And one thing just to inform our viewers- the session was truncated by Covid. As the infection rates and hospitalization and ICU utilization rates were skyrocketing- President Ferguson and Speaker Jones made the decision- what I think was the right decision- to not have all 188 of you in close proximity arguing at the top of your lungs and spewing microorganisms into the air. So the time that conferences would have worked and the time you would have worked to build consensus was just taken away from you.
Delegate Kerr: Yes. I also tried to help the craft beverage industry with a couple of bills that were unsuccessful. You know, when you go against the liquor lobby it is a difficult thing. One was a Class L license that they have in Allegheny County now that would’ve allowed Maryland breweries, wineries and distilleries to carry each other’s products. You know, your friends want to get together and sit down at Flying Dog or Idiom and have a beer but one of your friends doesn’t drink beer. This would have allowed them to serve some Hidden Hills Wine or some McClintock drinks as long as it was made in Maryland.
The other was a class MD license that would have allowed a restaurant to get a license- or essentially would have allowed for a tavern license in Frederick County- but you could only serve beer wine or spirits that were made in Frederick County. Both of those had a lot of opposition so I will keep working on them.
Another one had to do with cover crops. All of the barley that goes into making Maryland beer comes from out of state except for maybe the malting facility in Montgomery County that does a little bit of malting- because there is not really enough two-row barley to supply the agency up. For example, Flying Dog uses fifty tons a week of malted barley. The Amber Fields out in New Midway- he is capable of malting one ton a week. So his entire year’s production would go into Flying Dog for one.
So I was looking for a way to incentivize Maryland farmers to grow more two-row barley. There is a program called a Winter Cover Crop Program where they will grow a crop to fix the soil, pull out some nitrogen and pull out some potassium during the winter but they cannot sell it and they cannot till it under because it all has to do with soil erosion. So my bill said that if you grow two-row barley you can participate in the $75 per acre stipend that you get with the cover crop program but you can also harvest the two-row barley. So that got an unfavorable from committee and a lot of opposition but I was attempting to help two of the most important businesses in my district- the distilleries wineries and breweries and the farmers who are getting killed by soybean prices right now.
Rick Weldon: Well I had a conversation with Senator Charlie Smelser who represented Carroll and Frederick county a long time ago- before my time in the General Assembly. Senator Smelser once told me “A bad bill can pass in ninety days, a really good bill might take 2-3 sessions”. I will tell you that on behalf of our distillers, our vintners and our brewers, they deeply appreciate these efforts because if nothing else gets accomplished- you have at least elevated an issue to the level where people are talking about it. Often that brings attention to the other issues associated with the production and sale of alcohol in Frederick County and Maryland in general. I applaud you and you have to keep fighting the fight.
I know because you serve on HGO that you are involved in prescription drug monitoring and that’s an issue you’ve been really passionate about. Could you talk about that for just a few minutes?
Delegate Kerr: Prescription drug monitoring program had a sunset provision. A lot of people may not know that in order to get a bill passed that has some opposition- you agree to give it a trial run and then revisit in a period of years. If the bill is not working then the bill sunsets, but if it is working the sunset provision has to be removed.
So that was my first bill, Chairman Pendergrass gave me the bill to work so I learned a lot about prescription drugs in Maryland. Especially opiates and opioids and controlled dangerous substances. So the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program requires that before a prescription can be written for controlled dangerous substances it has to go through the CRISP system. This is where your physician looks to see if you’ve been prescribed similar controlled dangerous substances to make sure that you’re not a drug seeker or doctor shopping.
So it has been really effective, for the first time since 2012 we saw opiate-related overdose deaths decrease through the prescription drug monitoring program. Additionally, there are a quarter of a million fewer controlled dangerous substance prescriptions written in the state of Maryland- not individual pills but actual prescriptions. So it was an effective bill and I was glad to be able to work it to get that sunset provision removed.
I had another bill last year that didn’t get out of judiciary in the house- it got out- again Senator Young cross-filed it for me. It had to do with a drug not a lot of people know about called kratom and it is sold here in Frederick out of gas stations and tobacco shops. This is an herbal substance that hits the same brain receptors as opiates do- that’s called a SIP 3 A4 receptor- and so it can interfere with a lot of drugs that share the pathway. You know there is a drug called Coumadin-that’s blood thinner- that’s commonly used and if you are a kratom user, both of those drugs are competing for that same narrow metabolic pathway. SO you can either get too much of that coumadin and bleed out or not enough of that coumadin and throw a clot. So it is not a benign substance and it does mimic the effects of opiates- in a low dose it is a stimulate and in a high dose it is a sedative- and it is completely unregulated.
So what Senator Young and my bill was requesting was to put an age limit on it so that you would have to be twenty-one in order to buy it. We ran into a lot of opposition again so I don’t know if this year is the right year to bring it back because this session is going to be one where we have to focus on a lot of the needs of Maryland businesses and Maryland residents.
Rick Weldon: Well if you’d like to, I am happy to talk to you after the session about some education we can do through our channels. Our social media outreach here is broad and significant in the county and I would be happy to work with you to do some messaging.
In our last couple of minutes I wanted to talk about the concept of leadership in the General Assembly and how when you have proven yourself and you establish a reputation both in the floor and in committee of being a hard worker and being focused on legislative product in the interest of 8 million-plus Marylanders, in both parties- the majority and the minority- the leadership sees and rewards that.
You were designated this year as one of the deputy whips for the majority party. So I would like you to talk about that and then how you serve on two subcommittees that are incredibly important in terms of legislation that comes through your overall committee. Now. you are also on a statewide oversight committee for nursing homes and long term care. So if you could discuss what it means to be a deputy whip and your then your leadership service statewide on an issue that is so important to all of us.
Delegate Kerr: Well it was a surprise and very gratifying to have the speaker appoint me as a member of her staff on the whip group as a deputy whip. What a whip does is essentially finds out where people are on a certain issue and there are several of us- and we have a list of people typically on our committee- where we will just say where do you stand on this issue. This way we can see if we have enough votes to see if the bill is going to pass easily or do we have to meet with some people to see what their objections are and see if we can work out some kind of compromise to get the legislation done.
Sometimes it is very routine and we’ll get a card in the morning and just need to have it done by 2:00 PM but other times they will just come up to you on the floor and hand you a whip card and you’ll need to have it back within 5 minutes. It can be exciting but it is important work.
The other thing I was appointed to was the Oversight Committee for Quality Care in Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities. That was a bill that was created in 2017- I think- that established this committee. It has two senators. two delegates and then representatives from the industry- patient groups, resident groups, and then labor groups. It is a big stew of people coming together to try to establish a vision and a way forward for how we can improve the quality of care in these long term care facilities.
So we have been hammering out this document all Summer and for the last month, we have been meeting once a week. We have a draft of this bill that by law we are required to deliver to the governor by December 1st that says here is what we need to address right now. A lot of it has to do with training, retention, and hiring of qualified people who are dedicated to this important work. Another is- how do we secure sufficient quantities of personal protection equipment. Then, what do we do about a lot of the people in these facilities who are on Medicaid- how do we keep this industry viable and healthy by adjusting the Medicaid reimbursements.
A lot goes into it and before you get on a committee like this you have no understanding of the complexity of the issue. Like so many of the things in the legislature – they are complex issues and anybody that thinks there are simple answers doesn’t understand the problem.
Rick Weldon: Well listen this has been great. I want to thank you- every session you have been serving I have been able to come down and every time I’ve done that you have taken time to spend a few minutes to hear what the issues are with the business community in Frederick County. On their behalf, I deeply appreciate that you are always open and willing to discuss what is motivating their interests at a particular moment in time.
Our thoughts are with you as you gear up for this important time and the work you’re going to do from January hopefully all the way through to early April. So keep up the great work, thank you for your representation of the interests of the business community in Frederick County. I look forward to talking to you again.
Delegate Kerr: Anytime, Rick. Good to see you.
Frederick Chamber Insights is a news outlet of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. For more information about membership, programs and initiatives, please visit our website.