A bipartisan eight-bill package is aiming to modernize Maryland’s military laws and create consistent and equal benefits among the uniformed services and reserve units.
The package, submitted by Republican Sen. Bryan Simonaire, an Anne Arundel County Republican, and supported by five House delegates, would restructure Maryland’s military laws to provide more than 100 benefits that were being denied to current and former service members due to existing outdated terminology. It would make more than 500 revisions touching nearly every article of state law.
For example, active duty service members or National Guard members currently get in-state tuition breaks, but active duty reservists don’t get the same privilege, Simonaire said.
“The policy going in was, don’t change the underlying policy,” he said at a news conference Thursday morning. “I’m not trying to change policy, I’m just trying to create equality.”
The legislation would update and standardize military terms used in existing laws, as well as centralize those definitions in one place to make future revisions easier. The wording would be inclusive to all eight branches of the uniformed services, including the commissioned corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, who would be eligible to receive tax breaks on military retirement income.
There would be some fiscal impact, Simonaire said, but departments across the state told him the additional service members being added could be absorbed in their current budgets.
“It’s not about us, it’s about helping those in our community,” he said.
Del. Nick Allen, a Baltimore County Democrat and Army veteran, said the bills will help certain veterans, such as those who didn’t deploy, those who served during peacetime or others who don’t define themselves as veterans like others do, who may not think they’re entitled to receive certain benefits.
“This is going to really help simplify that, and there will be one definition for a veteran and they know where to go and they can, again, kind of self-identify and be like, ‘Oh, I am one of these, I am entitled to these benefits,’” he said.
Allen, along with Del. Charlotte Crutchfield, a Montgomery County Democrat, Del. Nic Kipke, an Anne Arundel County Republican, Del. Edith Patterson, a Charles County Democrat, and Del. Mike Rogers, an Anne Arundel County Democrat, will sponsor the various bills in the House.