FAQs for 2025 Legislative Strategy
Q. What legislation are we filing in 2025?
A. Between 2016 and 2023, we filed the main COS 3-subject resolution 8 times in the House of Delegates and 6 times in the Senate. In 2024 and 2025, we are filing the 34-Ready bill.
Q. What is the 34-Ready bill?
A. In 2024, COS Action has created model legislation to establish a process for selecting, instructing, and overseeing commissioners to an Article V Convention, and the Maryland legislative team worked with our lead sponsors to craft our state’s version of that model. This is known as the 34-Ready bill (when 34 states pass the same Article V application, we need to be ready for the Convention!).
This new legislation is NOT an application for a specific Article V convention. It serves as the guide for how the Maryland legislature would handle any Article V convention, whether our 3 subjects or any other application. The important thing is that the Maryland Legislature will set the terms for Maryland’s representation at a Convention and we can help them do that.
Q. Why file this different legislation? Is it appealing to the Maryland legislature?
A. We are confident that legislators on both sides of the aisle will respond positively to this legislation as it will alleviate their concerns over a “runaway” convention. This is something that is required along the path of holding the first-ever Article V Convention of States – and a Convention is coming.
Q. What is new with the 2025 Legislative Strategy?
A. Our goal in this Session is to show our true non-partisan nature by gaining a Democrat co-sponsor for our 34-Ready bill. This requires the exclusively Republican slate of co-sponsors to back down from signing onto this bill. Your legislator may have been one of those faithful co-sponsors in prior years, and they would gladly co-sponsor again, but we believe reaching across the aisle will produce greater results long term. Pursuing the 34-Ready bill offers us the opportunity to partner with more legislators to support this new resolution (and maybe even our COS resolution in the future).
Q. Who are our legislative lead sponsors for this 34-Ready bill?
A. Senator Justin Ready (D5) and Delegate Mark Fisher (D27A), and both have also been the lead sponsors of the main COS resolution.
Q. How can I help?
A. Come to Citizen Action Day on Tuesday, January 28th, 2025 at 9 AM at Lawyer’s Mall. We will teach you how to talk to your legislator, begin a relationship with them, and request their support of our bill! In addition, you can join the volunteer team, where we have several active working groups to grow our team, expand our influence, and train more people to be engaged citizen activists.
Q. What Committees are responsible for hearing our legislation?
A. Historically, our legislation is heard in the Senate Education & Environment Committee and the
House Rules & Executive Nominations Committee. It ultimately is up to the Speaker of the House and the Senate President to assign our legislation to a committee.
Q. Wait! What about the main Article V COS resolution?
A. We are not abandoning our goal of passing an Article V Convention of States resolution. A pivot towards 34-Ready should ultimately bring us greater success the next time we file the main resolution.
In the future, if our volunteer team and lead sponsors have the time and availability to support filing both, we will do so. This year, however, that is not the case.
Q. Are there other Article V legislation on the books in Maryland?
A. There were a few passed resolutions, but all were rescinded by the General Assembly in 2016. Several Article V applications have been made since then, but none have passed, including our COS 3-subject resolution.
NOTE: There are a total of 224 open Article V applications in legislatures in 40 states – not all are associated with our COS Action resolution.
