All eyes were on the boy in the blue plaid shirt.
Nathan Simm was born with one leg, and he was in Annapolis to ask lawmakers to require insurance companies to cover prostheses used in sports.
“I have an everyday leg, but it’s not that good for running,” he told state lawmakers in Annapolis in 2024. “It slows me down.”
Seated next to him was a Marine veteran and Paralympian, an amputee who travels the world as a defense consultant, and a man who’s walked with prosthetic legs for 50 years.
But it was the halting, brief testimony of a 12-year-old from Ocean City who wanted to play baseball that captivated members of the state Senate Finance Committee.
“Using the nonathletic leg, they don’t have the ability that athletic legs do,” he said. “They make you do more stuff that you want to do.”
The Maryland General Assembly gets down to the business of legislating this week. Hearings about energy, insurance and almost every imaginable topic will be on the agenda through April 13.
Thousands of people will testify before delegates and senators, all trying to convince them to see issues their way, to vote in favor of their positions.
The vast majority get just two minutes — maybe a little more by the grace of a committee chair — to accomplish that.
“You know, it takes a lot to come to Annapolis,” said House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, a longtime committee chair before her election last month as speaker. “And then they have to wait for hours, right?”
There’s limited public transportation, no free parking and lots of obstacles. Two minutes might not seem like enough.
“So I emphasize to the new people on these committees, please remember that there’s a human being there, right?” Peña-Melnyk said.
When the bell sounds — it’s a soft electronic tone similar to a wind chime — it’s time to wrap it up. How do you get your point across?
How do you say enough to change the world in two minutes?
“People have to understand that so much goes into something like this,” Caroline LaPere said, “and it is society speaking up and deciding to make a difference or no difference will be made.”
She and her husband, Frank, testified in 2024, five months after the murder of their daughter, tech entrepreneur Pava LePere, in Baltimore by a man released early from a prison sentence for a sex offense.
They were supporters of legislation that would prevent men like her attacker from automatically diminishing their sentences with good behavior credits.
“We celebrated her birthday two weeks ago,” testified Frank LaPere, fighting back tears. “Her loss is tragic and horrific, and I firmly believe it could have been avoided.”
Legislators could hear the pain as they told their story and asked for change. They said they kept Pava in their hearts as they spoke.
“What gave me the courage through boundless episodes of crying during that testimony,” Frank said Saturday from the couple’s Arizona home, “was that regardless of what she accomplished and how much she set in place for other people to benefit from, I just wanted to especially change the diminution credit law.
“I told the legislature, please, let me be the last father that has to testify before you about this issue.”
The work of sorting out bills happens in subcommittees. Policy experts and lobbyists work behind the scenes to shape an issue’s prospects, to influence how lawmakers think about a problem.
Testimony, however, can make the difference between pass and fail.
Most of it isn’t heartrending. It can be dry, full of data and dollar figures that advocates and opponents believe elected officials on the other side of the dais need to know.
“For me, it is to have a message that you want them to remember and say it in a way that is easily understandable,” said Vincent DeMarco, a longtime advocate for public health causes in Annapolis.
DeMarco talks to people, not just those interested in health initiatives, about giving effective testimony. He tells a story about a tobacco tax bill in 2007.
Eight faith leaders sat behind the witness table to support the new tax, which would funnel money into health care spending. The first seven all went over their allotted time — way over.
“They were all, of course, beautiful words,” DeMarco said, “but everybody wanted me to kill the final witness.”
It was a Baltimore Jewish Council representative who, seeing that legislators were ready to move on, gave what DeMarco considers some of the best testimony he has ever heard.
“He said these words: ‘Me too, from the Jew,’” DeMarco said. “And that was it. And he got an ovation.”
It got the message across in a memorable way. The bill passed.
During her time as Health Committee chair, Peña-Melnyk was renowned for dealing with difficult testimony. Even for her, however, there were limits.
Del. Heather Bagnall, tapped to succeed the speaker as committee chair, said she saw her shut down antisemitic and anti-immigrant testimony.
“She doesn’t let things rattle her, things that have actually rattled other members of the committee before, and she said, ‘No, no, we are here to be respectful,’” Bagnall said.
The LaPeres were successful and the Pava LaPere Act went into law.
“I was watching the General Assembly on the last day, and it was 12 minutes before midnight, and it still hadn’t come up for a vote and we were freaking out,” Frank said. “And then it finally came up for a vote, and they passed it unanimously.”
Simm’s testimony on Valentine’s Day 2024 worked, too. It didn’t hurt that the committee chair, Sen. Pam Beidle, sponsored the bill and sat by him during his appearance.
They overcame insurance company projections that it would be wildly expensive. The law went into effect this month, and the projections appear wrong.
“When you have a testimony of really direct impact, when you hear that it’s going to affect someone’s life,” Beidle said, “that makes all the difference.”
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