Aah–there I was again: what’s turning out to be my and Robert’s office, basically, The Bagel Bin in River Hill Village Center. I had just attended dance cardio class at The Columbia Gym, so those happy chemicals were Zumba-ing through my veins as it was, and the hint of sunshine outside was like a merciful gift from the Heavens after days of rain. I wiped some sesame seeds off a table by the door and sat down to wait for my partner-in-snack, Delegate Frank Turner (D-13), a Democrat who’s represented District 13–50 percent of HoCo–in the state legislature for 24 years. There, he’s overseen the passage of a host of landmark bills including ones affecting adoption policy and, as I’d recently learned and wanted to get details on from him, education. I’d asked him to meet me there to talk about how In the last three years before his retirement becomes official, he’s overseen the Near-Completers and Maryland Promise Scholarships Bill. It’s nothing short of an educational miracle, as I was about to learn,
Despite being inside the Bin, I noticed it was brighter then, the way you do when clouds move out of the sun’s way. I looked up, and there was Frank, walking in quietly but with a simple sort of ceremony. He always has a smile for me, as he did that morning. We exchanged hellos and he went to get a nosh.
“What do you want–something to drink?” he asked. I said no, but he insisted. Lately, I awe at charming ways of these HoCo politicians Robert and I have come to know. As Del. Eric Ebersole (D-12) taught me a couple months back, being good with people, to put it probably too simply, is a big part of the skill you need in politics. So, of course, Frank ended up in it–and got the Maryland Promise bill passed!
A water bottle landed with a soft thump in front of me. I looked up at Frank and couldn’t hold in a chuckle. He was wearing his ever-present Grin of Mischief, still holding on to the bottle. You always feel like you’re sharing an unspoken, funny secret with this one. I told him that for a second before he came, I thought I may have mixed up our meeting time.
“I didn’t want you to be mad at me,” I said, looking up and smiling at rank, as usual talking too much about unnecessary things, like my anxious feelings. He took a seat slowly.
“There’s no one in this world I’m mad at,” he said before tearing off a chunk of a toasted whole wheat bagel with butter and chewing it politely. Of course, I should have known this. Frank’s lived a full, rewarding life, complete with kids, career, and service. He has no reason to be mad.
Frankly, My Dear, He Does Give a Damn
The Maryland Promise bill, as it’s called for short, he said, segueing easily to talking about legislation, allows for $175million of the state budget each year, or up to $5,000 for a student per year, to pay for community college. I nodded my approval when Turner told me the refreshingly reasonable requirements one has to meet to qualify for the scholarship, which you can see here in full, as told by Brooke Henderson on the Maryland Association of Community Colleges’ website. That’s how it should be in a place that cares about its residents.
Briefly, to qualify for a Promise Scholarship ,an applicant must, according to Anne Arundel Community College’s website, an applicant must: enroll in a community college within two years of finishing high school or getting a GED, maintain a 2.3/4.0 GPA, enroll in 12 credit hours per semester, and not make over $100,000 (or $150,000 if they are married or live in a two-parent household).
The idea for Maryland Promise came to Frank when he surveyed the students in a business law course he teaches at Morgan State University and found that 65 percent of them were in debt because of school loans. Frank led a team of legislators, including Kelsey-Anne Fong, Alex Hughes, and Susan Turnbul (not “Susan Turnbull,” as I found out when I messaged the latter on Facebook to talk about the bill, but she’s running for Lieutenant Governor on Ben Jealous’ gubernatorial ticket) in looking at both why previous bills that aimed to help Maryland’s students fund their educations didn’t pass and the structures of similar legislation in other states. They used that knowledge to craft Maryland Promise.
“Promise will help students become effective, tax-paying citizens,” he said, and I tilted my head to the side because he has a way of putting things so that see them clearly. Educational debt, he said, can prevent people from getting housing loans, in addition to all the other reasons debt is no fun, so Promise’s reach extends into areas beyond just education. Frank is a complex thinker who immediately sees how to solve a problem. His ever-present easy body language and quick smile tell you this comes from a happy place. He said the bill will give recipients of the educational funding it provides a “jump start” to reach their full potential as Marylanders.
Don’t Fret About Debt
Frank retired this year, although it won’t be official until January 2019. Next year’s also when Promise Maryland will go into effect. The Maryland Higher Education Commission will administer it.
Frank told me Maryland Promise is one of the laws he helped pass that he’s proudest of–and he got it passed just before sine die (which, I used to think was people saying “Sign or Die” very quickly). That’s the last chance during the legislative session (January through April) when bills have to pass or wait until the following year to be voted on, though there’s no guarantee of that even.
Maryland Promise is a capstone bill, as they say in undergraduate education of projects that serve as a crowning achievement, to add the requisite Robert-and-Colleen-Morgenthau exaggeration to it, that puts a final flourish on a proud career. Tied with Promise in Frank’s heart for most pride-inducing are three bills he headed up on adoption policy, including one that makes it easier for children to connect with their biological parents.
When I spoke to my and Robert’s good friend whom we interviewed a couple months back for this website, Del. Eric Ebersole (D-12) about opportunities to access affordable, quality education in Howard County, Ebersole lamented the fact that even the relatively low cost of community college is prohibitive for some people.
“Frank Turner’s Promise bill will allow even more people to access the quality education they can get at their local community college,” Eric said. Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates Michael E. Busch (D-30) and fellow retired educator agreed and said Frank should take heart in the good the Promise Maryland bill will do.
“Over his past 23 years in the House, Del. Turner has been dedicated to increasing the educational opportunities for all Marylanders,” said Speaker Busch in an email exchange with me. “He should be incredibly proud of his hard work to make the Promise Scholarship bill a reality–a program that will help thousands of Marylanders attend community college every year.”
Frank also led the effort to pass a bill that allows children of faculty at schools in the Maryland system to go to any school in, not just the one that one or more of their parents teaches at. He told me this helped attract quality faculty to the area’s institutions of higher education, which we both agreed is vital to ensuring that schools in the Maryland system are as good as they can be.
Vanessa Atterbeary is on legislative “Team 13” with Frank (until January 2019 when he’ll retire) and Sen. Guy Guzzone (D-13), on which current Howard County Council member Hon. Jen Terrasa (D-3) will take his place. Bills that provide a nurturing and safe place for all kinds of vulnerable Marylanders are dear to Atterbeary’s heart, too. She was instrumental in the successful passage of the Domestic Violence Gun Transfer Bill during the 2018 legislative session, she told me. That bill requires people convicted of a domestic violence-related crime to turn in their firearms.
Atterbeary’s also working on getting a bill passed that would prevent minors from being coerced into marriages with adults, according to Marilyn Yu of The Baltimore Sun. Atterbeary’s ability to work on contentious but important issues like these two, achieving consensus across the aisle but staying true to the original intent of a bill, is just one of the many reasons she was named Vice Chair of the influential House Judiciary Committee this year and that the Sun named her one of its 25 Women to Watch in 2018.
Ways and Means and Assistance
Kelsey-Anne Fung, a staffer at the Maryland House of Delegates who’s worked closely with Frank over the years, noted how it was so apparent that both his coworkers and the bills they worked on together were so meaningful to him: “Professionally, as a legislator, I could always tell how much he cared about the issues that affected his constituents and wanted to find solutions to make the situation better. I will miss him dearly now that he is retired–especially since he used to bring donuts for the staff every Friday, and he would notice and remember which ones were your favorite.” She said Frank was the kind of boss whom you knew appreciated you and that made you want to work for him. This is obvious to me even in the short time we’ve known each.
I told Frank my personal prediction for his future is that he’ll concentrate more on teaching come January. He has, after, all been on the faculty in the Business Department at Morgan State University for the last 30 years. He said he might like to work on establishing a scholarship in his name at North Caroline Central University (NCCU), his law school alma mater, but as of now there are no concrete plans to do so. There are so many hybrid teacher-legislators in HoCo, and it makes perfect sense. It’s service work, and both of those require an affinity for people–for humanity. You’ll have no doubt that Frank possesses this within the first five minutes of meeting him. He’ll ask you, in his kindly scratchy voice, all about you. This is dangerous territory for me, as regular readers of this website will know. I already think and talk about myself way, way too much! This is part of the reason I’ve gotten along so well with Frank since first meeting him at a fundraiser a couple months ago: we’re a pair that works almost too well together, like peanut butter and jelly, guanine and cytosine, Starksy and Hutch. Look the last two up, if you must, but it’s true!
“The problem I have with it,” Frank said returning to talking about the Promise bill, complicating my moony fawning, “is that it only covers tuition–it doesn’t cover room and board, it doesn’t cover fees.” He added that New York State allocates $360 million for Promise scholarships, above and beyond any other state, because it covers four-year colleges.
When I interrupted our edu-talk to apprise Frank of the fact that our daughter, Rachel, will probably have to quit her job in Manhattan because the job she only recently began isn’t working out, he gave me the Turner Double Take, as I like to call it. It’s an ever-so-small grin coupled with an ever-so-smaller widening of his tenderly brown eyes. And it never fails to make me double over with laughter.
“We have got to get that girl a job,” he said, emphasizing the last word in a sing-songy string. Again, I scrunched up my eyes and laughed. We had to talk more about Maryland Promise, so I put my foot down.
“You’re so bad, Frank! Ok…let’s see,” I said as I shuffled my notes around and then paused to hold my pen still, hovering just above my notebook. Again, laughter got the best of me. That was it. Get it together, Colleen! I asked him what his hope was for the future of Maryland Promise. What lies ahead is always a nebulous and uncertain place that can make me nervous enough to get serious.
“I hope it’ll expand to four-year colleges…I hope the state will put more money into it,” he said when I asked him where he hopes the bill goes in the future.
Honestly, all this talk was making me want to go back to school. As I said this, Frank put one leg up on the bench and leaned against the wall next to him, smiling in exasperation. I rolled my eyes in an acknowledgment that perhaps my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees meant that I’d had enough school. Hey–it’s not my fault Frank’s so good at showing you why something’s a good choice!
Frank makes all his skills seem effortless, as do most pros. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t worked hard. It just means he’s loved it. Like his five children, he’s nurtured his careers, which began after he studied law. There’s a softness to Frank’s happily symmetrical features, one that only comes from the emotional serendipity of caring and confidence. While others faces harden with age, Frank’s has retained a pliant youthfulness.
“Colleen–we’ve got to get you some focus. You’re very smart, but you’re all over the place,” he said. I laughed too, because…well, because it’s so true. It took me decades to figure this out, but Frank figured it out in a matter of weeks. I guess we all have our strengths, and in Frank’s case, several of them.
Frank says he’s not sure what he’ll be doing in January, but I have a feeling–due in part, to his Grin of Mischief, I confess–that he has more of an idea than he let on to me at Bagel Bin. To be sure. As he’d said, he might like for there to be a scholarship in his name at NCCU. That sounds like a hint to me. I doubt, though, that Frank’s gotten where he is by being predictable in any way. Whatever direction–or directions–his life takes in January, I’m sure of one thing: it/they’ll involve a continued careful stewardship of Howard County, its people, and the educational opportunities available here.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.