Lawmaker questions failure to hike marriage fee

Additional money from licenses would have gone to county domestic violence shelter

‘‘The additional charge is minimal, but the benefits are far-reaching,” wrote Ivey, who asked the council to consider the increase when they resume meeting this September. ‘‘It is imperative that the Family Crisis Center be able to better help abused women (and men) and their partners.”

A county spokeswoman was unable to say why the county did not act on the bill before.

‘‘As of right now, they haven’t chosen to do so,” said council spokeswoman Shelby McRae. ‘‘Which is not to say it won’t be in the near future.”

Unlike other types of state laws passed by the legislature, the marriage license increase is not required. Instead, the piece was what is known as ‘‘enabling” legislation — a type of bill where the state agrees to give a local county the option to change. The bill raised the limit on how much the county could charge from the previous $45 up to $60.

Ivey said that she could make future bills mandatory.

‘‘I’ve learned my lesson,” she said. ‘‘Next time, I won’t say ‘may.’ I’ll say ‘will.’”

Former shelter director Virginia Callis said she spent months waiting for an answer from the county on the fee increase before speaking with Ivey.

‘‘We started about six months after the bill passed,” said Callis, who was interim executive director of the Family Crisis Center and left when a new director took over this month. ‘‘I had been trying to get some answers, but have not heard anything. We really could use the money.”

The center had hoped to use the increase in funding to help pay for court-mandated therapy the center provides family members and accused domestic violence suspects. The center charges the participants for the therapy according to their ability to pay, Callis said.

The crisis center’s new director, Sheri Sanzi, did not return calls for comment.

Ivey, the chief sponsor of the bill, said she did not realize the county had not acted on the change until a few months ago when Callis mentioned that the money still had not come.

Spousal abuse has been a major issue in Prince George’s County. Between 2001 and 2005, 48 people — mostly women and several children — were killed in domestic-violence-related murders, according to state advocacy groups. Every year in the county’s district court, spouses and partners file roughly 5,000 petitions for protective orders, the highest in the state.

The prevalence and brutality of the cases led national magazine Essence to publish a feature in 2005 calling domestic violence ‘‘the secret shame of Prince George’s County.”

Callis said the Family Crisis Center runs the county’s only ‘‘safe house” — a temporary shelter for women trying to leave abusive spouses. The center, which is run through a nonprofit corporation, also runs a 24-hour hotline and provides counseling, limited financial assistance and therapy to families.

Other shelters are available in the county, but they also offer temporary housing for the homeless and others, and also allow men.

Though each county sets its own additional fees, Maryland charges $10 for a marriage license. The county’s current $45 charge for marriage licenses already goes directly to the Family Crisis Center, which gets about $240,000 per year from the fee. Ivey’s bill would have increased the overall cost for a marriage license to $70 for a couple and provided an additional $75,000 in revenue for the center.

Unlike tax hikes and other changes, the increase was one ‘‘no one would complain about,” Ivey said.

‘‘When you’re getting married, you really don’t care about 15 more dollars,” she said.

E-mail Daniel Valentine at dvalentine@gazette.net.