Maryland General Assembly session opens with optimism, warnings about the months ahead

Maryland lawmakers — buzzing with both optimism and concerns about an increasingly tenuous state budget situation and still robust plans that could make that financial problem even tougher — converged Wednesday in Annapolis for the first day of the Maryland General Assembly’s three-month session.

Addressing public safety concerns and dealing with growing budget issues were major topics of conversation for many of the 188 lawmakers and hundreds of other activists and lobbyists who filled the historic State House and will return throughout the annual 90-day lawmaking sprint — the 446th such gathering for the historic governing body.

The session is just the second for Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, who entered office last year with an ambitious and idealistic agenda, and who vowed Wednesday to keep up what he describes as his style of moving boldly and quickly despite the financial challenges he’s warned the public and other lawmakers about in recent months. He hasn’t yet released his full legislative agenda but has talked in recent days about public safety-focused legislation, plans to expand affordable housing and a strategy around implementing artificial intelligence in government.

In the legislative chambers, Senate President Bill Ferguson, of Baltimore, and House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, of Baltimore County, were each selected by their colleagues to lead their Democratic-supermajority chambers for the fifth year.

As some of the legislators sat with their spouses or children to celebrate the start of another frenzied few months, both Ferguson and Jones offered positive messages while noting the significant challenges ahead.

Ferguson told his colleagues to expect a more “normalizing” year with tougher fiscal challenges and policy issues compared to recent, disruptive sessions during the coronavirus pandemic, the 2022 state election year and then, in 2023, the pomp and circumstance of the first months of a new administration.

Federal funding from the pandemic has dried up, leading in part to the immediate $761 million shortfall for the budget beginning in July. Billions of dollars more needed for education, climate and transportation plans are adding to the financial stress.

“We’ve been able to be a little bit more flexible over the last few years. That’s not the case this year,” Ferguson told his chamber. “We have to start really prioritizing the things that we all know and care about — investing in education and health care and protecting our environment and public safety.”

Moore must release his fiscal year budget plan by Jan. 17, and lawmakers will have the entire session to push and prod the administration to make changes — as well as the ability, for only the second year, to move money around while not going beyond the governor’s total spending figure, which last year was about $63 billion.

Moore told reporters Wednesday that his bar for considering new taxes is “very, very high.” Asked whether he would consider specific measures such as raising taxes for the highest earners or requiring what’s known as “combined reporting” to make corporations pay more, Moore said his office would be engaged in conversations, but the priority was on “modernizing government” and investigating the best use of the state’s current resources.

“We are going to make necessary cuts,” the governor said in an early morning forum held by The Daily Record. “But we have to have a measurement of discipline.”

Moore later told reporters that priorities like a new $1 billion-per-year environmental plan and the massive education reform plan, the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, will need to be paid for and his budget plan next week would reveal more details. His administration also announced $3.3 billion in future transportation cuts last month as lawmakers seek a new funding mechanism other than the gas tax to primarily pay for improving roads, bridges and transit.

“You got to have a way to pay for the ambitious goals that we have,” Moore said.

As Baltimore-area lawmakers have spoken out about the planned cuts to transit services and future projects, Jones said the legislature would be looking into all options to maintain Maryland’s transportation system.

“MTA and WMATA should both be world-class,” she said.

Republicans, meanwhile, say they will push back against tax increases and are concerned about rising costs for the Blueprint, which requires cash-strapped local governments to pick up portions of the cost.

House Minority Whip Jesse Pippy of Frederick County said reducing spending on the policy would “probably solve a lot of our fiscal problems.”

“The minority caucus is supportive of having world-class education throughout our state. However, some of the funding requirements … it’s just unsustainable. Completely unsustainable,” Pippy said. “You asked a specific question — what areas can we see some cuts? That’s one area right there.”

Ferguson did not rule out tweaking some of the intricacies of the landmark education reform policy, saying that the Senate would like the Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board and the Maryland State Department of Education to “recommend structural changes” needed for certain jurisdictions to ensure the law is being “implemented with fidelity and as cost-effectively as possible.” Jones said the legislature will keep its “commitment to the Blueprint.”

Moore, however, said the Blueprint is his “point of no compromise.”

“If we do not have an educational system that is preparing our students for the 21st century and to be leaders in the 21st century, we’ll repeatedly find ourselves putting money in to try and fix brokenness,” Moore said. “That is not just inefficient — it is lunacy.”

Advocates for funding the Blueprint — through a mix of “fair funding” revenue-boosting plans — were among a litany of activists, lobbyists and other elected officials who circled the State House on Wednesday, beginning months of pushing and pulling to get hundreds of bills over the finish line.

Environmental activists with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, for example, held a small rally outside the building to promote the RENEW Act, a bill to help fund the state’s ambitious climate change goals by making companies that have been major polluters pay a fee that would total $9 billion. Other groups were spreading their messages in conversations with lawmakers and planning rallies or protests for the coming days and months.

Among those attending the gaveling-in of both chambers were county executives from across the state, including Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who is running for U.S. Senate and has been endorsed by Moore.

Baltimore County State’s Attorney Ivan Bates also was in the building talking to lawmakers as many in the General Assembly say addressing both the public’s and law enforcement’s concerns about crime is a top priority this year.

“It should be at the top of everyone’s list, because there has to be consequences for people’s actions and unfortunately this body removed the consequences,” said Sen. Jack Bailey, a St. Mary’s County Republican and retired law enforcement officer.

The issue has been a focus for Ferguson in recent months, when the number of car thefts and firearms offenses among kids ballooned. Jones called the rise in juvenile crime “untenable.”

Ferguson said that the legislature needs to find a way to maintain oversight of the Department of Juvenile Services and the agencies it works with to “get better results.”

“We have to hold these everyday executive functions accountable to doing the job of following the law and engaging in the real work that is required every single day to change outcomes for kids,” Ferguson said.

The legislature also will revisit the End-of-Life Option Act, which would exempt a doctor from liability if they prescribed fatal drugs that a patient with a terminal diagnosis took themselves. Moore has been supportive of the policy and indicated Wednesday he would sign a bill if it reaches his desk.

Ferguson said that, of the 13 years he has spent in the legislature, aid-in-dying bills were the “hardest issue” debated, but he believes it will pass out of the Senate this year.

“It’s going to be a hard issue. It’s a personal issue — it’s not a partisan issue in any way,” Ferguson said. “This is one where individuals’ personal experiences really drive where they land on this.”