Politics

A key piece of Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s anti-poverty agenda is all but certain to fail in the legislature this year, but the new Democratic governor is still claiming a win. While the General Assembly is advancing Moore’s bill to accelerate a planned increase in the minimum wage so that it hits $15 per hour later this year, about two years earlier than planned, they roundly rejected his idea to tie future increases to inflation — and give up their power to set the minimum wage.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich is giving a tour of sorts around downtown Bethesda. It’s a mild, sunny day in late December, and he’s dressed in a leather jacket, playing equal parts chronicler and fortune teller of the pressures on affordable housing. As he points up and down Wisconsin Avenue, Elrich reels through a litany of planning terms: MPDUs (the “moderately priced dwelling units” the county requires in large development projects); affordable units (cheaper than MPDUs); and NOAH (the “naturally occurring affordable housing” he wants to protect).

Councilman Zeke Cohen made it official late Sunday afternoon, telling a bustling crowd of supporters at Center Stage in Mount Vernon that he’s running for City Council president. Pointing to hundreds of millions of dollars of federal stimulus money and a roster of new leadership in Annapolis with close Baltimore ties, the Democrat said that dysfunction and chaos persist at City Hall despite a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make progress.

Facing looming deadlines and with scores of legislation up in the air, Maryland delegates convened Saturday in Annapolis for a weekend bill-passing session.The 141-member House met for several hours to cram through a slew of bills before Monday’s “crossover day.” That’s the last day bills can pass either the House or the Senate and get a hearing in the opposite chamber without going through extra procedural steps. The General Assembly session is scheduled to end in just over three weeks.

Maryland lawmakers are working to shift between $300 million and $400 million in the state budget to add more help to implement the state’s K-12 education funding law, known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. The money is in the state’s $63.1 billion budget plan, which the Maryland House approved Friday for the next fiscal year on a 131-5 vote. That sends the legislation to the Senate.

Prince George’s County, Maryland, Council member Krystal Oriadha is proposing legislation to create a guaranteed basic income pilot program to help residents take care of their basic needs. Oriadha said this program is modeled after a similar one in Stockton, California. If passed, the region’s program would let 200 low-income families participate and receive monthly cash stipends for 24 months. Those in the program would receive direct cash to support their basic needs like food and utilities. The benefits would be eligible to residents who live at or below the poverty line.

A voucher program championed by former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) that allows low-income students in the state to attend private schools using state money is quietly causing friction among Democrats in Annapolis. On one side is Hogan’s successor, Gov. Wes Moore (D), who, backed by top leaders of the House of Delegates, moved to slash 20 percent of the $10 million in state-funded scholarships from his first budget, with the goal of phasing the program out, saying public dollars should go to public schools.

In a hearing before City Council in June of last year, Baltimore’s then-chief broadband official outlined a vision to bring next-generation internet connection to one of the poorest parts of town, the public housing project Gilmor Homes, within a matter of weeks. He pitched the idea as step one in an aggressive campaign to establish 100 communal Wi-Fi hotspots across West Baltimore, all within a year.