Politics

Prince George’s Board of Education Chair Juanita Miller signaled on Friday that she has no plans to resign, despite a direct request a day earlier from the woman who appointed her, County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D). In a video statement emailed to Maryland Matters, Miller said she intends to fight charges leveled at her by the state Board of Education late last month. Those charges include the failure to sign a legal services contract with a law firm that was the choice of a majority of Miller’s colleagues.

After two years of a temporary provision to allow remote voting in the U.S. House, the top 36 users of the proxy voting system are all Democrats, though Republicans have also taken advantage of it. Proxy voting was meant to keep crowds of House members smaller and thereby limit the spread of COVID-19, back in the early days of the pandemic. The first proxy votes were cast on May 27, 2020.

After months of work sessions, the Westminster mayor and Common Council’s recently approved 2023 fiscal plans for the city include a capital budget of $47.6 million and a total operating budget of $32.5 million. The approved budget contains no increase in the real property tax rate for the 10th consecutive year. The city will maintain a tax rate of 56 cents per $100 of assessed value. Expected increases in property values means the city stands to collect more in fiscal 2023 from that tax rate, as the constant yield rate was set at 54 cents per $100 of assessed value.

When Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rushern Baker III launched his first television ad of Maryland’s 2022 campaign, he chose to focus on murders in Baltimore, telling viewers “nobody in power gives a damn” about the carnage because the victims are Black and vowing to “stop the slaughter of young Black men.” And it’s not just Baker, a former Prince George’s County executive, who’s been talking about crime and policing on the campaign trail.

A state lawmaker wants Gov. Larry Hogan to declare a state of emergency ahead of next month’s primary election. Montgomery County Democratic Sen. Cheryl Kagan is asking Hogan to declare a state of emergency to allow the canvassing but not counting of mail-in ballots to begin eight days before early voting starts. That was the exact language in one of two bills sponsored by Kagan that Hogan vetoed last week.

Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) has asked the head of the county school board, Dr. Juanita D. Miller, to step down, “effective immediately,” Maryland Matters has learned. Miller, a former state delegate and water utility commission board member, has been at the center of multiple controversies since her appointment 16 months ago. Ethics complaints have been filed against her and she supported a separate set of disputed complaints that was filed against a faction of the board with whom she has clashed.

The House is swiftly working to put its stamp on gun legislation in response to mass shootings in Texas and New York by 18-year-old assailants who used semi-automatic rifles to kill 31 people, including 19 children. Debate on the legislation came as the White House announced that President Joe Biden would give a primetime speech about the shootings and his plans to press Congress “to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”