Politics

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.

According to results from a survey by the Montgomery County Planning Board, just over half of residents surveyed said they are satisfied with conditions as they walk around the county — be it taking their dog for a walk, running errands or waiting for a bus. However, there are proposals to improve what planners call “the pedestrian experience” in the Maryland county.

The House of Delegates on Thursday gave preliminary approval to legislation that would bar police from detaining individuals simply because they smelled of marijuana. Following its voice vote, the House could vote as early as Friday on passage of the bill, which states that marijuana’s odor alone gives police neither reasonable suspicion nor probable cause to suspect someone of criminal activity. The smell, however, could still be a factor in an officer’s reasonable suspicion during a traffic stop that a person was driving while impaired by marijuana.

Gov. Wes Moore on Wednesday blasted a private health care contractor for abusing and neglecting veterans residing in a state-run assisted living and skilled nursing facility, announcing the state has taken steps to terminate the 21-year relationship. The state has paid HMR Maryland LLC hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to oversee management and operations of the 454-bed facility going back as far as 2002. The governor said the state will look to hire a contractor to replace HMR.