The first two months of Maryland’s 90-day session will likely be markedly different from the final one, presiding officers say.
Why?
The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican who campaigned on strict alterations to existing Democratic policy, has state lawmakers uncertain regarding how they’ll need to respond in a year where Maryland’s purse strings are particularly tight.
“I’ll be honest: This upcoming legislative session is not going to be easy with the uncertainty felt by so many right now,” House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat, said Monday.
Trump will be inaugurated Jan. 20. The Maryland General Assembly gavels in at noon on Jan. 8.
“Everything remains on the table. That’s going to be the theme of the session. I know that blueprint means a lot of uncertainty for folks, which is going to be what the session feels like for the first 60 days,” Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said in an interview Monday. “We have to learn what the new administration is going to do — the impacts there — and so there is very likely a lot of dynamic impacts that we’re going to have to account for by the time we leave in April.”
Ferguson said he is “anxiously awaiting” the approach a new Trump administration will take and what comes to fruition policy-wise, including the potential elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, a shift in the cost that states may pay for programs like Medicaid, and the incoming president’s plan for tariffs.
“We’ll get a signal pretty early on as to how expansive some of these projected cuts will be when the administration comes on board,” Ferguson said.
Maryland’s legislative session begins Wednesday. Lawmakers will spend weeks mulling over the state budget while navigating a nearly $3 billion deficit. Ferguson said the budget will “drive everything” in 2025.
The budget is generally settled in the session’s final weeks. That, paired with the potential desire to mitigate Trump administration policy, could make for a jam-packed late March and early April.
The governor is poised to release his budget proposal Jan. 15. The session is scheduled to end on April 7.
“Restructuring our state government in a way that is financially stable and allows us to be competitive is going to be the foundation of basically every decision we make this year,” Ferguson said. “We really have to have a hard look and hard conversations about what we can afford to do in Maryland and how we pay for it, and that’s going to take some significant restructuring of a lot of formulas and commitments, and we have to have a comprehensive approach of what we’re doing moving forward.”
Ferguson said that anything that has an annual funding formula-based increase — from education to health care to land preservation — will be open to discussion for adjustments.
Jones said that, given the shortfall, the House will be looking at “all our options to raise additional revenue.”
“We can’t cut our way out of the fiscal situation we are facing,” she said.
Echoing Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, Ferguson said that “raising revenues is a very high bar … because we want to make sure that Marylanders can keep as much money in their pockets to spend and use as they like.” But he clarified that won’t prohibit the legislature from minding its key priorities, like investments in health care and education.
Buzz has swirled about potential cutbacks to The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a multibillion-dollar education reform plan poised to be enacted over the better part of a decade.
The program is currently fully funded through the 2027 fiscal year.
Moore, who testified in favor of the law in early 2020, signaled during the Maryland Association of Counties winter conference in December that his administration will sponsor a bill to reform the Blueprint, including its “collaborative time” policy for teachers, which gives them increased time for curriculum planning, grading, and professional development outside of the classroom. House and Senate Republicans said last month that a bill was being drafted to do away with the provision that mandates pre-kindergarten for three-year-olds.
Ferguson said that the “talking points” that Maryland is facing budget challenges related to the Blueprint are just “simply not true.”
“Our deficit is caused by entitlement spending and health care costs and childcare subsidies,” he said. “It’s an interesting talking point. It isn’t a factually accurate one to say that the Blueprint is driving the cost.”
According to Ferguson, even if the legislature cut $500 million from the Blueprint this session, “it wouldn’t help close a single dollar toward the gap that exists” because the money for the program sits in a special fund. He did concede, however, that adjustments will need to be made to the program in 2025.
“I don’t think that’s rolling back,” he said. “I think that’s doing the basic functioning of governing — to manage a program to what is actually happening on the ground, and so that will happen this year.”
Jones said that the House chamber will “have a high bar for any cuts” to the Blueprint.
Aside from potential Trump challenges and Maryland’s budget woes, the presiding officers plan to address the cost of energy for residents, including moving away from coal and brainstorming ways to create electricity domestically through wind, solar, water, and natural gas.
“We must listen to our constituents who are telling us that their energy costs are too high,” Jones said. “The urgency around energy prices and climate demand an all-of-the-above approach.”
The pair also wants to focus on the rising cost of health care.
Jones said she plans to expand access to behavioral health care and increase the affordability of prescription drugs.
A Gonzales poll of 811 registered voters in Maryland conducted between Dec. 27 and Jan. 4 on behalf of Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative found that 83% of those asked believe that drug companies can afford to make their drugs less expensive based on their profits and advertising spending.
Jones also said Monday that she plans to work this session to make housing more affordable, and to protect the rights of communities that have been “historically and disproportionately affected by certain policies.” Those bills are still being drafted.
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