Buses, racetracks, and plastic bags? They’re all issues to follow in Maryland’s 2020 legislative session.

A lot of change happened during the “Interim” or offseason period between the 2019 and 2020 Maryland legislative sessions. Seven Delegates and two Senators (and counting) left office, and a new House Speaker and Senate President of the House of Delegates and the State Senate, respectively, were selected.

This year’s session of the Maryland General Assembly could prove equally as exciting as public transit, highways, housing, renewable energy, and education are just a few of the topics expected to dominate the proceedings. Earlier this week, I wrote about how the Maryland legislative process works. Now, here are some of the key issues I’ll be covering in Annapolis this year.

Transportation

Maryland’s 2020 legislative session begins, Wednesday. And the state’s Board of Public Works is expected to meet and approve a deal reached by two of its members of its three members, Governor Larry Hogan and Comptroller Peter Franchot. The deal would advance a public-private partnership to build new toll lanes on I-270 and expand the American Legion Bridge. Very few of the details of the agreement have been released so far, and previous iterations of the plan have drawn heavy opposition. Expect both chambers of the General Assembly to continue taking a keen interest in how Maryland’s latest highway fight unfolds.

Funding for the Corridor Cities Transitway, a proposed 15-mile Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line that would connect Shady Grove Metro Station with Clarksburg, and eventually Frederick County, was cut from the state’s transportation budget in September. Transit projects in Maryland overall has sparked fierce controversy during the second half of 2019. Expect both of those topics to come up at least once in legislation this winter and spring.

Finally, with Virginia now practically running circles around Maryland when it comes to investing in passenger rail, including reaching a deal with CSX to purchase and expand the Long Bridge, which could pave the way for a potential expansion of MARC service into the Old Dominion State, among other projects, look to see if Maryland will attempt to respond to Virginia’s ambitious rail plans itself and finally start trying to play catch-up.

Housing and land use

Building more housing and zoning laws have become increasingly important topics in several different states over the past few years. Virginia joined that debate last month when Delegate Ibraheem Samirah announced legislation to legalize duplex homes in previously single-family only zones across the Commonwealth.

In Maryland last week, Delegate Vaughn Stewart of Montgomery County. proposed a set of “Homes for All” bills which, as Kriston Capps of CityLab reported, would lift zoning restrictions on new housing, create a public housing fund, and expand tenant rights throughout the state. So expect that to be a hot topic for debate.

Maryland officials also have to decide what to do with three of the state’s most historic horse racetracks: Pimlico in Baltimore City, home to the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, Laurel Park in Anne Arundel County, and Bowie Race Track in Prince George’s County.

Last October, a deal was reached between the City of Baltimore and the Stronach Group, the track’s owner, to demolish and reconstruct the clubhouse and grandstand of Pimlico, the state’s oldest remaining racetrack. The deal also called for the subsequent rotation of the actual track to allow for private development.

In return, while Pimlico would retain the Preakness Stakes race, Stronach’s actual training and stable facilities would shift entirely to Laurel Park. Bowie Race Track, which closed as an actual functional racing facility in 1985, served as a training center from then until 2015. Since then it has sat vacant for the past five years, and would most likely be sold by Stronach, to either Bowie State University or the City of Bowie itself.

All of this, however, is contingent upon the General Assembly passing legislation to alter the structure of a fund previously set up by the state to use slot machine revenue to pay for track upgrades.

Sustainability and the environment

One of the General Assembly’s first acts each legislative session in recent years has usually been overriding gubernatorial vetoes on any remaining bills they passed with a large enough majority to do so. There are at least six such bills this year and one of them, HB720/SB830, creates a new oyster fishery management plan for Maryland’s portion of Chesapeake Bay. Other key environmental issues to pay attention to in Annapolis this year include:

• Addressing the recommendations released last month in the Transportation and Climate Initiative, which Maryland is a party to, along with the District of Columbia, Virginia, and nine other states.
• In 2012, Chestertown, a small town in Kent County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, banned plastic bags in stores. Since then, the idea has rapidly spread throughout the state. Montgomery County instituted a 5¢ fee on plastic bags that same year, Takoma Park banned the bags outright in 2016, and thanks to legislation each jurisdiction passed last year, Westminster in Carroll County, Howard County, and Baltimore City will all follow suit this year. Expect the State of Maryland to do the same, as Maryland Retailers Association President Cailey Locklear Tolle cited the trade group’s anticipation of such a bill as a factor in not opposing the Baltimore City ban last year.
• Last year, the General Assembly passed a bill requiring 50% of Maryland’s energy, or its “energy portfolio,” to come from renewable sources by 2030. Despite Governor Hogan allowing the bill to pass into law without his signature, a common practice for bills he knows has enough support to easily sustain a veto override, the bill still drew criticism from several environmental advocacy groups for including energy sources like incinerators and “black liquor” from paper mills. Expect an updated bill this year.

Education

It’d be hard not to start a list of the top educational priorities for Maryland in 2020 without discussing the Kirwan Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, or Kirwan Commission for short. The Commission, named after its chairman, former University of Maryland System Chancellor William Kirwan, was created by the General Assembly in 2016 to study both the best practices of the world’s leading public school systems and the issues affecting Maryland’s own public schools and use their findings to rewrite the funding formula the state has been using for over 20 years.

After three years of meetings and preliminary legislation, the Commission finally released its funding recommendations last October, calling for a $3.8 billion increase in state education spending over the next 10 years.

Governor Hogan has vehemently opposed many of the Commission’s recommendations, citing fears of tax increases, but both the House’s new Speaker, Adrienne Jones, and the Senate’s new President, Bill Ferguson, were already among the Commission’s 26 members, so any fights between Maryland’s executive and legislative branches will loom large over Annapolis for the next three months.

Closely tied to this debate, but nevertheless distinct, is the issue of school construction. Speaker Jones announced back in July that a bill she’s co-sponsoring to increase school construction funding for the next decade by $2 billion, and its corresponding Senate version would receive the symbolic titles of “HB (House Bill) 1” and “SB (Senate Bill) 1”, signifying them as the very first bills to be introduced in the House and Senate this session.

Hogan, meanwhile, has announced his own school construction bill to be introduced in the General Assembly, albeit one which calls for about $300 million less in funding than HB 1.

Stay tuned for more coverage of the 2020 Maryland General Assembly legislative session, including analysis of specific key bills to watch out for.