Maryland senators celebrate legislative successes: ‘We’re in an incredibly positive place’
With an three days left, Senate leaders reflected on their legislative wins and how they plan to tackle the bills yet to pass.
With an abundance of confidence and three days left until the end of the session, Senate leadership Friday reflected on their legislative wins and how they plan to tackle the hundreds of bills yet to pass.
“This has been an unbelievably productive session, and we are landing the plane at a time when Maryland has a great deal of uncertainty,” Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said at a news conference Friday morning. “But Marylanders should be proud of the work we’ve been able to do together.”
The General Assembly navigated this year’s 90-day legislative session with relative ease — even in the face of threats of violence that put the Maryland State House on lockdown and unprecedented tragedy felt when the Francis Scott Key Bridge fell, killing six people.
But they responded quickly with an emergency economic relief bill for displaced workers and industries that rely on the partially closed Port of Baltimore amid other priorities, like negotiating discrepancies over Maryland’s $63 billion budget and quashing constituent concerns about the rise in certain crimes among youth.
The omnibus juvenile justice bill passed out of the Senate on Thursday, but needs final approval from the House before it’s presented to Democratic Gov. Wes Moore for consideration. Senate Judicial Proceedings Chair Will Smith, a Montgomery County Democrat, said he’s “optimistic” about how the House will receive the amended legislation.
By Friday morning, over 500 bills had already been sent to Moore — who will approve, deny or let them go into effect without his signature — and both chambers were prepared to sift through hundreds more.
“Hitting day 87 of 90, here we are,” said Ferguson, who was flanked by his standing committee chairs. “And we’re in an incredibly positive place.”
The work left to complete in the limited time lawmakers have before the end of Maryland’s 90-day legislative session includes some heavy lifts. The state budget is mostly settled but hasn’t officially passed, and the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee scheduled a late-session bill hearing to consider legislation that would require the state to purchase Pimlico Race Course.
That bill, which passed out of the House on Monday, wasn’t introduced until early March, and has been a point of contention in the Senate.
Asked if he thought the bill would pass out of the Senate, Ferguson said “we’ll see.”
Because of the workload, the House chamber will convene a Saturday session, as it does every year. Ferguson said Friday morning it’s likely the Senate will have to come in to work, as well, even though they traditionally work late into the night the Friday before the General Assembly adjourns for the year.
“It’s not going to be a crazy last day,” he said. “All the big, major, challenging, most complex things have really moved forward. It’ll be busy — we’ll do a lot of cleanup of some of the last-minute things …. But I have every confidence in the world that we have the right people making the right decisions, and we’ll get to the right place in the next 72 hours.”