By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
The Maryland General Assembly closed its three-day special session Tuesday night having done exactly one thing: sending a constitutional amendment to the November ballot that would strip the state Declaration of Rights’ criteria from congressional redistricting and clear the legal path for a more Democratic-friendly map in 2028. The House passed it 96-38. The Senate followed 32-13. Every Eastern Shore lawmaker in both chambers voted no.
That outcome was never really in doubt. Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers, and House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk and Senate President Bill Ferguson made the sequencing plain before a single gavel fell: this session existed for one bill, and one bill only. In a July 20 letter, the two leaders instructed the Department of Legislative Services not to draft any legislation unrelated to redistricting — not a courtesy filing, not a placeholder, nothing. Any lawmaker hoping to raise a constituent problem during the three days the full General Assembly was assembled in Annapolis was told, in writing, before they arrived: don’t bother.
It’s worth being clear about what the underlying bill actually does, because that’s what makes the “power over people” framing more than a slogan. The last time Maryland Democrats drew a congressional map to their own advantage, in 2021, the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court threw it out. In Szeliga v. Lamone, Judge Lynne Battaglia ruled the map an “extreme” partisan gerrymander that violated the redistricting standards embedded in Maryland’s constitution and the Free Elections, Equal Protection, and Free Speech provisions of its Declaration of Rights — the same document invoked in the ruling’s core holding. The General Assembly was ordered to redraw the map within days, and it did.
House Bill 2100 and Senate Bill 2100 don’t add clarity to that constitutional language. They remove it. The amendment specifies that “nothing in the Maryland Constitution provides applicable criteria for the boundaries of a congressional districting plan” — eliminating the exact legal hook a court used three years ago to strike down a Democratic gerrymander. That is the plainest way to describe what happened this week: rather than draw a map that could survive the standard the courts already applied once, the majority spent a special session rewriting the standard itself, so that the next map — whatever it looks like — has no constitutional yardstick left to be measured against. That’s not a neutral process fix. It’s the legislature using the power it holds to make sure the power it holds can’t be checked the same way again. And it’s the frame that makes it worth asking what else that same three days, and that same supermajority, could have been used for.
“Rather than draw a map that could survive the standard the courts already applied once, the majority spent a special session rewriting the standard itself.”
Here is what didn’t get heard.
“The legislature didn’t just choose what to debate. It chose what Marylanders weren’t even allowed to ask about.”
1. The disability community was told this wasn’t their moment
Advocates for people with developmental disabilities gathered outside the State House on Monday, the session’s opening day, to press lawmakers on a $126 million cut to the state’s Developmental Disabilities Administration approved earlier this year and set to take effect this fall. Sherry Handley, a family liaison for DDA provider Elevate Spectrum, was among those who stood on the State House steps explaining how the reduction will land on families and caregivers who depend on that funding for day-to-day support. Concerned Citizens of Self Direction Maryland, which helped organize the demonstration, said the group was frustrated that the session’s scope wouldn’t even permit the subject to be raised, let alone debated.
Because of the DLS drafting restriction, it wasn’t. Legislative leaders had made clear before the gavel fell that redistricting was the only permissible subject, and the DDA cuts stayed exactly where they were left this spring — a decision affecting some of the state’s most vulnerable residents, made by default, with no floor debate at all.
2. Affordability — utilities, groceries, and the cost of owning a car — got nothing
Maryland Republicans arrived with a specific, pocketbook-focused list: relief on high utility prices, vehicle registration fees, and a possible gas tax holiday. House Minority Whip Jesse Pippy held a news conference on the session’s opening day demanding lawmakers address affordability and calling the decision to keep it off the floor “outrageous.” Because the DLS instructions barred bills unrelated to redistricting, Republicans couldn’t formally introduce affordability legislation at all — there was no bill to vote down, because there was no bill permitted to exist.
“Marylanders paying more for utilities, groceries and vehicle costs got one answer: next year.”
When FOX45 asked Senate President Ferguson directly why the legislature wouldn’t act on affordability now, rather than waiting for the 2027 regular session, he said leaders were “still evaluating what actions the state can realistically take.” For Marylanders paying more for utilities, groceries, VEIP inspections, and vehicle registration and excise fees, that’s an answer that arrives no sooner than next year, at the earliest — a full legislative cycle after the session where the doors were open and the members were in the room.
3. Roads, bridges, and the Transportation Trust Fund keep sliding — with no floor time to discuss it
Maryland’s Transportation Trust Fund, the account that pays for state and local road, bridge, and transit work, is not in good shape. The Department of Legislative Services has projected a fund shortfall running past $1 billion over six years, and a scheduled cut to Highway User Revenues — the formula that sends state gas-tax dollars back to counties for local road and bridge maintenance — is set to strip roughly $110 million a year from local governments starting in fiscal 2028, growing to an estimated $520 million cumulative loss by 2031. Counties maintain more than 80% of Maryland’s road miles and depend heavily on that revenue stream. None of it came up this week. A special session convened with every member of the General Assembly in the building was not used to discuss the funding structure that keeps Marylanders’ roads and bridges maintained.
“A special session convened with every member of the General Assembly in the building was not used to discuss the funding structure that keeps Marylanders’ roads and bridges maintained.”
4. Data centers are reshaping communities and rates, and local fights are boiling without state help
The General Assembly did pass data-center-related legislation this year — the Utility RELIEF Act, signed in the spring, requires large power users like data centers to help fund their own grid connection upgrades rather than spreading those costs across all ratepayers. But that law hasn’t settled the fight. Montgomery County imposed a six-month moratorium on new data center permits in June. Frederick County residents have been showing up to local hearings warning their county could become the next “data center alley.” And in June, 80 state lawmakers — a bipartisan group — asked federal regulators to force PJM, the regional grid operator, to redo its cost allocations for transmission lines built to serve data center demand, arguing Maryland ratepayers are on the hook for roughly $1.6 billion in costs tied to that buildout over the next decade. That fight is live, it’s costing ratepayers money right now, and it never came up during three days when the full legislature was assembled.
5. The Child Victims Act bill is coming due, and there’s still no plan to pay it
Maryland faces more than 12,000 claims filed under the 2023 Child Victims Act, most tied to abuse survivors describe in the state’s juvenile justice facilities. Each claim could cost the state up to $890,000 depending on when it was filed, and legislative budget analysts have said the state’s total exposure could run into the billions — with no dedicated funding mechanism in the budget to cover it. Sen. Justin Ready raised the unresolved liability directly with reporters as he arrived for Monday’s session, noting “there has been no real provision on how to pay for those lawsuits.” Senate Budget and Taxation Chair Guy Guzzone told colleagues earlier this year, plainly, that “there is no money in the budget for that this year.” Both remain true. A session called for one purpose only wasn’t going to fix this — but it’s a reminder of how much fiscal exposure the state is carrying while lawmakers spent three days on a map fight instead.
6. Juvenile crime concerns didn’t get revisited
Unlike some items on this list, juvenile justice did get legislative attention this year — just not this week, and not in the direction critics wanted. Gov. Wes Moore signed the Youth Charging Reform Act in May, raising the age at which most teens are automatically charged as adults from 14 to 16 and shifting offenses including first-degree assault and certain firearms charges back into the juvenile system by default. All 24 of Maryland’s elected state’s attorneys opposed the bill, including Baltimore City’s Ivan Bates, who has repeatedly said the Department of Juvenile Services is “ill-equipped to handle these young, violent, repeat offenders.” The law takes effect Oct. 1. Whatever one thinks of the policy, the special session offered no opportunity to revisit it in light of continued violent incidents involving juveniles this spring and summer, because nothing outside redistricting was permitted on the floor.
7. Fare evasion and transit disorder went unmentioned
Marylanders riding the Baltimore Metro Subway, MTA buses, or WMATA’s Red Line into the District have been hearing about this problem all year. A Fox45/Spotlight on Maryland investigation this week quoted an MTA bus driver saying operators are explicitly instructed not to enforce fare payment — “we can’t enforce the fare,” he said — despite the agency’s official position that evasion “is not permitted.” Across the river, WMATA says fare evasion cost the system more than $50 million in lost revenue in fiscal 2025, a loss that grew sharply that year. None of it came up in the special session, which had no floor time for transit funding, transit policing, or the visible disorder riders have been describing for months.
8. The Key Bridge rebuild still doesn’t have a contractor for its main span
More than two years after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, the state still doesn’t have a signed contractor for the biggest piece of its replacement. The Maryland Transportation Authority cut ties with original contractor Kiewit in April after cost negotiations for the bridge’s second phase blew past the state’s own estimates, and the agency only issued a request for qualifications for the main span and marine approaches — budgeted at up to $4 billion — in July. Kiewit remains on site finishing Phase One work through the end of the year, but the entity that will build the bridge’s centerpiece hasn’t been chosen. That’s a live, expensive, unresolved problem sitting in the same state government that spent three days this week on a redistricting amendment. It wasn’t raised once during the special session.
9. Housing costs keep climbing, and the crisis got no special-session attention
Maryland’s housing shortage was already a defining problem before this week — the state is short an estimated 100,000 housing units, and at the current pace of construction it will meet only half of projected 2030 demand. The numbers have moved in the wrong direction since: statewide active housing inventory fell 16.4% between May 2025 and May 2026, new listings dropped 22.1% over the same period, and the average home sale price rose to $547,405, a 4.7% increase year over year, according to Maryland Realtors. Renters aren’t faring better. A Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report found Maryland renters now spend more than 31% of income on housing, up from about 25% in 2001, even as real renter incomes rose only 4% over that span. The General Assembly did pass housing supply bills earlier this year — the Housing Certainty Act and the Starter and Silver Homes Act among them — but those were 2026 regular-session measures, not special-session action, and the state’s own housing secretary has called the affordability and availability problem a crisis in the same breath as touting them. None of it was back on the table this week, even as the inventory and price numbers kept moving against Maryland families.
10. Marylanders are leaving, and high taxes are part of the reason
The housing math connects to a harder number: people are voting with their moving trucks. IRS migration data show Maryland lost roughly 13,600 to more than 20,000 net income-tax filers to other states in the most recent reporting years, taking billions of dollars in income with them — placing Maryland among the half-dozen states with the largest net outflows in the country. The state’s own comptroller has pointed to housing affordability as a key driver of that relocation decision, and Maryland ranks 46th out of 50 states in the Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index, well behind neighboring Virginia and Delaware. Internally, the state’s own “State of the Economy” analysis found residents moving out of the Baltimore and Washington metro areas toward the Eastern Shore, Southern Maryland, and Western Maryland in search of cheaper housing — while Florida, a no-income-tax state, remains the single largest destination for Marylanders leaving entirely. Maryland’s population actually declined in 2021 and 2022, the first sustained drop since World War II. That is not a talking point; it is a state government’s own data describing people choosing to leave. It received no mention in a session that had the attention of the entire legislature for three days.
“Families priced further out of the housing market and Marylanders packing up moving trucks got the same answer: not this week.”
11. The Preakness snub happened in the same 72 hours — and got no floor attention
While lawmakers were consumed with redistricting, Maryland’s marquee horse-racing asset absorbed a real hit. Churchill Downs Incorporated announced a new Thoroughbred Championship Series that leaves out the Preakness Stakes entirely — a development state officials say they learned about through media reports, not through any advance notice from CDI. It came roughly a year after Maryland spent $85 million to acquire the Preakness’s own intellectual property specifically to protect the race’s future. CDI’s press conference addressing the snub lasted nine minutes and took a single question. The timing put this developing crisis for a signature piece of Maryland’s economy and identity directly alongside a special session where lawmakers had the floor, the cameras, and each other’s attention for three straight days — and still found no room to discuss it.
12. Twenty-nine Republican amendments went down, and none were about the map
It’s worth being precise about what “no debate” looked like in practice, because Republicans did get floor time — just not on their own issues. House Republicans offered 20 amendments to House Bill 2100 during roughly four hours of debate on the session’s opening night; every one failed, including proposals to ban mid-decade redistricting outright, require voter ID, transfer map-drawing authority to an independent commission, and — in a pointed protest vote — begin the process for the Eastern Shore to secede from the rest of the state. Senate Republicans introduced nine more, on subjects ranging from ballot language to a state constitutional right to bear arms to caps on assessed property values; all were voted down on party lines or ruled out of order. Every one of those amendments was, by rule, confined to the subject of redistricting — meaning even the vehicle Republicans had to register dissent could only be used to talk about the one topic Democrats had already decided the session was for.
“The amendment’s fate will be decided in November. The legislature’s priorities were decided this week.”
What this adds up to
Democratic leaders will tell you this amendment is about “clarity” — that Maryland’s constitution never clearly addressed congressional map-drawing in the first place, and this just settles the question. That’s a generous read of a bill written by the same majority that lost in court the last time it drew a map for its own benefit, introduced in a session where no other subject was permitted to be discussed, and passed on a nearly party-line vote after 29 Republican amendments were rejected without changing a word of substance. A more honest description is the one Republicans offered on the floor: this is Annapolis rewriting the rulebook so the referee can’t make the same call twice.
“Democrats had every member back in Annapolis. They used that opportunity on one bill—and one bill only.”
That alone would be a legitimate story. What makes it worse is what the majority chose to do with the leverage instead. A special session is a rare thing — it pulls every member of both chambers back to Annapolis, at real cost, outside the normal session calendar. Democrats had that leverage this week and used all of it on one bill. Disability advocates asking to reopen a $126 million cut, Republicans asking for utility and gas relief, counties watching their road funding cliff approach, communities fighting data center buildouts, abuse survivors waiting on a state that admits it hasn’t budgeted to pay them, riders watching fare enforcement collapse, a state agency still without a bridge contractor two years after six workers died, families priced further out of a housing market that keeps tightening,
Marylanders who are packing up and leaving the state entirely, and the sudden collapse of Maryland’s marquee horse race all got the same answer: not this week, and — per the DLS letter — not even a chance to ask. Marylanders will decide the amendment’s fate in November. What’s already decided is whose priorities this legislature spent its special session serving, and whose it didn’t.
Sources: The Anne Arundel County Circuit Court’s March 2022 ruling in Szeliga v. Lamone and subsequent case summaries from the Maryland Law Review, the American Redistricting Project, and Maryland Matters on the 2022 congressional map’s constitutional violations and remedial redraw; Maryland Matters reporting on the special session floor votes, the 20 House and nine Senate Republican amendments, and the Aug. 3 protests outside the State House (marylandmatters.org); WYPR’s coverage of House and Senate floor debate and vote totals; FOX45/WBFF and Spotlight on Maryland reporting on Ferguson’s comments on affordability timing and the unresolved Child Victims Act liability; WMDT/47ABC on the DDA budget-cut demonstration; the Baltimore Banner and Fox45/Spotlight on Maryland on Child Victims Act claim volume; the Washington Times, Fox45/WBFF, and Maryland Matters on the Youth Charging Reform Act and state’s attorneys’ opposition; Fox45/Spotlight on Maryland on MTA fare-enforcement practices and WMATA fare-evasion revenue data; the Maryland Department of Legislative Services, Conduit Street/MACo, and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce on Transportation Trust Fund and Highway User Revenue projections; the Daily Record, Maryland Matters, and Utility Dive on the Utility RELIEF Act and the FERC data-center transmission-cost complaint; Maryland Realtors and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ America’s Rental Housing 2026 report on housing inventory, prices, and rent burden; the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2026 Maryland Housing Profile and the Baltimore Sun on the state’s housing shortage; the Tax Foundation’s state migration data and 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index, the Daily Record, and the Maryland Comptroller’s “State of the Economy” report on outmigration and in-state population shifts; WYPR, CBS Baltimore, and Engineering News-Record on the Maryland Transportation Authority’s Key Bridge contractor search; and MDBayNews’s own reporting on the Preakness/Churchill Downs Thoroughbred Championship Series snub.
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