Busy is good, right? By that standard it’s been a good week.
Saturday was lots of walking, with my staff in the Annapolis Pride Parade, and at the Crofton No Kings march.
I’ve written before about Pride parades, how they are such a raw and colorful celebration of just being who we are and accepting who our neighbors are. This year I found myself thanking the organizers for making it happen in the face of the same kind of sponsorship decline that Juneteenth saw this year. It seems that while the people still come out, the corporate world is less present. The division movement has pushed back against the inclusion movement, but ultimately, I’m convinced that they’ll discover that inclusion is better for business.
No Kings in Annapolis took place on Sunday to avoid the conflict with Pride, but my wife Erin and I joined some friends to be at the Saturday evening Crofton No Kings. I wanted to be there, not just because I believe in the cause, but also to support the organizer, a young woman who worked for me on the farm years ago.
I expected a small group to be sign-waving on Route 3, but instead found somewhere between 500 and 1000 of every age and background, nearly all of whom had made their own creative signs. Erin was the creative one in our household, and after drawing a beautiful American flag on a poster board, she asked me what it should say. We agreed on “Liberty and Justice For All.” I know it’s an incredibly radical statement to carry, but I swear I’ve heard it somewhere before, and I loved carrying it.
I march for justice wherever I can, because I truly believe that mass mobilization in support of democracy, separation of powers, and the rule of law are essential when those things are threatened, as they are today. I was thrilled that 7 million Americans felt as strongly as I do.
A great follow-up on Sunday was cohosting a town hall meeting with Congresswoman Sarah Elfreth. I did that as Maryland Democratic Party Chair, but the audience was simply residents who care about their communities. It’s so good to see our local leader working on the national stage, but staying as close and engaged to Anne Arundel County as ever. Thank you, Congresswoman Elfreth for representing and inspiring us.
On Monday I joined our Economic Development Corporation for a kickoff lunch and briefing for county staff who will fan out to visit 80 local businesses for Business Appreciation Week. On my visit list is prosthetics maker Dankmeyer, Inc., party inflatables rental company Bouncy Rentals, and historic Annapolis’ Reynolds Tavern. For some reason, they scheduled me for the Bouncy Rentals at happy hour and the Tavern at 8:30 am. We’ll see how that turns out, but I very much look forward to hearing about each business’s challenges and triumphs.
That afternoon I had two engagements with the Maryland Department of Transportation folks. First, we met in Crownsville adjacent to where traffic backs up on I-97 because it narrows to two lanes instead of three. It’s the bottleneck that people avoid by taking Route 2 and Route 3 to travel north and south in our county, so it impacts thousands of our residents every day.
The news that our state partners were sharing is that the $113 million widening project, including the ramp from Route 50 West, is in the Consolidated Transportation Program that will come out this year, and it will be fast-tracked using the “design-build” program that is also being employed for the Key Bridge.
The I-97 project was on the cutting block until we salvaged it with an $11 million contribution of county funds. In these tight financial times, Maryland prioritizes projects where counties are willing to contribute. We think this is an investment that will pay off.
That evening, leaders from all of the MDOT agencies presented status reports in a public meeting before the County Council on projects underway. I thanked them and encouraged them, as always, to move and move fast on what we prioritized in our annual CTP Letter, which you can read here. It includes road improvements, transit investments, bike and pedestrian trails, sidewalks, safety initiatives, bridges, and even a ferry. The Moore/Miller administration has been incredibly responsive in a lot of areas to all county governments, but the breadth of projects we work on together under MDOT’s guidance is pretty massive, and after years of inaction, they are all moving at once.
On Tuesday morning, I insisted on attending a presentation and open house at the Board of Education, because it was about a program that is incredibly effective - Community Schools.
The Maryland General Assembly gets all the credit here. As part of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state mandates that schools with high numbers of students eligible for Free And Reduced Meals (FARM) must implement a program that connects students to their communities and provides services to families. We now have over 40 county schools in the program, and it’s improving test scores.
And then there is housing. I started the day yesterday speaking on a panel at the third annual Anne Arundel County Affordable Housing Symposium, hosted by Chase Homes Foundation. The panelists were myself, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development Secretary Jake Day, Mayor Gavin Buckley, Southway Builders’ Willy Moore, and National Center for Smart Growth’s Dr. Nick Finio. The topic was what we can do at the state, county, and developer levels to address affordability in the context of federal cuts.
I thought about what I would say as I drank my two morning espressos. Morning energy and caffeine led me down the dark path of reality that all of the energy we put into addressing the problem has helped some families, but even more are unable to afford a decent home. Dr. Finio presented data showing that in 2000, 70% of county residents could afford to buy a home of average price. In 2022, only 58% could afford one. Today the percentage is certainly lower. The folks who can’t buy must rent, and that’s driving the prices for apartments to levels that essential workers can’t afford.
It’s a national problem that we know how to fix. After World War II, the federal government launched an affordable housing construction boom, and it built a middle class. Today the federal government is implementing tariffs that increase the cost of construction while threatening to cut the subsidies that prevent millions of Americans from being homeless. That middle class is disappearing.
Fifty trillion in wealth was transferred during the last fifty years from the bottom 90% of American earners to the top 1%. We could solve our housing problem easily if that money was filtered back down to working people through housing supports and construction. But we don’t yet have the political will.
Thanks to our dedicated revenue source for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Anne Arundel will put $14.5 million into housing production, homeownership assistance, rental assistance, and eviction prevention this year. It’s $14.5 million more than we spent before I took office, but if we lose the $33.6 million that we get in federal housing vouchers and $7.9 million in other federal housing support, our residents will find themselves living on the streets. We’ve created the Federal Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Workgroup within our Office of Emergency Management to plan for this outcome, but none of the solutions will truly protect our people.
Still, I am optimistic. In the long-run, the people of our county and our country will reject policies that leave their neighbors without housing, and will demand that the extraordinary wealth that exists among us be invested in solutions that work.
I feel very lucky to live among people who are wise enough to be turning this ship toward calmer seas.
Until next week…