ANNAPOLIS — The Maryland General Assembly has spent the last three months working on legislation to address a host of critical issues, including tackling rising utility costs and limiting federal immigration enforcement in the state.
With the legislature set to adjourn Monday, it’s down to the wire.
Democrats tout accomplishments, including bans on agreements with Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents, but say they’re scrambling to get more done.
“We’re trying to make sure that when we leave here and adjourn, the people are in a better place,” House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s, told Capital News Service. “And I believe we will do that.”
While Republicans point to some wins, including protecting the seat of Maryland’s only GOP congressman, they said they’re frustrated that taxpayers and ratepayers did not get more relief.
“We’re standing here very disappointed,” Minority Whip Sen. Justin Ready, R-Carroll and Frederick, said at a press conference Thursday. “We have a lot to fight for the next couple of days.”
Here are some key issues lawmakers have considered this session.
State budget
Gov. Wes Moore signed the legislature’s three-bill budget package into law on Wednesday. The $70.8 billion plan resolved a projected spending shortfall. It was the second year in a row state lawmakers had to close a deficit.
The budget includes no new taxes or fees, maintains the state’s rainy day fund and will increase the state’s general fund, leaving a surplus, according to the governor’s office.
“A budget is more than numbers on a page,” Moore said in a statement. “It tells our people what matters, it tells our people who we are fighting for, and it tells people whether we are willing to make hard decisions and still deliver.”
Utility relief
Just days before the end of the session, House and Senate leadership said they had reached an agreement on the Utility RELIEF Act of 2026, a comprehensive bill aimed at lowering Marylanders’ energy bills.
“Over the past several weeks, the House and Senate have worked collaboratively to advance the Utility RELIEF Act as a balanced, statewide approach to deliver meaningful savings, strengthen our energy grid, and protect ratepayers,” Senate President Bill Ferguson and House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, both Democrats, said in a joint statement Wednesday.
The leaders said they’re still finalizing the bill’s language, but are confident it will “deliver real, immediate relief while making long-term investments in Maryland’s energy future.”
The act would regulate utilities and data centers, change regulations on energy sources and expand clean energy.
“We’re doing what we can with the tools we have at the state level, but we have to be very, very clear about where we’re seeing price increases come from. It’s the federal government from an indiscriminate war in the Middle East,” Ferguson, of Baltimore City, said at a press conference last Friday.
Immigration bills
State legislators introduced more immigration-related bills this year than in any session in the last 15 years. Many address concerns about cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
About a dozen of the 43 immigration bills introduced moved forward in the legislative process. Only a few are expected to become law.
Earlier in the session, Moore signed legislation to prohibit agreements between Maryland local law enforcement officials and ICE, under what is known as the 287(g) program.
Many immigration advocates and Democratic senators have also pushed the Community Trust Act, which prohibits law enforcement agents from engaging in certain immigration enforcement actions. The bill had initially stalled, but the Senate took it back up Friday to consider amendments and move it forward before Monday’s deadline.
Cheltenham investigation
Legislation to launch an investigation into the deaths of hundreds of Black boys at the House of Reformation for Colored Children in Cheltenham is on its way to the governor’s desk.
The bills, sponsored by Sen. William C. Smith Jr., D-Montgomery County, and Del. Jeffrie E. Long Jr., D-Calvert and Prince George’s, moved through the legislature without much opposition.
The legislation was one of several priorities of Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus.
Other priorities included raising sickle cell disease awareness, reducing punitive student debt programs, protecting voting rights and reforming the youth sentencing system.
Del. N. Scott Phillips, D-Baltimore, the caucus’s chair, said 17 of the caucus’s 25 priority bills had moved through the legislative process by early April.
Phillips cautioned that although the caucus is the largest in the legislature, its members must still push for its priorities until the end of the session.
“I want to remind you we’re not done,’’ Phillips told the caucus earlier this month. “It is incumbent on all of us, if [priority bills] are in your committee, to make sure they get a vote, they come back, that they pass those bills so that we can celebrate at midnight on April 13.”
What hasn’t made it?
Some efforts, however, are unlikely to survive.
The Democrats’ proposed congressional redistricting initiative, an early priority for Moore and supported by Peña-Melnyk, hasn’t budged in the Senate since the House passed a measure in February. The effort came amid a wave of congressional redistricting plans across the U.S., and drew high-profile support from national Democrats, including U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Maryland’s redistricting plan would have targeted the seat of U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the state’s lone Republican congressman.
Other efforts with little forward momentum include a measure to make seatbelts mandatory on some school buses and Republicans’ effort to pause the state’s gas tax.
Legislation not approved before the session’s end will have to wait another year for its next shot at becoming law.
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