Leaders of the Maryland General Assembly made it clear Thursday that lawmakers will not redraw the state’s congressional district boundaries when they return to Annapolis next week.
Senate President Bill Ferguson and House of Delegates Speaker Pro Tempore Dana Stein issued a joint statement emphasizing that the scope of the special session will be “strictly limited.”
Gov. Wes Moore called for a special session to allow the House to elect a new speaker to succeed Del. Adrienne A. Jones, who stepped down from her leadership role last week. Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk has secured enough support from her colleagues so that she will likely win the vote for speaker on Tuesday.
Lawmakers are legally obligated to consider bills from their last session that Moore vetoed, chief among them a study of reparations for slavery and state-sanctioned racial discrimination.
Beyond that, lawmakers will only consider “other administrative functions,” Ferguson and Stein said.
That means congressional redistricting is off the table — for now.
Democratic leaders in Maryland have been considering whether the state should join the national back-and-forth of partisan map-drawing that kicked off when President Donald Trump pressured Texas to rework its districts to elect more Republicans to Congress.
Maryland’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives includes seven Democrats and one Republican, U.S. Rep. Andy Harris. Some Democrats want to redraw Harris’ Eastern Shore-based district to make it friendlier to Democrats.
Moore has supported the concept of redistricting and set up a redistricting commission to make recommendations. The majority of Democrats in the House of Delegates appear to support a redistricting effort, but Ferguson and the majority of Senate Democrats do not.
Moore said he’ll wait for his redistricting commission to come up with recommendations and proceed from there. He said he won’t push them to work “with a certain speed.”
“I am not here to prejudge nor to push the commission to come up with any type of solution,” Moore told reporters in Baltimore on Thursday.
Moore also said his job is not to convince Ferguson or other lawmakers who don’t want to redistrict, and he noted members of the General Assembly will have a say in what happens.
The Senate president and House speaker have strong power over which bills are brought up for votes.
The governor’s commission, led by Moore ally U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, has heard hours of input from Marylanders during online sessions. Commissioners have not publicly released or discussed any proposed congressional maps.
The commission’s next meeting is Friday afternoon.
Comments
Welcome to The Banner's subscriber-only commenting community. Please review our community guidelines.