Political and business leaders gathered Tuesday at Impact Maryland, with many discussing challenges the state faces and potential paths forward.

Gov. Wes Moore and a handful of county executives highlighted the negative effects that federal spending cuts and layoffs are having on Maryland. Other panels went in-depth on specific issues, including housing, health care and the future of higher education.

Moore and David Rubenstein, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist who led a group that bought the Orioles last year, kicked off the thought leadership conference hosted by The Banner with a wide-ranging conversation.

Moore said he didn’t have a “personal beef” with President Donald Trump, but said there’s been an “assault” on Maryland that “has been aggressive, has been intentional, it’s been petty, it’s been partisan and it’s been punishing.”

At a later panel, Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman said the state hasn’t yet felt the full economic impact of the Trump administration’s downsizing of the federal government.

Many workers who left under the “fork in the road” option laid out at the start of the year just received their final paycheck at the end of last month. Decreases tied to the job losses — like personal income and sales taxes — won’t be baked into the state’s revenue estimates until December or March, Lierman said.

During his conversation with Rubenstein, Moore also said it didn’t matter to him who his Republican opponent in the governor’s race next year will be, saying the declared candidates “all kind of sound the same at this point.”

The governor said he has no desire to be a senator or member of Congress, but neither he nor Rubenstein directly discussed the presidency.

More than 30 speakers joined panels for the daylong conference at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. Here are some of the highlights from Impact Maryland 2025.

Challenges on the local level

Leaders at the county level expressed concerns with the federal government, too. Howard County Executive Calvin Ball said damage from the Trump administration has been “devastating.”

Referring to federal spending cuts, immigration raids and attacks on diversity programs, Ball said, “We are going to have to not only deal with the challenges and the attacks from this administration, but the impacts to our mental health, our budgets, our community and our well-being for, frankly, generations.”

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich did not mince his words.

“I’ve never seen a more racist, homophobic, fascistic government in the United States,” Elrich said, adding that he had lived through the turmoil of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.

Baltimore County Executive Kathy Klausmeier said federal spending cuts, tariffs and other changes are going to hurt the county financially.

“I don’t know how much money we’re going to have,“ she said. ”I can’t promise people anything."

The county executives spoke in a prerecorded interview that was filmed before the ongoing government shutdown. The full video interview, which also features Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman, will be available on the Impact Maryland website.

What’s next for some local leaders?

Each of the four county executives who spoke during the prerecorded panel is entering their last year in office. Elrich, Pittman and Ball are all term-limited; Klausmeier hasn’t indicated if she will seek the county executive office again.

The Banner’s Pamela Wood asked each of them what comes next.

Elrich said he would seek to return to the Montgomery County Council.

Pittman said he was dreaming about the future of the Maryland Democratic Party, of which he was elected chair earlier this year.

Klausmeier said, “This time next year, I might be saying, ‘Yeah, I’m running for something,’ who knows?”

Ball said he wanted to help people and make a difference, but he didn’t know what form that would take.

Optimism from higher education, despite ‘challenging’ times

Despite the recent challenges facing higher education, four college presidents at Impact Maryland were optimistic during their panel, which was moderated by Brian McGrory, a Banner board member who served as interim editor-in-chief.

“We wake up every day, and the challenge is new and it’s different, but it is profoundly meaningful,” said Valerie Sheares Ashby, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Ron Daniels, president of the Johns Hopkins University, admitted it was a “challenging time” in higher education.

About 50% of Hopkins’ budget comes from federal research funding, Daniels said. He acknowledged there are “things we want America’s research universities to do differently,” but said it’s important to still stand by the mission of higher education.

For Bruce Jarrell, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, that mission is crucial. He warned that cuts to the National Institutes of Health and other grant-awarding agencies could cause the country to lose a “generation of scientists.”

Despite those losses, University of Maryland, College Park President Darryll Pines believes his university, and others in Maryland, will persevere.

“Students who come to our institutions’ lives are transformed, and they go off and do great things,” he said. “That is the promise of what we do, and we will continue to do that.”

Taking smart risks

The smartest risk that Constellation Energy took in the past year was to grow even bigger, its chief financial officer, Daniel Eggers, said Tuesday.

The Baltimore-based energy company — the nation’s largest in nuclear generation — acquired Calpine, a huge natural gas producer, in a $30 billion deal in January. Some consumer groups protested that the massive merger could reduce competition, but the federal government ultimately approved the transaction this summer.

“That was our big bet,” Eggers said.

Anirban Basu, the host of a panel entitled “The View From The Boardroom” told Eggers it was good to see a Baltimore company on the “front foot,” rather than being acquired.

An affable host, Basu spent about half an hour asking questions of, and joking around with, Eggers, as well as M&T Bank’s Augie Chiasera, T. Rowe Price’s Michael Davis and Shannetta R. Griffin, the executive director and CEO of the Maryland Aviation Administration.

Griffin, who took over the body that oversees Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport earlier this year, said what keeps her up at night is “safety and security” at BWI in regard to the federal work stoppage. About 800 federal employees work at the airport, she said, but aren’t being paid.

Housing in Maryland

The term “affordable housing crisis” isn’t broad enough for what’s happening in Maryland, said Jake Day, the state’s housing secretary. Speaking on a panel that touched on health care, construction and regulation, Day said the lack of housing in Maryland has a simple cause.

“We stopped building,” he said, referring to the construction industry’s slowdown during the Great Recession.

Chuck Kasky, CEO of the Maryland Association of Realtors, said he “would go even further.” Local zoning laws, Kasky said, have been suffocating new home construction for decades.

“The phrase ‘exclusionary zoning’ is redundant,” he said.

Janine Lind, president of Enterprise Community Development, said the conversation needs to be about all types of housing. It’s not just about building new communities of single-family homes, Lind said, but doing infill development, duplexes and quadplexes.

Maisha Douyon Cover of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield said housing is inextricably connected to the health of Marylanders. Housing doesn’t just mean a physical building, she said, it’s about your community. Where you live plays a role in your access to healthy food, transportation options and employment opportunities, she said.

Code blue: Can Maryland face health care challenges?

The population is aging and getting a little more creaky. Health insurance costs are rising and limiting who can access care. The health care workforce isn’t keeping pace.

These are the challenges executives at the state’s major health care systems say they face in keeping Marylanders healthy while also holding costs in check.

Hospitals in the state, however, must figure out how to maintain that balance within the unusual agreement the state has with federal regulators, under which hospital rates are set. The model has been in place for decades, but the latest version launches in January.

The focus will remain on primary care provided before people need expensive emergency care. What the executives from Johns Hopkins Medicine, the University of Maryland Medical System, MedStar Health and Kaiser Permanente say has to change is how they meet the moment.

“The entire system is reaching a point where there could be a code blue,” Kevin W. Sowers, executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said during a panel discussion. “We have to step back and become more innovative and use all tools, from AI to new technology, to … ensure delivery of quality health care.”

Bringing film to Maryland

Maryland has everything filmmakers and TV producers need to create their projects, David Bonnett Jr., producer of the recent hit independent movie “The Baltimorons,” said during an arts panel discussion.

The East Baltimore native said it was “supremely easy” to film “The Baltimorons” over the course of 15 days in Maryland, thanks to a hard-working, all-local crew and help from the state and city film offices.

“Everything can be done here in state, from ideation to premiere,” he said. “It can all be done here.”

The panel also featured Rosiland Cauthen, executive director of the Baltimore School for the Arts, author D. Watkins and Arts for Learning Maryland CEO Stacie Sanders Evans.

With Baltimore School for the Arts alums like actresses Rachel Hilson and Tracie Thoms making recent headlines in Hollywood, Cauthen emphasized the need for artists and workers in arts industries to connect and mentor current Baltimore students.

“What we need at the BSA is working artists who are in the profession,” Cauthen said.

Banner reporters Hayes Gardner, Ellie Wolfe, Meredith Cohn, Giacomo Bologna, Wesley Case and editor Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report.