Maryland House of Delegates and Senate lawmakers will be legislating at a feverish pace Monday as the General Assembly reaches its annual Crossover Day deadline.
“Monday will be the final sprint to get all of our Senate bills over on time, and I know the House is doing the same,” Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, said at a Friday news conference.
Crossover Day marks the last of the 90-day legislative session when a bill can pass and is guaranteed a hearing in the opposite chamber.
Bills passed after Crossover Day can still make it to Gov. Wes Moore’s desk — and many do — but the deadline is a good identifier of what Ferguson and House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s, have prioritized for the 2026 session.
Here is a taste of those priorities:
Putting ICE on ice
Although much of the first few weeks of the 2026 session revolved around Moore’s seemingly failed attempt at midcycle redistricting, it also saw the quick passage of a series of immigration reform bills that aim to temper the increased enforcement seen under President Donald Trump‘s second term.
By Feb. 17 — a month and three days after both chambers gaveled in for the year — Moore, a Democrat, had signed legislation banning local law enforcement from entering into formal memoranda of understanding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or 287(g) agreements. Under the agreements, certain county sheriffs were holding people who illegally entered the United States in their jails until ICE picked them up.
The legislation was an emergency bill, meaning it went into effect immediately upon receiving Moore’s signature. According to the state Department of Legislative Services, this was the earliest a bill had been signed during a session since Jan. 30, 2014.
Beyond banning ICE agreements, the Senate passed legislation that would bar state and federal law enforcement from wearing face masks in the regular line of duty (with a few exceptions).
The House passed bills that would allow the attorney general’s office to direct the Maryland State Police to collect all identifying digital data possible regarding federal agents who are the subject of misconduct complaints; place minimum mandatory standards for the care, custody and conditions of people held in ICE detention facilities; and prohibit public school security personnel from aiding the agency in investigating students and faculty on school property.
Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith Jr., D-Montgomery, said Friday that his chamber will see more immigration legislation before the crossover deadline, including a bill to prohibit the erection of private detention centers — including ICE facilities — in the state.
That legislation has already passed in the House.
“We believe that a broad applicability will withstand constitutional muster, and also it’s good policy for us not to have private detention centers in Maryland,” said Smith.
Juvenile justice reform
After punting several iterations of the bill for years, the Senate chamber passed legislation that aims to reduce the instance of minors being charged in adult criminal court.
If passed by the House and signed by Moore, the bill would allow more cases in which children charged with criminal offenses to start in the juvenile court system rather than the adult system. The burden of proof to waive those cases up to adult court would sit with the prosecution instead of the defense, where it currently lies.
Juvenile court jurisdiction under the bill would exclude 14- and 15-year-olds charged with any crime punishable by life imprisonment, as well as 16- and 17-year-olds charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, second-degree rape, armed robbery, third-degree sex offenses, carjacking, attempted second-degree murder, attempted second-degree rape, attempted armed robbery and the use of a gun in the commission of a violent crime, or if they have previously been convicted as adults.
The bill fumbled in the Senate chamber last session due to the leadership of the Department of Juvenile Services under the leadership of former Secretary Vincent Schiraldi — at least in part. Schiraldi left the agency over the summer, and was replaced by Betsy Fox Tolentino, a veteran of the agency who was confirmed by the Senate Executive Nominations Committee earlier this session.
“I think that’s a public safety bill because you’re going to get better public safety outcomes getting those youth services in a more quick fashion, as opposed to having them languish in adult prisons for up to two years, three years without education, without services,” said Smith, who sponsored the legislation this year and last.
Energy relief
Last week, the House passed sweeping legislation poised to shave a minimum of $150 off Marylanders’ utility bills annually.
The bill seeks to scale back the EmPOWER Maryland program, which aids residents in energy efficiency projects and is funded by a surcharge on monthly utility bills.
“I can tell you that both parties on both sides are not happy,” Peña-Melnyk said before taking the official vote Tuesday. “That’s how you can tell a bill is good.”
Republicans in both chambers have argued that the bill doesn’t go far enough to provide immediate relief to Marylanders who are struggling to pay their bills each month. But some in the House still managed to hold their nose and vote in its favor, including House Minority Whip Jesse Pippy, R-Frederick.
“Lot of people in our party — some people, including my very good friend the minority whip, because he cares so much about trying to save somebody any level of money — voted to support the ultimate bill because it does, maybe, have a savings of $12 a month,” said House Minority Leader Jason Buckel. R-Allegany. “But we can’t walk away from this session and tell people that we fixed anything.”
Senate Republican leadership said Thursday that they plan to push to expand immediate ratepayer relief.
“That’s going to be our task over the next couple of weeks, is to make sure that we can get some more meaningful short-term relief, and then adjust some of the longer-term rates, as well,” said Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey Jr., R-Upper Eastern Shore.
Ferguson said Friday that there “will be slight differences” in the version of the bill that his chamber passes but noted that the “framework is in full agreement.”
A break-neck budget
The Senate chamber passed a $70.7 billion budget bill Wednesday — the fastest it has done so under Ferguson’s tenure as its head (aside from the 2020 session, when the legislature adjourned early due to the coronavirus pandemic).
Moore and the legislature started the session contending with a $1.4 billion budgetary shortfall, which underwent its annual transformation into a surplus.
Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chair Guy Guzzone, D-Howard, led the chamber in passing a budget that would provide a $250 million surplus, leave $2.2 billion in the state’s Rainy Day Fund, reduce General Fund spending and limit budget growth to around 1% — all without increasing taxes and fees.
According to Ferguson, $10.2 billion under the budget was allocated for investments in public education, $4.6 billion is for continuation of the state’s Medicaid program, $100 million was set aside for energy relief for Marylanders across the board, and $280 million was given to the Office of Home Energy Programs specifically to aid low-income Marylanders with their energy bills and arrearages.
“We know that residents are counting on us to reduce their costs, and this budget does just that,” Ferguson said.
But that relief doesn’t come without cuts, one of the largest being to the Developmental Disabilities Administration.
The DDA is out $123 million in cost containment measures that will be backfilled by transferring approximately $23 million from the General Fund.
The budget passed out of the Senate on a bipartisan basis, but it wasn’t a hit among the full Republican Caucus.
Hershey said that he couldn’t support it because it “did not address the nearly $3 billion budget deficit that we’ll see in the future.”
“It relies on one-term solutions and fund transfers instead of long-term fixes,” he said.
The budget now needs to be debated and passed by the House chamber, which is likely to take it up on the floor sometime this week.
