Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan rejects pressure to welcome Syrian refugees
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is standing firm in his opposition to resettling Syrian refugees in the state, despite assurances from top U.S. officials and growing criticism from advocates who say his stance does not reflect American values.
Christian and Jewish faith leaders delivered a petition to the governor’s State House office calling on him to welcome refugees. They said they had gathered signatures from about 100 other faith leaders in the state.
“Our elected officials have a responsibility to protect the nation, but turning away families who risk their lives to escape the destruction of war is unnecessary and wrong,” the petition said. “America can prevent attacks without turning our backs on desperate refugees.”
Hogan is one of about 30 governors, mostly Republicans, who have asked the Obama administration not to allow Syrian refugees into their states. He announced his decision in a Facebook post last week, saying he wanted the federal government to provide “appropriate assurances that refugees from Syria pose no threat to public safety.”
But Hogan said Monday that the letter did nothing to increase his confidence in the Obama administration’s screening policies.
“It’s not going to change,” he said of his position during a news conference in Baltimore. “An overwhelming majority of Marylanders support my position. Most people in the country support my position, as does a majority of Congress and the super-majority of all the states.”
Speaking with faith leaders Monday, Rabbi Stephen J. Weisman acknowledged that “no vetting process is perfect,” but he warned that losing the nation’s moral compass poses a greater threat.
“Challenging moments call not for retreat from our core values but indeed for rededication to those values,” Weisman said during a group prayer.
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Maryland Underfunds Its Publicly Funded HBCUs
Some of Maryland’s Black lawmakers were insulted by the amount of funding Gov. Larry Hogan proposed on Wednesday to satisfy a lawsuit over the state’s inequitable funding of four public Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Publicly funded HBCUs, like the ones in Maryland, are struggling to survive financially. For decades, state governments have underfunded them compared to predominantly White state institutions. Unlike flagship state universities, the Black universities charge much lower tuition, enroll fewer students and receive smaller private donations.
At the same time, there’s a widespread legacy of discrimination and neglect from state governments.
Eighteen HBCUs in several states had not received nearly $57 million of state funding, according to a 2013 report from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities.
Other lawmakers were less generous than Glenn in their response to Hogan’s offer. “That’s like throwing peanuts at a very gigantic problem,” Del. Nick Mosby said after breaking down the numbers. The four HBCUs would receive about $2.5 million per year over a decade. Hogan’s offer is also getting a cold response outside the Legislature. David Burton, the lead plaintiff in the case, described the $100 million as a “slap in the face.”
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Hogan vetoes renewable energy bill
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed a bill Friday that would have required the state’s electricity suppliers to get more power from renewable sources. Hogan, a Republican who ran for office on a pledge to lower taxes, said the energy bill was effectively a tax increase on electricity ratepayers, saying they would have to pay more for costlier power generated by wind, solar and other renewable sources.
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Hogan Vetoes MTA Oversight Board
Governor Hogan vetoed legislation that would have created a citizen panel with oversight of the MTA. Most major transit agencies in the country have an oversight board that includes transit riders. Hogan derided the MTA oversight bill as "sophomoric."
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Hogan Vetoed Transportation Scorecard
Governor Hogan vetoed a bill to require greater transparency in why certain road projects are funded. Despite Hogan calling the bill the "Road Kill Bill" all this bill would have done is require that the administration report to the public the rationale behind transportation projects. It mandated that the administration create a ranking system and provide an explanation if a low rank project is given priority over a higher one.
This bill would not have mandated that only high scoring projects be funded - it merely provided an opportunity for public accountability and transparency. He used exaggerated and false rhetoric against the bill, pretending that it would have prevented him from funding projects in western Maryland and the Eastern Shore.
Ultimately, the legislature overrode his veto, although it was further weakened in 2017 after significant lobbying by the administration.
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Hogan called removal of confederate monuments political correctness "run amok".
Hogan stated that additional efforts to remove controversial Confederate symbols in Maryland was "political correctness run amok." A national debate over Confederate flags, statues and symbols erupted in 2015 after the shooting death of nine people in a historically black church in Charleston, SC. The racist shooter and his white supremacist views prompted calls for state and local governments to stop using the flag and to remove Confederate symbols from government properties. In Maryland, MoveOn.org launched a petition asking the state of Maryland to remove a statue of former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney outside the Annapolis statehouse. Taney wrote the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which upheld slavery and said blacks born in the United States could not be U.S. citizens. Hogan stated that he would not support the removing of the Taney statue. Hogan, completely incapable of understanding that the issue surrounds the Civil War and these men's position on that war stated “George Washington was a slave owner,” Hogan said. “Should we remove him from the statehouse?” Hogan is completely unaware that George Washington passed away a good sixty years before the Civil War began.
Hogan failed on forfeiture reform
Hogan vetoed a civil asset forfeiture reform bill that had been passed almost unanimously by the State Senate. Senate Bill 528 would have closed the "equitable sharing" loophole that incentivizes Maryland law enforcement agencies to circumvent state forfeiture laws for financial gain. Senate Bill 528 sought to rebalance a system that is prone to abuse. Financial incentives built into civil forfeiture encourage law enforcement agencies to seize property, often on dubious grounds, since typically they get to keep some portion of the proceeds of their forfeitures. Meanwhile, tortuous legal processes make it exceedingly difficult and prohibitively expensive to challenge seizures when they do occur. To prevail in court, property owners typically must prove their own innocence. And if they are too poor to afford a lawyer, they must do so on their own. Innocent people like Randy and Karen Sowers have been forced to fork over half their farm's earnings to the government because of an alleged "structuring" violation. Their business which involved direct-to-consumer sales often led to dealing with large amounts of cash. A bank teller advised them to deposit in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid government scrutiny. This act alerted the IRS which accused them of trying to bypass currency transaction reporting laws. Despite never being accused of earning the money illegally, they were forced to pay the government nearly $30,000 as part of a settlement. While SB 528 would not have solved all these situations, it would have gone a long way to help prevent what happened to the Sowers family to happening to other innocent Marylanders.
Hogan Veto of Marijuana-Related Bill Defied Logic
Hogan’s decision to veto a bill that would have decriminalized the possession of marijuana paraphernalia defied logic and common sense. The bill was aimed at bringing the law surrounding marijuana paraphernalia—such as pipes and rolling papers—in line with the marijuana decriminalization bill that was enacted last year. The legislation this year would have eliminated the criminal penalties for a person caught with marijuana-related paraphernalia as well as for smoking marijuana in a public place. Under current Maryland law, a person caught with marijuana paraphernalia faces a misdemeanor charge and a fine up to $500 the first time and up to two years imprisonment the second time. Regulating and taxing marijuana would create a new taxpaying industry, allow law enforcement to use resources on more serious crimes and put drug dealers and organized crime gangs out of the pot business. https://bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/2015/Hogan-Veto-of-Marijuana-Related-Bill-Defies-Logic-State-Senator-Says/
Gov, Larry Hogan's hypocrisy on climate change and fracked gas.
Hogan has been profoundly duplicitous on fracked gas and climate change. I serve on the Maryland Commission on Climate Change (MCCC) and have seen firsthand the governor’s policies that make Maryland’s contribution to global warming worse.
As Hogan and his senior staff know, climate change is being exacerbated by emissions of methane gas from the drilling and combustion associated with fracking. Isotope measurements show fossil fuels contribute significantly more to the levels of methane in the atmosphere than previously understood — and natural gas is the biggest culprit. Each methane molecule has a heat-trapping potential up to 86 times greater than carbon dioxide. This is one of the reasons Maryland legislature banned fracked-gas drilling in 2017.
Hogan signed that bill, yet he accelerated his policy “kick-starting” greater combustion of fracked gas in Maryland, while vetoing legislation promoting wind and solar power. His administration has been actively helping Canadian gas companies sidestep the drilling ban by importing fracked gas and promoting its consumption. He is partnering with fossil fuel giant TransCanada to pipe Pennsylvania fracked gas through Maryland and has a $100 million plan to increase gas use and build pipelines across the state.
Hogan uses outdated data to claim fracked gas is somehow a clean energy, while he ignores the avalanche of new data which was presented to the MCCC — showing fracked gas probably is worse for the climate than coal.The trends are scientifically established: extreme precipitation events such as the Ellicott City floods are happening with 50 percent greater frequency along the East Coast, according to data from NOAA. And a 2014 federal report says it is highly likely that heavy precipitation events will increase because of climate change.
The more slowly we react to global warming, the more severe the threats. Hogan should stop misleading Marylanders on fracked gas and start really supporting wind and solar power.
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Larry Hogan's education agenda has focused on limiting funding for public schools to create money for his new private school voucher program. In his first budget, he tried to cut $144 million from schools, and successfully withheld $68 million resulting in larger class sizes, slashed programs, and cut educator positions in 13 Maryland counties. In total, he has withheld nearly $100 million from schools that are now underfunded by billions of dollars. After meeting with Donald Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Hogan created a private school voucher program, diverting $20 million from public schools to subsidize private school tuition. As public schools have gone underfunded, their quality has slipped. Recently ranked best in the nation five years in a row, Maryland schools have now fallen to 6th in Education Week's national rankings. Between 2015 and 2017, Maryland’s national ranking has dropped 6 spots for 8th grade reading achievement and 11 spots for 8th grade math on the National Assessment for Education Progress. This drop in educational quality has resulted in a wider achievement gap. According to the Maryland State Department of Education, the achievement gap has widened between white and non-white students since 2015.
Hogan vetoed a bill to extend voting rights to felons
Hogan vetoed the law saying it improperly restored rights to people who had not yet paid their debt to society. He waged an aggressive social media campaign urging his supporters to lobby lawmakers to side with him and his "common sense" veto.
The legislature narrowly overturned Hogan's veto of a bill to extend voting rights to felons before they complete probation and parole.
The current system requires felons to complete probation and parole before registering to vote. But proponents argued that the system is confusing, unnecessary and demoralizing to ex-offenders trying to rebuild their lives.
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Hogan vetoes bills pushed by teachers union
Hogan vetoed three education bills, two of the bills were backed by the Maryland State Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union. The legislation would have changed the composition of the Maryland Board of Education to include two teachers and a parent, made it possible for more school supervisors to join the union and made it harder to fire hundreds of political appointees at the state Department of Education. The state’s largest teachers’ union issued a statement calling Hogan partisan for vetoing the legislation that required him to appoint teachers — who would have been recommended by the union — and a parent to the state school board. “It’s the very definition of common sense that teachers should be at the decision-making table when developing policies that affect our students,” MSEA president Betty Weller said in a statement. “Gov. Hogan is sending a very clear message: He doesn’t believe teachers should have a voice in decisions about our schools, students and profession.”
Hogan crime bills won't actually reduce crime.
Violence in Baltimore continues at soar and city residents are desperate for solutions. Unfortunately, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has proposed crime bills that sound tough but that won’t actually reduce crime. Straight from the Trump-Sessions playbook, the governor’s plan relies on lengthy mandatory-minimum prison sentences. This approach wastes taxpayer dollars and results in higher recidivism rates. This outdated model of fighting crime that reflects a desire to “do something” to look tough shows little evidence that longer, mandatory sentences work. The Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice has found that it is the certainty of being caught and the swiftness of the response, not the length of the sentence, that deters future crime. Cities with record-low crime rates, like New York City, pursue tactics such as “hot spot” policing that target high-crime street corners and focusing resources on closing cases and getting convictions.
Hogan and his team were recently caught deleting comments and banning critics on his official Facebook. More than 450 people have been blocked from Hogan’s page over the past two years. One caller on the Kojo Nnamdi show is quoted as stating, "“I was cordial. I was friendly … I was blocked after asking the question about where does Maryland stand with the Muslim ban. The next day my comment was gone and I could no longer comment.” Gov Hogan owes Marylanders answers, including whether public taxpayer dollars and resources were used to silence their voices and whether first amendment rights were violated.
Hogan's pubic/private highway plan: subtle and not so subtle racism
Hogan rolled out a massive highway program in an effort to quiet criticism of his cancellation of the Baltimore Ed Line light-rail project, a project that would have been critical for lower-income residents to access jobs. Unlike older rail lines in Baltimore, the Red Line was set to focus on transportation issues within the city rather than focusing on the suburbs. He also stripped important features of the still active Purple line and made it a public/private partnership. The racial discrimination implicit in cancelling the Red Line but not the Purple Line prompted a Title VI civil rights lawsuit, and a federal investigation under the Obama administration.
Hogan mischaracterized data when he claimed heroin overdoses have decreased on his watch
Hogan claimed that under his administration, the number of heroin overdoses dropped 20 percent statewide. He failed to mention that this drop is primarily due to a huge spike in overdoses due to fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that is often sold as heroin on the illicit market. The data distinguishes between "heroin-related" fatalities and "fentanyl-related" fatalities, so while his original comment was not wrong, it sends the wrong message. To be clear, the total number of opioid-related deaths has more than doubled since 2014 when Hogan took office.
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Chose Big Pharma over lower drug prices for consumers.
Governor Hogan opposed a bill to lower prescription drug prices, siding with drug companies. Although he claims to care about consumers struggles by saying the , “The legislation does have a laudable goal, to combat price-gouging of consumers for life-saving drugs, and I am supportive of that goal.” However, he did not support or sign the bill, nor share a concrete plan for driving down exorbitant drug prices. Once again siding with corporations that put profit over the needs of people. We need a governor with a REAL plan for affordable healthcare for all.
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Marylanders are struggling and Governor Hogan backs business over workers.
Twice in the last legislative session Governor Hogan opposed legislation that supports workers.-paid time off and raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Fortunately, both prevailed past his veto. Hogan stated raising the minimum wage would be a “disaster”.
A REAL disaster is that over a 1/3 of Maryland families are struggling to make ends meet. A recent United Way study found that, “38 percent of Maryland families — and nearly half of those in Baltimore — cannot afford necessities, such as housing, transportation, food and child care.”
We need a governor who will fight for everyday Marylanders to ensure that they have every opportunity to care for themselves, their families and communities. We need a governor who will strengthen workers’ rights.
Sources:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-united-way-income-20180911-story.html
http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/hogan-minimum-wage-maryland-budget
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The Opioid epidemic has killed over 6,139 Marylanders since Governor Hogan took office.
Despite campaign promises, upon taking office Governor Hogan did not declare a formal state emergency although there was clear need for immediate action and resources. In the year it took for the governor’s plan to be developed there were 1,856 opioid related deaths in 2016. The state has the opportunity now to make save lives by making treatment available in prisons and jails but needs the leadership to press corrections to do so.
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Rising healthcare premiums puts profit over the health of Marylanders.
Under Governor Hogan healthcare premiums have risen as much as 120% for some Marylanders. Businesses or individuals that want to offer or purchase healthcare shouldn’t have to choose between putting food on the table or risking a health crisis without adequate insurance coverage. This risks the lives of hard-working Marylanders and their families by putting profit over health. We need real affordable healthcare options that serve the needs of all Marylanders.
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Has Hogan Delivered on Crime Reduction?
Four years ago Governor Hogan declared a state of emergency on opioid use and the general uptick in crime. Since then Baltimore's crime rate has increased to one of the highest in the U.S.
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Larry Hogan Is No Friend of Labor
In 2017 Governor Hogan vetoed a measure that would have provided paid sick leave to 700,000 Maryland Workers. The bill would have also given workers time off to seek help for sexual assault or domestic abuse
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Governor Hogan Ignores Heating Crisis in Baltimore City Schools
Baltimore parents, students and teachers brace themselves for another winter of substandard heatng n Baltimore schools. The Baltmore Teacher's Union has demanded that schools close until ths problem is addressed. Children frequently wore coats and gloves while trying to focus on their education. Governor Hogan argues that the school system has enough money ...turning his back on the needs of Baltimore's needes children. To voice your concern call: Baltimore City at 443 984-2000
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MD withdraws opposition to coal-ash dumping in Potomac.
" Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration is withdrawing its opposition to a Dominion Virginia Power plan to release coal-ash water into a creek that flows into the Potomac River after the utility company agreed to stricter testing standards."
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MD rolls back technology standards for septic systems
"Some environmental advocates worry that a state plan to roll back regulations for septic systems in parts of Maryland could stall efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay."
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EPA says MD exceeds pollution limits for SOx
"Large parts of Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties may be exposed to sulfur dioxide emissions that violate national air quality standards, the Environmental Protection Agency”
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t’s the very definition of common sense that teachers should be at the decision-making table when developing policies that affect our students,” MSEA president Betty Weller said in a statement. “Gov. Hogan is sending a very clear message: He doesn’t believe teachers should have a voice in decisions about our schools, students and profession.”
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Governor Hogan cancelled the Red Line
The Red Line was a planned east-west mass transit light rail line for Baltimore, Maryland. Although it had been granted federal approval to enter the preliminary engineering phase, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared on June 25, 2015 that he would not provide state funds for the project. The line's construction had been estimated to begin in late 2015–early 2016, subject to funding, with a completion date set for late 2021–early 2022.
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Governor Hogan failed to order a safety study for the Cove Point LNG facility
A team from Cove Point visited the Governor's office to discuss about the potential hazards that the gas refinery, power plant and export terminal being built by the Virginia-based Dominion Energy poses to the community in Cove Point.
The next day, almost a year to the day that We Are Cove Point initiated the petition campaign to ask Governor Hogan to order a safety study, his office responded with an official “NO.”
They said the Governor supports Dominion’s project and will not order a safety study. But even if he supports the project, that shouldn’t come before protecting his constituents. There is no excuse to forego a safety study so that Marylanders know the risks.
We Are Cove Point is a coalition of people and
organizations who are working together to stop a new liquefied fracked gas export terminal that Dominion Resources is building in the residential community of Cove Point in Lusby, Maryland.
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