Landing on a topic for this week has been hard. None of the big stuff seemed ready to share.
The Maryland House and Senate are getting close to a budget deal, but decisions aren’t final. County budget deliberations are in full motion, but my office’s final decisions are still a couple of weeks away.
It feels like a lot of things are in that space between the edges. Real tariffs or just threats of them? Stock market instability and plummeting consumer confidence or actual economic recession? Major dismantling of Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP, and education funding, or just threats of it? Complete surrender to Russia, or will the majority party in Congress do its job?
It’s really hard for anyone who follows national news to put one foot in front of the other because it feels like we’re getting close to a cliff.
But we do. We must. On the fourth floor we met this week with eleven departments to better understand their budget requests.
I had the honor of reflecting on the lessons and impacts of the Key Bridge collapse, at both the Governor’s home and the bridge site, with families of the fallen workers, first responders, and the response’s unified command. It felt good to reflect on a time just a year ago when government stepped up and delivered, fast and precisely, in a crisis. The written version of my comments is here.
I was briefed by staff on five major initiatives, met with City of Annapolis representatives about some important joint planning on transit, met with our hard-working Planning Advisory Board, and did a dozen or so meetings with various staff about the amazing work they are doing.
The most fun I had this week was recording two Pittman and Friends podcasts, one with Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation President Amy Gowan, and the other with Apostle Antonio Palmer and Dr. Barbara Palmer of Kingdom Celebration Center and Kingdom Kare, Inc. I do love thirty-minute conversations with brilliant people who are solving big problems.
Some might say that the most impactful thing I did this week was to walk into a lamp post on my way to a meeting with the presiding officers of the General Assembly. In subsequent budget meetings, I explained the band-aid on my forehead as the result of banging my head against a wall in frustration from all the things we can’t afford to fund.
On a more constructive note, I met this week with Charlestine Fairley, Director of Anne Arundel Community Action Agency, and her deputy director, Joshua Hatch, to discuss funding for the program that they operate to move incarcerated men and women into housing, jobs, and better lives. The Community Action Agency has been the official federally funded anti-poverty agency of our county since 1965, and Charlestine herself has been in this line of work for many decades. She has seen history, and she is wise.
”How are you all doing?” I asked at the end of the meeting. “You must have a lot of programs that are being threatened.”
She paused before she spoke, and looked into my eyes, or maybe further. “We’ll be ok,” she said. “We have work to do.”
She talked about the process of drawing federal money down, and how executive orders and DOGE cuts were being struck down by the courts. But then she talked about her staff, many of whom have worked their way out of the poverty they are battling, and are a couple of missed paychecks away from being there again.
”They worry,” she said. But she reassures them. She tells them to focus on what they can control - their work - to make sure they are doing everything they can for every person who comes to them for help.
I think she’s right. There’s something healing and reassuring about getting things done, especially getting them done for other people. It takes your mind far away from the other, to the now. It’s empowering.
I felt like her words were directed at me. I feel like I should direct them to you. So I am.
Until next week…