In mid-March, Maryland’s two legislative leaders solemnly met to do triage. What must they rescue before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the General Assembly?
Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) refused to leave without enacting an enormous education overhaul aimed at fixing generations of inequity in public schools.
“There was no question in my mind or Bill’s mind that we had to get this done,” Jones recalled this week.
The bill passed by veto-proof margins before the legislature rushed out of town weeks early. But the sweeping schools reform effort, known as Kirwan, is in limbo nevertheless.
A tax package Jones and Ferguson shepherded through to pay for the biggest pieces of the reforms was based on assumptions that economic activity would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue.