New Howard County Council faces familiar, thorny issues

The Howard County Council may have new faces, but the issues waiting for them are anything but.

Unofficial results show four political newcomers joining incumbent Christiana Rigby around the council’s dais — all of them Democrats.

Kevin Chin, a doctor; Jessica Nichols, an educator; and Janssen Evelyn, an administrator for the Anne Arundel County government, ran unopposed in the general election. In District 5, small-business owner Cat Carter has declared victory and Republican Ryan O’Connor has conceded.

Here are some of the issues awaiting the new council.

Affordable housing

Howard County may be the poster child for the affordable housing crisis. In the past decade, its housing prices have skyrocketed.

County Executive Calvin Ball proposed a fix last winter that would allow the county to fund affordable housing development by taking on debt in the form of bonds, similar to the way it finances capital construction for schools, roads and other infrastructure.

Election results showed a majority of residents signed off on the necessary charter amendment.

Passing the referendum does not lock the county into taking on debt to fund affordable housing projects. Instead, it gives the county the option to explore it in future budget cycles with public input.

Jasmine Doyle voted to support the charter amendment. The 36-year-old and her husband live with her parents while saving to buy a house.

“There are a lot of people struggling to live in America right now,” Doyle said. “We’d love to stay in Columbia, but we got to go somewhere a little cheaper.”

Not all residents favor the county borrowing money to support affordable housing development.

Columbia resident Todd Fagan voted against the ballot measure because he’s worried about increasing taxes, overburdened roads and overdevelopment.

Education spending

Funding the Howard County Public School System is always a hot button for the council, school board, education advocates and residents.

In his final budget year, Ball’s proposal covered 99.3% of what the school board asked for, leaving the smallest gap for school officials to close in his two terms as county executive.

In previous years, the school board balanced its budget by axing darling programs such as third grade orchestra, cutting over 100 staffing positions and threatening to increase class sizes.

Budget negotiations begin again in early 2027, and incoming County Executive Vanessa Atterbeary’s administration must present a budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year to County Council. The council can only make cuts, not add to the proposed expenditures.

Access to records

The county’s watchdog, Inspector General Kelly Madigan, has been in her position for almost a year but lacks access to about 50 categories of records she said she needs for investigations.

That’s primarily due to conflicting court decisions in other parts of the state. This year, an attorney with the Maryland Attorney General’s office advised Baltimore that inspectors general should not have unfettered access to records. Instead, inspectors should be subject to the records restrictions outlined in the Maryland Public Information Act. That reflects a 25-year-old ruling by Maryland’s highest court that a police department’s internal investigation records could not be disclosed to Montgomery County’s inspector general.

That’s a huge hurdle for government watchdogs such as Madigan because the act bars counties from releasing certain records, including personnel and financial information. Record holders also have the discretion to withhold other records, such as those related to investigations.

Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming filed a legal challenge after Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration cut off her access to city records. A Baltimore Circuit Court ordered access restored, but the city is appealing the ruling.

The conflicting Montgomery County and Baltimore court decisions put Howard in a difficult position, the county’s attorneys said.

The County Council’s 2024 bill creating an inspector general’s office explicitly gave the watchdog “the right to obtain full and unrestricted access to all records and files.”

Madigan has said this language and the Baltimore ruling are sufficient to grant her access, but the county attorneys, Ball administration and a majority of council members aren’t so sure.

The current council’s final attempt to give Madigan access to records failed in a 3-2 vote last week, but the newly elected council could revisit the question.

Rigby, who voted against the legislation, said she’s not against Madigan accessing records but thinks it’s up to the state legislature or the Maryland Supreme Court to fix the issue.

Since assuming her role, Madigan said, she’s received tips from current and former employees, vendors, law enforcement partners and the public. They include allegations of grant misuse, time theft, procurement fraud, nepotism, bribery and kickbacks.

Strained communication

It was a tense final year for some departing council members who openly sparred with the leaders of a major community center project and the influential Board of Appeals.

In their final legislative session, council members narrowly voted to strengthen grant requirements for property development and purchases, a measure aimed at a publicly funded redevelopment called The Source.

The project has been in the works since 2023, when the county approved an ambitious proposal for a public-private partnership to convert the former Columbia Flier building along Little Patuxent Parkway into a community center and hub for recreational, health and social services.

The county awarded Columbia Community Concepts, the nonprofit managing the project, two grants totaling $25 million in 2025 and 2026. Roughly $12.2 million of the public funds have been spent on demolition and other tasks there.

This year council members Deb Jung, Liz Walsh and David Yungmann said they had questions about how the funds were spent, but a meeting between the elected body and representatives of the project never occurred.

The project’s developer, Brian Kim, filed an ethics complaint in June against Jung, accusing her of scrutinizing the project for political gain when she was running for county executive. Jung called the complaint a “desperate political stunt” and the ethics commission later dismissed it.

A separate conflict with the county’s appeals board came to a head in late summer. Jung, Walsh and Rigby hastily convened a closed-door meeting in September and voted to fire appeals board chair Gene Ryan. The move drew furious reactions from members of both bodies, who have been feuding for more than a year.

Ryan filed a lawsuit in October, claiming officials violated open meeting laws and denied him due process. He asked a Howard County court to overturn the decision, but his seat on the board remains unfilled.

Four new people joining council in December could reset the rapport between The Source developers and the remaining Board of Appeals members — or raise more questions about how to move forward.

Banner reporter Alissa Zhu contributed to this article.