Maryland Senate District 16

A: Maryland’s structural deficit requires honesty about both sides of the ledger. It cannot be solved by cutting waste alone, nor by taxing without regard for burden. Both are necessary.

I would restructure Medicaid managed care contracts to cap administrative overhead and redirect savings to direct services, and if necessary, freeze renewal of corporate tax expenditures that cannot demonstrate a documented return on investment. I support adding income tax brackets for the wealthy; closing the carried interest loophole so investment managers pay rates comparable to wage earners; and modernizing the sales tax base to include digital and consumer services that did not exist when Maryland’s tax structure was designed.

A: First, housing affordability. Maryland’s housing crisis is a statewide emergency. Rents are consuming unsustainable shares of household income, and homeownership is increasingly out of reach for working families.

Second, the structural fiscal deficit. Maryland faces a gap between projected revenues and committed expenditures. Resolving it will require honest trade-offs on both spending and revenue, which too many elected officials have been unwilling to make publicly. Delay makes every option more painful. Third, healthcare access and workforce collapse. Maryland cannot implement its public health commitments of behavioral health parity, Medicaid expansion, and maternal health equity without the nurses, community health workers, and primary care providers to deliver them. The workforce pipeline is broken, and the legislature has not treated it with the urgency it deserves. These three issues are interconnected. A family that cannot afford housing, cannot access mental health care, and is one medical bill from bankruptcy is not a policy abstraction; they are my neighbors and fellow Marylanders.

A: The cost of living is not one problem; it is three: housing, healthcare, and taxes on working families. I would address each directly.

Housing-I would push for zoning reform that enables more multifamily development in high-opportunity communities, and expand state rental assistance to bridge the gap while supply catches up. On healthcare, I would strengthen enforcement of insurance parity so families actually access the coverage they pay for, and expand community health centers in underserved areas to reduce costly emergency room dependence. Lastly taxes, I would modernize and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, strengthen the Homeowners’ Tax Credit for moderate-income and fixed-income residents, and ensure that any new revenue measures fall on concentrated wealth and capital income — not on working families already stretched thin. The through-line is simple: the government should make it easier to live here, not harder. Every policy decision I make will be filtered through one question: Does this make Maryland more affordable for the people who do the work and live here?

A: Before committing to new revenue or rollbacks, I would need an honest review of Blueprint implementation to identify which programs are delivering measurable outcomes and which are not yet operational or accountable. We should protect and fully fund what is working and ensure improvements to teacher compensation with documented retention impact. We should restructure investments where implementation has lagged and reallocate the dollars to other programs that could use extra funding

I will not gut the Blueprint’s investments that are genuinely moving the needle for Maryland’s most underserved students and will not support automatic across-the-board rollbacks that punish successful programs for implementation failures elsewhere. The Blueprint deserves the respect of honest evaluations. That means neither protecting it from scrutiny nor dismantling it for political convenience. Maryland made a generational promise to its children. I intend to keep it, but keeping it responsibly means knowing what is actually working.

A: Voters deserve metrics they can find, read, and challenge. I would have data or links to state data that can be easily found on my website annually measuring progress across different policy issues for example: healthcare access (uninsured rate in District 16; behavioral health wait times); housing affordability; education outcomes (Blueprint milestone completion rates; per-pupil spending); and constituent responsiveness (number of constituent contacts, response time, and any major outcomes). I will draw on publicly available Maryland Department of Legislative Services reports, the Governor’s StateStat data, and the Maryland Center on Economic Policy. Every legislative session, I will hold community events in District 16 to review these numbers together. I am interested in success defined by whether a working family in Bethesda or Potomac is measurably better off. If they are not, voters should use that data to hold me accountable.

A: The Maryland General Assembly is constitutionally required to pass a balanced budget, which we do every year. Because of this requirement, it’s important to note that, with the exception of during the Covid crisis when the State benefited from a surge in federal funding, every year I’ve been in the legislature we’ve had a projected deficit we’ve addressed to balance the budget. The projected future shortfall is in large part due to the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which is addressed below. Since I was assigned to the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, not a budget committee, I am not in the weeds on specific spending cuts or revenue increases. That said, I strongly believe we should continue to focus on diversifying our economy – the last year has illuminated the real risk of our economic reliance on the federal government. We must support an environment that attracts more businesses to locate and grow here. This is a win-win: more jobs, more revenue into the general fund to support our schools, our other priorities, and all the great services we provide.

A: The economy, housing and education.

* The economy and the cost of living: As evidenced by your questions and the focus of our 2026 legislative session, I believe affordability – everything from groceries, gas, utility bills, and taxes to housing and healthcare – is top-of-mind for most Marylanders.

* Housing: Maryland is facing a significant housing crisis with a critical shortage, rising costs, and inequity in terms of access to quality and affordable housing.

* Education: I think that most residents view education as a path to success. That’s why we heard overwhelming support from voters about passing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, despite the huge financial investment. We hear concerns about achievement gaps, discrimination and bias, class size and overcrowding, resources, and aging facilities – to name just a few.

A: This last session we focused a lot on affordability, especially when it comes to energy. We passed a large energy package that aims to reduce residential costs in the short, medium and long term. In addition, we focused on economic development. For a long time, Maryland has been lucky to have a robust federal workforce, and all the associated economic benefits that it brings. Now, we are suffering due to the recent cuts to that workforce. We must work to grow our private sector, bringing in new businesses and supporting the growth and expansion of our current businesses so that the cost of the many services the state provides doesn’t fall as heavily on our residents. We also took measures to improve housing affordability through supply, location, and equity.

A: As the question implies, when we passed the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, we ensured that it was fully funded for the first 5 years. In addition, we included a mid-point review to determine what was working and what needed to be tweaked. That review is going on right now, and I anticipate that the results will shed light on some programs that can/should be adjusted or changed. All of this will indicate what financial commitment is needed by the State.

A: I want constituents to review my job performance based on how well I have listened to and served them. I aim to be their voice in Annapolis, bringing and supporting legislation that is important to our District. I have a proven track record in terms of legislation that includes protecting the environment, reproductive health, privacy, civil liberties, criminal justice, victims of abuse, and public safety. Equally critical, my office and I work hard to be responsive to all constituents who reach out to us for help or with questions.