The Year Ahead

What's next? Politics never ends.

First, we have a new Frederick City Council, a new Chair of that City Council, Cesar Diaz, and several new representatives in other Frederick County Municipalities. Follow the webpages for these municipalities to see what your local representatives are doing.

The MD legislature begins January 14, 2026. Our state legislators will be cosidering legislation to keep Maryland running, especially given a large budget deficit, to complete the process by April 13, 2026, if there is no extension of the session. You can follow the action on the Maryland govenrment website: Home Page. It can be a confusing and frustrating site to navigate. Please start with the excellent videos about how to use it at: https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Information/VideoTutorials.For a more general introduction, see https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Information/Text/about_mga.

The LWV of Maryland handles organizing and training for supporting bills in the session. If you are interested, please go to the website at https://www.lwvmd.org/advocate_manual for more information.

In preparation for the new state legislative session, 3 members of LWV of Frederick County met with several of our representatives to discuss 3 pieces of legislation the LWV of MD and of Frederick County hope to see pass in this coming legislative session. Kris Fair, Ken Kerr, and April Miller met with us in person, and representatives of Karen Lewis Young and Barrie Cilliberti met with us to discuss bills that were introduced last session that will be coming back for consideration this year, including a bill to fill vacant seats in the legislature by special elections, a bill to require all amendments on the election ballot be stated in plain language, and a bill to study the impact of data centers on local communities.

In a special legislative session called by Governor Moore last week, the legislators overturned a veto of the data center study, meaning that the study will proceed. Numerous other vetoed bills were overturnedas well. And Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk was elected Speaker of the MD House to replace Speaker Adrienne Jones, who served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from the 10th district since 1997. She served as the 107th Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates from 2019 to 2025, becoming the first African-American and first woman to serve in that position in Maryland.

We hosted a legislative breakfast with our Frederick delegation on Saturday 12/6/2025. Delegates present included Representatives Jesse Pippy, the chair of the delegation, as well as Ken Kerr, Karen Sinpson, Christopher Eric Bouchat, and representatives of Karen Lewis Young and Kris Fair. It was a lively conversation and the delegation was very responsive to questions from the audience. Thank you to the delegates, their representatives, and to the audience.  

Our next Board meeting is on TUESDAY, because the library is closed for the Matin Luther King holiday, 1/16/2025, at the C. Burr Artz library. For details check the link at the bottom of this page for that meeting. There isn't much there right now, but there will be soon. We will be discussing projects we will be working on for next year, including the midterm election. There are lots of opportunities for new members, suitable for both introverts and extroverts! All members are welcome, as is the general public. It is a smaller room than the Community Room, so there is a Zoom option for you.