By Tashi McQueen,
AFRO Political Writer,
tmcqueen@afro.com
Members of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland (LBCM) recently unveiled their 2024 legislative priorities, which include upholding recently passed juvenile justice laws, making resources more available for Maryland’s small businesses and ensuring prescription drugs are affordable for Black Marylanders.
“Members of the legislature founded the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland to advance policies that promote the interests of Black residents. For 54 years we have fiercely advocated for change that ensures Black Maryland thrives,” said LBCM Chair Del. Jheanelle Wilkins (D-Md.-20). “We will work together to ensure passage of every single one of these bills that we have outlined.”
Justice Reform and Public Safety
As public safety and juvenile justice remain significant concerns for Marylanders, in 2024, LBCM will prioritize establishing and supporting a correctional ombudsman office within the attorney general’s office, creating an expungement expansion bill package, supporting the success of returning citizens and maintaining recent policies and laws related to juvenile justice.
“The Legislative Black Caucus last year in the Maryland General Assembly passed really important foundational legislation to make sure that children in our communities are not interrogated without their Constitutional right of access to an attorney,” said Wilkins. “We believe that legislation is a critical bill, and we will defend that legislation this session.”
Black Wealth and Black Business
Redeveloping Maryland small business online resources, ensuring accountability and transparency between the Board of Public Works and Minority Business Enterprises (MBE) and increasing MBE contracting opportunities are prime legislative initiatives for the LBCM in 2024.
“The caucus truly believes that Black wealth will grow through entrepreneurship,” said Del. N. Scott Phillips (D-Md.-10). “We will work with the Comptroller’s office to create a public interactive searchable informational dashboard of public works data.”
The Board of Public Works oversees most state agency procurements and contracts exceeding $200,000, according to their website. Phillips said caucus members believe that “transparency in that process is essential for us to understand procurement in the state of Maryland and to grow the opportunities for minority businesses.”
Phillips explained that the dashboard would include relevant information from BPW agenda items such as contract spending amounts, MBE goals and MBE waiver requests.
Housing and Transportation
“It’s a bold policy posture to create a dedicated funding stream to pay for public transit. This is a moral decision,” said Del. Robbyn Lewis (D-Md.-46). “Martin Luther King fought for the right of Black people to move freely in pursuit of education, health care and opportunity. As members of the LBCM, the largest such body in the U.S., we have a sacred duty to carry on his work to help make sure Black people can move and seize opportunity.”
LBCM’s initiatives in this area include authorizing just cause evictions for lease non-renewals and increasing oversight and compliance on evictions. They are also working on “banning the box” on lease applications and protecting access to transportation for Black communities.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan non-governmental organization, “banning the box” is a movement to remove questions about an applicant’s criminal history from job applications until after they are offered the job. It ideally gives applicants a better chance at employment.
Health and Environmental Justice
LBCM’s top health and environmental justice priorities include the Maryland Maternal Health Act of 2024, the Prescription Drug Affordability Drug Act, a prostate, breast and lung cancer screening bill and legislation on the impact of environmental permits.
“Maternal health continues to be an area where we struggle and witness devastating outcomes. We find that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their White counterparts,” said Del. Jennifer White Holland (D-Md.-10).
Holland said the bill aims to update and streamline medical forms used during pregnancy and upon discharge to improve care coordination and connections to community-based services. It would also increase the state’s study and action on severe maternal morbidity.
Education Equity
“I’m proud to sponsor, alongside Chair Wilkins, legislation to support the expansion of community schools under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future,” said Del. Alonzo Washington (D-Md.-22). “The bill does several things, including empowering community school coordinators to operate with flexibility to create transformational change with their students [and] codifying national best practices for community schools implementation.”
Del. Stephanie Smith (D-Md.-45) said there is a bill she is planning to sponsor this session that will ensure unnecessary duplicate programs from HBCUs are not approved, much like the issue that heated up in 2023 between Towson University and Morgan State University concerning a duplicated doctoral program.
LBCM’s other initiatives in this area include equitable funding for land grant institutions and preserving the affordability of the Child Care Scholarship Program.
Tashi McQueen is a Report For America corps member.
