What had been a busy but predictable final day of the legislative session, filled with light-hearted moments and sentimental farewells to departing lawmakers, took a sharp turn toward ugly in the final hour Monday.
Tensions spilled over in the Senate after Republican senators slow-walked bills for much of the evening with the clock ticking. And chaos erupted in the House at four minutes to midnight when House leaders tried to cut off debate on a voting rights bill and lawmakers began shouting over each other as the speaker tried to keep the process moving.
The House explosion came over Senate Bill 255, the Maryland Voting Rights Act of 2026, that supporters have said is needed to preserve voting rights ahead of Supreme Court rulings this summer that are expected to gut the federal Voting Rights Act.
Republicans spent close to an hour in a House session Saturday debating the bill that they called biased and partisan. But when they tried to continue that debate late Monday night, Democrats called the question, essentially shutting off debate.
House Republicans erupted in opposition, demanding to debate the issue further, and Democrats shouted back. House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel) said the motion was not debatable, but the ruckus scarcely died down until midnight, when Majority Leader David Moon (D-Montgomery) moved that the House adjourn Sine Die.
Peña-Melnyk, speaking to reporters early Tuesday, attributed the outburst to the stress that comes with the final hours of a legislative session.
“You know that always happens on Sine Die. You know why? It is because everyone is stressed,” she said. “It is the last day and the clock is running.
“Moving forward, again, my job is to run the floor in a way that is respectful and civil, which I’ve done, and I stand by that, because I was very intentional about that. And my friends across the aisle, they’re my friends,” Peña-Melny said.
The Senate was more of a slow burn, as Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) grew frustrated with some Republicans slowing down the passage of bills.
Sen. William Folden (R-Frederick) was among those frequently questioning bills and offering amendments throughout the day, as the clock was ticking.
Tensions reached a boiling point with minutes to go before midnight, as Folden rose again to ask questions about Senate Bill 623 — a bill creating a premium cigar lounge liquor license for tobacco shops — on what would ultimately be the last bill of the session.
“Please stop. You’ve embarrassed yourself enough,” Ferguson said from the rostrum, interrupting Folden’s line of questioning. With just two minutes left, Ferguson dropped the bill and moved into a brief line of thanks before adjourning.
Folden said he was upset because he had been working with Senate leadership to pass a salary increase for the Frederick County Sheriff, by attaching it to a bill about the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney, but that leadership abruptly reversed course.
“At the last minute, apparently they weren’t happy about that,” Folden said. “They don’t like the sheriff of Frederick County. They made it a personal matter.”
He said he didn’t begrudge Ferguson for his stern remarks Monday night.
“It’s a high-tension time. I don’t have any ill will to the Senate president,” Folden said. “I’m operating within what I have left as a super minority member. That’s all I got.”
Despite the high-volume arguing in the last moments of the 2026 session, the House and Senate were able to come together during the rest of the day to finalize dozens of bills and send them off to the governor for consideration.
Stillbirth tax credits
A third attempt to grant a $1,000 tax credit for parents who have faced the loss of a child through stillbirth faced an uncertain future just a week ago, but now it’s on its way to the governor’s desk.
Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery) last week called on the House to move Senate Bill 356 which had not been voted out of the Ways and Means Committee. But committee Chair Jheanelle K. Wilkins (D-Montgomery) expressed concerns over whether a tax credit was the most appropriate offer to grieving parents.
As of Monday, the committee had not voted on the legislation, holding it up in the legislative process.
Instead of waiting for a committee vote, Waldstreicher added the stillbirth tax credit language to House Bill 547, which concerns an income tax subtraction for agricultural equipment. It would require the agriculture secretary to report to the legislature and the governor on recommendations for which types of equipment should qualify for an income tax subtraction modification.
The House ultimately accepted the amended version, sending both the agriculture-related tax benefit and the stillbirth tax credit to the governor’s desk.
Waldstreicher called it “a historic moment of recognition for parents who have been through incredible trauma.”
“This has been a five-year labor of love,” he said, recognizing Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), Wilkins, and the parents of stillbirth children who “never gave up” and continued to advocate for the legislation.
Transit-oriented housing bill back on track
Gov. Wes Moore’s priority housing bill, on Transit-Oriented Housing, would encourage new housing development around transit-oriented locations by restricting parking minimums and other local decisions in specific situations. Senate Bill 389 and House Bill 894 would also prohibit the collection of certain county taxes until a project is close to completion.
But the bills got hung up between the House and Senate in a dispute over so-called project labor agreements (PLAs).
The administration bill originally included language calling for PLAs, collective bargaining agreements between a project developer and labor unions establishing the terms for employment on a project. Developers looking to apply for the state’s Transit-Oriented Development Capital Grant and Revolving Loan Fund would get a boost if the project included a PLA, under Moore’s proposed legislation.
The House wanted to keep that language, while the Senate stripped it out. Ultimately, the House deferred to the Senate. The bills approved Monday say developers applying for a state grant to help fund their projects can include so-called project labor agreements (PLAs), but they won’t earn extra consideration by state officials for doing so.
No vacations for Cayman Island insurance tax
The Senate agreed with the House that a complex tax issue on so-called captive insurance should be left up to state insurance officials to decide whether hospitals should have been paying taxes on potentially billions sheltered in the Cayman Islands — at least for the time being.
“Captive insurance” is when a organization forms its own insurance company — a captive — to help cover claims that may not be covered by commercial insurance.
Maryland does not have a regulatory framework to let companies establish captives within the state. So decades ago, Maryland nonprofit hospitals set up captives in offshore locations such as the Cayman Islands. The hospitals believe those captives are not subject to a 3% state tax on out-of-state insurance premiums, but state insurance officials aren’t so sure.
Senate Bill 890 had proposed a two-year pause on the tax to give the Maryland Insurance Administration time to study the issue. But the pause in tax collections was stripped out by the House Ways and Means Committee, and the amended bill was given a preliminary OK by the full House Friday.
The Senate agreed to remove the proposed two-year pause Monday.
“So if MIA does a study and decides that the taxation is correct and should be done, then they can go ahead and charge the tax,” Finance Chair Pamela Beidle (D-Anne Arundel) said before the chamber approved the bill on a unanimous vote.
Elopement bills see some successes
A legislative package known as the LEAD Act, to provide greater resources for people with disabilities who “elope,” or wander away from caregivers, made notable strides this year, with lawmakers passing two out of five first-time bills.
The LEAD Act — for Laila’s Elopement Awareness and Dissemination Act — is named after a young autistic girl whose elopement at age 6 inspired the bills to give caregivers more resources when their loved one wanders away, a common occurrence for people with autism, dementia and other disabilities.
On Monday, the Senate approved House Bill 634, to require law enforcement training on how officers can better locate and interact with an individual who has “eloped.” The Senate version of the bill Senate Bill 745, was passed and sent to the governor’s desk last week.
The Senate on Monday also gave final approval to House Bill 1434, which prompts the Maryland Department of Health to set up a resource webpage for family caregivers.
Other bills passed the House, but got stuck in Senate committees. They would have let schools coordinate the use of locative devices with parents of autistic kids prone to elopement and increased school mapping data to include nearby bodies of water, among other measures.
Megalodon lives in Maryland
After some concerns that the bill making megalodon the official state shark might be as dead as the prehistoric shark itself, it rose from depths of the General Assembly recycling bin Monday.
The shark and a proposal for “Purple Lights Night,” to honor survivors of domestic violence, were appended by the House to Senate Bill 35, sponsored by Sen. Carl Jackson (D-Baltimore County), which originally designated the Natural History Society of Maryland as the state’s official natural history museum. The Senate unanimously agreed to the “State Shark, State Natural Sciences Museum, and Purple Lights Night” bill Monday.
“I guess [I’ll] be the shark guy now,” Jackson said early Tuesday morning after the Senate adjourned Sine Die. “But definitely happy to bring the Maryland State Natural History Museum to Baltimore County. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m really excited about it. It’s been a journey.”
As for the megalodon (formerly called “Otodus megalodon”), the legislation almost went to sleep with the fishes, after it failed to get out of the Senate. It was revived by the House Government, Labor and Elections Committee which rolled the museum, megalodon and domestic violence survivors into one measure.
Shark support came not only from two sponsors — Sen. Jack Bailey (R-Calvert and St. Mary’s) and Del. Todd Morgan (R-St. Mary’s) — but also from fourth-grade students at Beltsville Academy in Prince George’s County who drew shark pictures and submitted letters to the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee.
“I think it was extremely important that in the divisiveness of the world today, when it comes to politics, that we were able to influence the hundreds of children that wrote testimony to this bill to learn about how an idea becomes a law,” Bailey said early Tuesday morning.
A study on second jobs
Sen. Ron Watson’s (D-Prince George’s) bill that would have eased restrictions on legislators getting second jobs in state or local government was reduced to a study before it was approved Monday.
Senate Bill 618 originally would have let a state lawmaker hold another state job, or work for a county or municipal government, if that person had served at least one full term in office and “objectively satisfied the minimum education, licensure and experience requirements” of the job.
The bipartisan legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Johnny Ray Salling (R-Baltimore County), was approved 32-10 in the Senate on March 23. It appeared Watson had a receptive audience when he presented the bill Aprail 7 to the Government, Labor and Elections Committee, but it voted Saturday to advance the bill as a Task Force on Legislator Employment.
The House granted preliminary approval on the amended bill and passed the measure 101-36 on the same day Monday. The Senate had to concur with the House changes, but it never happened, according to the bill’s landing page.
If approved, the task force would’ve examined current provisions of the Maryland Public Ethics Law, studied the impact of current legislator employment rules on members of the General Assembly and the legislative process and reviewed recusal requirements for legislators who are employed by state or local government or a quasi-governmental entity.
Some of the members would’ve included the five members of the public chosen by the Senate president and another five the House speaker, chairs of the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics and a representative with the Maryland Association of Counties (MACo).
