My Plan for
District 27A

My neighbors in Waldorf, Clinton, and Brandywine are losing roughly two full work weeks a year sitting on Route 301. That is not a traffic problem. That is stolen time, time taken from your kids, your second job, your sleep. The Washington metro region consistently ranks in the top five in the country for per-driver congestion delay. We have Interstate-level traffic volume on suburban roads that were not designed for it. I'm not waiting on MDOT to fix this on their own. The General Assembly appropriates every dollar MDOT spends. That's my job.

Maryland made a generational promise to our kids in 2021 when the General Assembly enacted the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, a ten-year, $3.8 billion-per-year overhaul of public education. PGCPS and CCPS students in this district are owed every dollar of that formula, in their classrooms, on time. Law is not the same as funded. Funded is not the same as delivered. Every session there is a fight over whether to slow the Blueprint's implementation. Every session I will be the vote that says no.

Charles County is home to approximately 12,500-13,500 veterans, roughly 10-11% of the adult population, nearly double the national rate. Add Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center, add the shadow of Joint Base Andrews, and District 27A is one of the most military-dense districts in Maryland. These residents deserve a delegate who has lived their life. I have. I served in the U.S. Army including a deployment to Guantanamo Bay, and spent 29 years in the U.S. Coast Guard rising to Master Chief E-9. I know what's killing my friends, and I am not going to stand by while we talk around it.

I was a Fire Chief. I've pulled people out of burning buildings and I've stood over kids bleeding in the street. Nobody needs to lecture me on toughness. The question is not whether there should be consequences, there should be. The question is what consequences actually stop a 15-year-old from becoming a 25-year-old in Jessup. The evidence on that is not ambiguous. And I am going to follow the evidence.

Maryland has consistently ranked in the worst quartile of U.S. states for per-capita pedestrian fatalities. Pedestrian deaths account for roughly a quarter to nearly a third of all traffic deaths in Maryland, despite pedestrians making up well under 3% of all trips. That number tells you everything about how our roads are designed, for speed, not for human beings. I am carrying two bills to change that.

Brandywine, Baden, Cedarville, and Aquasco, predominantly African American communities in southern Prince George's County, host a disproportionate concentration of natural gas power generation within about a 13-mile radius. Three large facilities already operating, a fourth long-proposed. These communities have carried an unfair share of Maryland's energy burden for decades. At the same time, Mattawoman Creek in Charles County is one of the most productive and ecologically intact sub-estuaries in the Chesapeake Bay, and it is at risk from the same 301-corridor sprawl that is choking our roads. These two fights are connected, and I am in both of them.

Roughly 45-50% of Charles County renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Median gross rent in Charles County has been in the high $1,600s to mid-$1,700s, with Waldorf higher. Rent growth ran 5-8% year-over-year in 2022-2023. A senior on a fixed Social Security check cannot absorb a 7% rent hike two years in a row. That is not a market finding its level. That is a crisis finding its next victim.

Maryland voters enshrined reproductive freedom into the state's Declaration of Rights in November 2024, with 74-76% of the vote. That is not a close call. Maryland also has the 1991 Freedom of Choice Act, the 2022 Abortion Care Access Act, and a 2023 shield law protecting providers and patients from out-of-state subpoenas. We are already one of the three or four strongest reproductive-rights states in the country. HB 372 is the final piece: making the federal EMTALA emergency-care duty a matter of Maryland statute, so that if the federal protection gets hollowed out in Washington, Maryland law still holds.

District 27A is not an economically weak district. It has Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center, the Navy's center of excellence for energetics, roughly $1 billion a year in regional economic impact. It has the shadow of Joint Base Andrews, $2.5-3 billion a year. It has Prince George's Community College and College of Southern Maryland. The problem is that we have been functioning as a bedroom community, our residents commute out, spend their money near their offices, and come home to sleep. I want to change that by building workforce pipelines that keep our talent here.