Gov. Wes Moore greets a child during the Family Prosperity Act bill signing. The passage and signing into law of the Family Prosperity Act in the 2023 legislative session will provide a much-needed boost to the economic security and sustenance of Maryland’s working families, helping more than 400,000 Marylanders afford the basics and invest in their futures. Working family tax credits, like Maryland’s state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), are proven, powerful tools that help ensure kids don’t grow up in poverty and help families afford the basic things their households need. Maryland took a big step forward in supporting working families in 2021 when it created a modest CTC, expanded the state EITC to include thousands of low-income workers who were previously ineligible for the credit, and increased the value of the credit for all recipients. The Family Prosperity Act made those changes permanent…

At the start of this year’s legislative session, newly elected Gov. Moore introduced a bill to fulfill his campaign promise to accelerate and strengthen Maryland’s $15 minimum wage. As introduced, the bill would have boosted paychecks for 175,000 workers. Lawmakers ultimately passed the bill in significantly weakened form, delaying implementation by three months and stripping a provision to secure the wage floor’s purchasing power in future years. The legislation Gov. Moore signed this week is an important accomplishment, providing relief to 163,000 workers who are currently being squeezed by rapid price increases. However, the law misses opportunities to provide workers long-term protection and make our minimum wage more inclusive. Gov. Moore’s original Fair Wage Act consisted of two important pieces: Phase in the full $15 minimum wage for covered workers at all employers effective in October 2023 Adjust the minimum wage for inflation beginning July 1, 2025 to ensure that…

Maryland lawmakers are getting close to adopting a spending plan for the next budget year, which begins July 1. The development of the state budget year has been marked by several major differences from recent years. First, as it is the first year of Gov. Wes Moore’s term, development of the proposed budget was split between his administration and the prior administration of former Gov. Larry Hogan. Second, this is the first year that the legislature has had additional powers to move money around in the budget and increase funding for certain line items, following a voter-passed constitutional amendment that passed in 2020. And, the governor and legislature also went into the start of the budget process in a historically strong financial position, having ended the 2022 budget year with more than $1 billion in unallocated funds due in large part to the influx of federal funds early in the…

MDCEP Policy Intern Megan Condon contributed to this post Equal Pay Day serves as a reminder of the ongoing gender pay gap and the need for action to achieve pay equity in the workplace. This year it takes place today, March 14, which symbolizes how far into the year women must work in order to have earned what men made in the previous year. Currently, women in Maryland are typically paid just 86 cents for every dollar paid to a man. This legislative session, MDCEP amongst other fair pay advocates is supporting a bill (House Bill 832) that would require employers to include the possible salary range for a role. Disclosing a salary range is a simple and effective way to increase transparency and close both gender and racial pay gaps. When women aren’t paid fairly, it makes it harder for them to take care of their families, limits their…

As lawmakers consider Gov. Moore’s Fair Wage Act, inflation indexing has emerged as the central point of contention. Indexing would mean that the minimum wage automatically adjusts once a year to maintain its true purchasing power. While powerful interests have lined up against indexing, the right path remains clear: Inflation indexing is critical to avoid leaving workers behind. Inflation indexing is a tool to maintain the status quo after the full $15 minimum wage phases in. Without indexing, while the dollar value of the minimum wage stays constant over time, its purchasing power continuously declines due to inflation. In other words, without indexing, workers must constantly watch their standard of living erode, day by day. Failing to index also further tilts an already lopsided balance of power. Without indexing, low-road employers that seek to maximize profits through low wages get an automatic, continuous reduction to their responsibilities in real terms.…

State budget documents revealed a sharp increase in the number of public school students qualifying for free and reduced-price school meals after the state changed the method it uses to determine eligibility. More than 110,000 students in Maryland’s public schools qualified for free and reduced-price meals when the school year began last fall. – a 34% increase from the previous year. This measure is important not only for ensuring students from low-income families are able to get food at school so they are well prepared to learn, but also because this figure is used as a measurement of poverty in a given school in the school funding formula. Source: Department of Legislative Services, Office of Policy Analysis. Fiscal Briefing. January 25, 2023 Every jurisdiction, except Baltimore City (-1.2%), Wicomico County (1.5%) and Somerset County (5.5%), saw a significant percent increase in the number students enrolled for free and reduced-price meals.…

As the first standardized test scores reported since the start of the COVID pandemic show more Maryland students struggling with math and reading, it is more important than ever that the state maintain the commitments it made to students through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation, which gained final passage in 2021. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” showed a decline in fourth and eighth grade reading and mathematics scores for most states compared to 2019 with the dip in mathematics scores being the largest ever recorded. Maryland was among the majority of states that saw a decline in scores, which confirmed the toll the pandemic has taken on student learning.  However, while the decline in scores for 2022 can be in part attributed to the pandemic, it is important to note that there has been a national downward trend since…

In order to provide greater opportunity for all city residents and address the lack of affordable housing, Baltimore City needs an effective policy requiring developers to include a certain number of affordable apartments or houses in new development projects. This week, the City Council is considering a new “inclusionary housing” policy to replace a law that expired in June and had largely been ineffective at generating new affordable units. Inclusionary housing laws generally require developers of certain projects to set aside a percentage of new units to be more affordable and help create more socioeconomically integrated communities. The old law was enacted in 2007 and only generated 37 housing units in the 14 years it was in place. Loopholes and waivers city officials granted to developers rendered the law to be largely ineffective, so the majority of new housing projects did not provide affordable units and were built in communities…

When children are facing a crisis, it is critical that Maryland’s foster care programs provide them with stable, safe and supervised care. Recent media reports of foster youth being housed in unlicensed facilities suggest that the state is not living up to this basic standard. The report indicates that foster children were placed in hotels, a commercial office building in downtown Baltimore and in some cases were left in emergency departments and other sections of hospitals even though they had no medical reason for being there. So far, we know that in the first six months of this year, 11 children have spent at least one night at the Baltimore City Department of Social Services office building while 56 have been placed there for a total of 200 hours. According to the Baltimore Banner analysis, each year 80-100 children in state custody stay in hospitals longer than medically needed, mainly…

Recent Census Bureau data demonstrate that it is possible to reduce poverty and prevent hardship through government action—support that is especially needed in Maryland as the poverty rate in the state increased significantly between 2019 and 2021. While relief measures such as the federal and state Child Tax Credits and the eligibility expansion of the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) helped mitigate hardship associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers must extend and restore such measures to reduce the economic burden that continues to harm Maryland families and children. Percentage of Marylanders living in poverty increased compare to pre-pandemic levels Alarmingly, the percentage of people living in poverty in Maryland increased from 9.0% in 2019 to 10.3% in 2021. Specifically, poverty rates for children under 5 years old saw the greatest change from 11.7% in 2019 to 15.2% in 2021, with children living in single female-headed households seeing the largest…