I hope you and your family are doing well. We are into our third full week of the 2020 Legislative Session. Below are some things that I’m working on and an event I want to be sure you know about with our District 5 Team. As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome at [email protected].
Stopping “Sanctuary City/County” Practices in Maryland:
On Thursday, Senate Bill 332, legislation I’m sponsoring that would require local law enforcement to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security, will be heard in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. SB 332 requires local law enforcement to provide 72 hour notice to the United States Department of Homeland Security if a person being held is subject to an immigration detainer and hold the same person for additional 48 hours to allow the transfer of custody.
Currently, several Maryland counties and cities are refusing to notify ICE when an illegal immigrant who’s serving a sentence for crime is nearing their release date. They aren’t allowing ICE to deport these dangerous individuals and it’s led to a number of terrible crimes. You can click here for more details. We need to allow local and Federal law enforcement to cooperate to get dangerous criminals off of our streets.
Kirwan Needs to Focus on the Classroom
As I have talked about in the past, the very expensive Kirwan plan has some serious flaws and not enough accountability. Not considered or addressed by the Kirwan Commission are complaints from teachers about problems in the classroom learning environment.
Teachers are unable to change or cater curriculum to their students as needed, standardized testing dominates learning, there is too much paperwork, and they lack the ability to enforce real discipline.
I’ve laid out my views in the past more specifically – now the time has come to engage in the battle against simply throwing more money at problems in places like Baltimore. We need real, concrete standards and goals that we expect to be met. If those goals are not being met, we need to be able to reverse course and not put state taxpayers in a huge hole. I’m hopeful that we will be able to make some changes to ensure that we fund education appropriately but also provide for real accountability and flexibility.
District 5 Night in Annapolis
Please join us for our Annual District 5 Night in Annapolis. February 17, 2020 from 5:30-7:30 for food and conversation followed by Session at 8 pm. Call my office 410-841-3683 or email [email protected] to register or for more details.