When someone is facing only months to live due to terminal illness, they may consider a physician’s assistance to ease the pain of dying and have more control over what their final moments may look like. But in Maryland, a physician is currently prohibited from participating in so-called “medical aid-in-dying.”

Maryland lawmakers have tried year after year, but so far, no bill to legalize medical aid in dying has passed.

But supporters of the legislation think that 2024 might be the year it passes, due to a changing political climate and overall voter support for the measure. The General Assembly is set to convene Jan. 10.

Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, chair of the House Health and Government Operations Committee, said that another round of medical aid in dying legislation will be introduced in the upcoming 2024 session.

“We have been working on it during the interim,” Peña-Melnyk (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s) said in a written statement. “I am hoping that this is the year the bill is successful. It has been carefully drafted and thoughtful. I hope the bill is allowed to come to the Senate floor.”

She said that she has asked Del. Terri Hill (D-Howard) to sponsor the House bill next year. Hill could not be reached for comment.

Peña-Melnyk led the previous attempt last year, with House Bill 933, called the “The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings and the Honorable Shane E. Pendergrass Act.” The bill would have provided certain medical patients the ability to self-administer medication that would result in their own death.

The 2023 legislation restricted such requests to people with a terminal illness and the mental capacity to make their medical decisions. An individual would initially request aid in dying to a physician and then submit a written request that says they were “of sound mind” and suffering from an illness that “will, more likely than not, result in death within 6 months.”

While medical aid in dying legislation has never quite made it over the finish line in Maryland, 10 other states and Washington, D.C. have passed similar legislation.

Members of the House of Delegates who support the legislation believe that 2024 will be the year it passes. The question remains on whether Maryland’s senators will support the bill.

“Our question has always been on the Senate side,” said Del. Bonnie Cullison (D-Montgomery).

In 2019, the aid in dying legislation came to an end on the Senate floor when one Senator chose not to vote at all, leading to a 23-23 tie vote and the bill’s demise.

In October, Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) said that he thinks aid-in-dying legislation will be a “a very real conversation this year,” Maryland Matters previously reported.

“I would say it’s probably going to be one of the headline issues to be addressed this year,” he had said at the time. The Senate president’s office did not respond to follow-up questions.

Cullison said she thinks public opinion is more strongly in favor of medical aid-in-dying procedures.

“This is just another way that folks are able to have personal autonomy over their own health care, and so I think that is how the public is perceiving it,” she said.

A Gonzales Research & Media Services‘  poll that was sponsored by the end-of-life care advocacy group Compassion & Choices surveyed 807 Maryland voters in December of 2021 on their attitudes towards aid-in-dying, and found that 69% believe that “a mentally sound adult with an incurable, terminal illness, who only has six months or less to live, should have the legal option of medical aid in dying.”

Those percentages went up to 73% among Democrats and down to 65% among Republicans. Unaffiliated voters supported the measure at 63%.

And Gov. Wes Moore (D) has previously voiced support for aid-in-dying legislation during an interview with The Daily Record when he was governor-elect.

Donna Smith, the D.C. campaign director for Compassion and Choices, an advocacy group that has pushed aid-in-dying legislation across the nation, said that she thinks that we’re in a different climate than in previous years to take serious consideration on aid-in-dying bills.

For one, she said the conversation about aid-in-dying goes hand in hand with discussions of ‘bodily autonomy’ especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“I think this is a timely discussion, especially as we look at the abortion rights issue, because that’s one of self-autonomy, right?” she said. “That pregnant women should have autonomy over their body. And I think that applies to death and dying as well. Because why would we not give dying people options at the end of life, when the options are so few?”

Cullison agreed.

“I think what it did was it pointed out the concept of personal autonomy and choices,” Cullison said. “There is a natural progression from that discussion to the discussion we’re having about end of life options.”

Smith with Compassion and Choices also said that the COVID pandemic may have led people consider the challenging discussion, as it “put death and dying in the conversation in a way that had not happened before.”

“It has people thinking about what they want their end of life to look like,” Smith said.

“The experience of going through that, we had to talk about death and dying, what that looks like, in a way that we didn’t have to do that before. The conversation was very taboo to even have. Now, it’s less taboo,” she added.

But there are many who oppose the measure all together.

Various religious groups like the Maryland Catholic Conference oppose aid-in-dying legislation because it “seeks to legalize the intentional taking of human life,” according to its website.

According to a Gallup poll from 2018, while 72% of people surveyed said that a physician should be able to medically end a terminally ill patient’s life at the request of the patient, favorability drops among regular church goers.

Of those who attended church weekly, only 37% agreed with medical aid-in-dying. That went up to 69% among those who would attend church nearly weekly or monthly. Of those who never or seldom attended church, 86% supported medical aid in dying.

There are also concerns from some members of the disability community, who worry that aid-in-dying procedures will endanger people with disabilities. The disability group called Not Dead Yet has opposed the Maryland legislation in the past, and say that efforts should be made to improve quality of care for disabled people.

But supporters of the legislation insist the bill will not target individuals with disabilities and has guardrails to ensure that a patient is not being coerced into making a life-ending decision that they do not want to make.

“A small percent of people opt to go through the process,” Smith said. “And an even smaller percentage of people actually get through the process. Understand that we are talking about terminally ill people. And having a disability does not automatically qualify you for the law.”

By Danielle J. Brown

Maryland’s Department of Transportation is facing billions in cuts to address shortfalls that will squeeze operations and construction budgets.

State officials spent the better part of this week briefing lawmakers and local leaders on an 8% across-the-board cut to all the agencies within the Maryland Department of Transportation.

The Department of Transportation, in a statement responding to questions about the cuts and an expected public announcement next week, blamed the troubles on flagging revenues used to support road and transit projects.

“During a period when families are still feeling the effects of inflation, it’s incumbent on state government to take a balanced approach that tightens its belt while still making strategic investments in the future,” the department said in a statement. “The Moore-Miller Administration has been clear about the challenging budget shortfalls facing Maryland that have long been forecasted to take place. The depths of those structural problems only became clearer over time.

“Maintaining a sustainable, balanced budget requires a number of hard choices while still making key investments to grow Maryland’s economy, which is what the upcoming budget aims to accomplish.”

The briefings this week and a more public rollout next week come just as leaders of the state’s 24 major political subdivisions will gather in Cambridge for three days of policy briefings by the Maryland Association of Counties. The three-day conference, named “The Eye of the Storm” was already expected to include discussions of state budget concerns.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) is expected to speak to the group on Thursday.

In August, Moore warned of hard budget decisions on the horizon.

“As much as I want to say ‘yes,’ you’re going to hear some ‘no’s,’” he said during the association’s Ocean City convention.

Moore did not offer details on possible budget cuts, local project vetoes, or other options.

Just a month earlier, legislative budget analysts warned of looming budget deficits.

Members of the General Assembly’s Spending Affordability Committee were told last month that the state faces a structural gap of $322 million in the coming legislative session. The gap continues to grow in fiscal 2026 and 2027 to $376 million and $436 million respectively.

By fiscal 2028, the gap would grow to nearly $1.8 billion followed by a nearly $2.1 billion deficit the following year.

Driving much of the gap in those last two fiscal years are large increases in spending related to implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reforms.

Those gaps in the state’s budget and within the Department of Transportation may further hobble Moore’s promise to “rebuild state government” by filling vacant state jobs.

Moore in January vowed to hire 5,000 new employees before the legislature returned in 2024.

As of mid-September, the administration had hired fewer than 1,000, far short of the pace needed to fulfill his promise.

Maryland, as with other states, is struggling to find ways to pay for road and transit projects.

Currently those projects are paid for through the Transportation Trust Fund. The fund is a dedicated pot of money that in part comes from the state motor fuel and vehicle taxes.

The balance of the fund has failed to keep pace with transportation needs.

People are keeping their cars longer, resulting in less revenue from taxes on new car purchases. More fuel-efficient cars and increases in the number of electric and hybrid vehicles reduced the amount of motor fuel taxes collected.

Additionally, the money the state does collect is not going as far as inflation and other factors drive up the cost of projects.

A proposed six-year spending plan known as the Consolidated Transportation Plan, was presented to lawmakers out of balance. It is the first time that has happened in the history of the planning document.

“This was an issue that this administration inherited,” the transportation department said in its statement Friday night. “Maryland has known the current model for funding transportation in the state was unsustainable — coupled with years of flat revenue created the current problems with how the state funds transportation.”

Earlier this year, Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld told a blue-ribbon commission tasked with modernizing how the state pays for roads and transit projects that there is a shortfall of $100 million in the first year.

That shortfall grows to $2.1 billion by the end of the current six-year proposal.

The fund is barely enough to keep pace with state-of-good-repair efforts and previously approved projects. Newer projects including the Red Line east-west project in Baltimore and widening of portions of the Capital Beltway, I-270 and replacement of the American Legion Bridge are not covered.

“The department is reviewing every dollar that it spends to ensure that funds are being invested in a way that meets our priorities,” Wiedefeld said in an email response when asked Thursday if the agency was planning to make any budgetary adjustments.

The initial failure to present a balanced spending plan has irritated lawmakers and local officials.

“MDOT is required to submit the final CTP to the legislature in mid-January, but we expect to provide additional information on what that final CTP will look like in the coming weeks,” Wiedefeld said in his email response.

Over the week, transportation officials met with leaders of the state’s eight largest jurisdictions and state and federal lawmakers to brief them on the coming announcement.

Multiple sources who were familiar with those briefings said the cuts included elimination or reductions in commuter bus service, possible elimination of as many as 10 MTA bus lines considered the least used; cuts to MARC service into West Virginia and a decision to forego a plan to expand train service along the Brunswick line.

Spokespeople for the department did not respond to specific questions about individual cuts nor did they elaborate on briefings given during the week.

“In spite of these strategic budget cuts, the state continues to protect the federal investments, approximately $7 billion in total, dedicated to transportation projects,” the department said in its statement. “The Moore-Miller Administration will continue to propose ideas that are in the best interest of the Maryland taxpayer.”

By Bryan P. Sears

On November 2, the Heart of the Chesapeake Country Heritage Area annual awards ceremony was held at the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge. Two individuals and three organizations or projects were recognized for their outstanding contributions over the past year in promoting the culture and traditions of this part of the Eastern Shore. It marked another successful year for the HCCHA, which continues to play a major role in celebrating and developing what’s great about the extended community.

In concert with public and private partners, the Heart of the Chesapeake Country Heritage Area helps people, groups, and government entities preserve and promote the unique historic, cultural, and natural resources of Dorchester County. It’s core mission is to make the positive effect of heritage tourism on the local economy broader and deeper. The HCCHA is managed by the Dorchester County Tourism Department, which relies on the county government for staff, offices, and funding.

When Natalie Chabot left the tourism director position in Allegheny County to take over the one in Dorchester in 2001, a plan had already been made for creating a heritage area here, but it was still in draft form and not in great shape. Fortunately, Natalie had a solid advisory committee to work with, and they commenced the project in earnest.

The community was required to designate boundaries for the heritage area; they at first wanted to make it the whole county, but Maryland preferred to keep the areas smaller. It does encompass the majority of Dorchester, with Cambridge, Church Creek, Vienna, Hurlock, East New Market, and Secretary within the borders, as well as portions of the waterways that surround the county on three sides.

Creating the heritage area was a big process. Natalie and her staff had to attend council and planning commission meetings in every incorporated town and make them part of the project. The management board ended up with a member from each of those towns. According to Chabot, an important aspect of the heritage area is that all the communities within it share a history, heritage, and environment.

“Dorchester County has a very rich history,” she said.

Each of Maryland’s certified heritage areas is defined by the distinctive characteristics that make it unique within the state. Chabot’s team originally decided to concentrate on seven themes for the Heart of the Chesapeake, and one of them involved Harriet Tubman because hers was “such a compelling story.” Evelyn Townsend was the only African American at every meeting, and she just kept saying “Harriet Tubman.”

From the time Chabot took over the tourism director position, the process for the heritage area took about a year. It was formed in September 2002 and celebrated with fireworks at the Visitor Center in Cambridge. It was a big deal, according to Chabot, because “there’s only 13 heritage areas now in the state of Maryland.”

The themes that presently define the Heart of the Chesapeake Country Heritage Area are

• Agricultural Life
• Arts, Artists, and Entertainment
• Chesapeake Landscapes and Outdoor Adventures
• Dorchester Families and Traditions
• Dorchester History, Architecture, and Artifacts
• The Environment
• Harriet Tubman and the Eastern Shore African-American History
• Maritime Villages, Trades, and Life
• Native American Heritage

Throughout the years, the HCCHA has played a significant part in developing the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, Visitor Center, and National Park. It installed large murals, interpreting the area’s themes, on buildings along the Chesapeake Country Scenic Byway. In 2019, it celebrated Dorchester County’s 350th anniversary by creating cell-phone walking and driving guides that showcased Cambridge and the Chesapeake Mural Trail.

Beyond those achievements, the heritage area also awards mini-grants to nonprofit organizations and local municipalities to help with projects that enrich heritage resources and improve the area’s economic health. These grants are made possible by the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority. The awardees for FY2024 included the Taste of Cambridge event, the Dorchester County Historical Society, Groove City Culture Fest, Spocott Windmill (for displays and newsletters), and the Pride of Baltimore II’s visit to Cambridge next year. The Heritage Board also supported the funding applications of area organizations for such endeavors as Cambridge Main Street’s Wayfinding Project, Dorchester County’s FY24 Heritage Management Grant, and the Mid-Shore Community Radio Dorchester History Project.

At the November 2 awards ceremony, the Heritage Area Management Board honored the late Shirley Jackson, Melvin “Zeke” Willey, the “Beacon of Hope” Harriet Tubman Sculpture, the Dorchester Skipjack Committee, and Choptank Communications.

“This year’s group of honorees is exceptional,” said Board Chairman Tom Bradshaw. “Their extraordinary efforts are evidenced in the programs, projects, and ideas that have served to aid, enrich, and inspire the Dorchester Community. These unsung heroes have made a significant impact on enriching people’s awareness, understanding, and appreciation of our rich and diverse heritage assets in Dorchester. They clearly exemplify all that is best in Dorchester County.”

In his speech, Bradshaw also mentioned a 2021 economic impact study conducted by the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority estimating that the Heart of the Chesapeake Country Heritage Area had contributed $40.2 million to the statewide economy and supported 570 jobs. Additionally, the study concluded that the HCCHA generated around $5.3 million in tax revenues for the state and local governments.

“In the Heart of the Chesapeake Country Heritage Area, our top priority is to protect, preserve, and promote Dorchester County’s unique historic, cultural, and natural resources,” said Heritage Area consultant Julie Gilberto-Brady. “But it is important to note that our heritage area also plays a vital role in both the state and the regional economies.”

According to Bradshaw, the Management Board is preparing for the 250th anniversary celebration of the United States, leading up to area events in 2026.

Half a dozen free-range chickens were scratching on a narrow patch of grass at a farm in Potomac Monday afternoon, looking for insects, seeds and other things to eat.

The chickens, with names like Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, seemed happily oblivious to the four cloth chicken dolls stuffed into a cage on the grass before them. But for the humans gathered at Rosie’s Farm Sanctuary, the visual made for a stark tableau.

Several animal rights activists came to the farm Monday to discuss the Humane Society of the United States’ top legislative priority for the upcoming Maryland General Assembly session: a bill that would require all chicken eggs farmed and sold in Maryland come to come from birds who were not cooped up in so-called battery cages.

“These battery cages are incredibly cruel,” said Jennifer Bevan-Dangel, director of the Humane Society’s Maryland office.

State Sen. Karen Lewis Young (D-Frederick) and Del. Jen Terrasa (D-Howard) are preparing legislation that would make Maryland the 11th state to prevent the sale of eggs from chickens who spend their days in battery cages, which are designed to house up to 10 egg-laying hens and are often arrayed in long rows in a chicken coop. If it becomes law, Bevan-Dangel said, the bill would cover roughly 2 million chickens raised in Maryland and another 6 million chickens from out of state whose eggs are sold here.

“This is the most consequential piece of legislation in Maryland for animals, in terms of the number of animals impacted,” she said.

Young, a longtime animal rights activist who helped her father establish a kill-free pet shelter in Lycoming County, Pa., more than three decades ago, introduced the bill in this year’s legislative session, but it failed to get a vote in the Senate Committee on Education, Energy and the Environment, where she serves. Bevan-Dangel said animal rights activists viewed this year’s legislative push as an educational effort but are intensifying the struggle in advance of the 2024 session, including a House sponsor for the first time.

“We’ve always had an ambitious agenda because the legislators have shown they’ve been very supportive of animal rights,” she said.

The setting for the news conference, on a hillside of a rolling 5-acre rescue farm that was set up as a nonprofit about a year and a half ago, was fitting, and friendly, camera-ready sheep and other animals wandered by as the activists were speaking. The timing of the news conference was also not coincidental — coming at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, when millions of Americans are looking forward to eating turkey, chicken, ham and other meat delicacies.

Michele Waldman, who established Rosie’s Sanctuary as a home for dozens of farm animals, said the nonprofit is designed to educate the public about the kinds of animals who are abused in the marketplace. The farm offers tours to school groups, other organizations and individuals who are interested in animal rights. Waldman said she gets daily entreaties to shelter animals that are being abused, but said there are only so many the farm can accommodate.

“As you can see,” she said, gesturing to the chickens, “they just love to forage. They spend half the day doing this.” These particular birds were rescued from an Orthodox Jewish festival of atonement in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they were scheduled to be ritualistically waved over people’s heads and then slaughtered.

Young and Bevan-Dangel said animal rights is only one aspect of the legislation.

“There are health and safety reasons,” Young said. “There’s scientific evidence that caged birds are more likely to produce eggs that produce salmonella and possibly other health hazards.”

“If COVID taught us nothing, it’s that close proximity can be an incubator for disease,” Bevan-Dangel said. She also cast the legislation as a consumer rights bill, noting that the price of cage-free eggs would drop if all the eggs on the market were produced in the same way.

When the bill was up for a hearing earlier this year, the Maryland Farm Bureau opposed it in part on the grounds that the legislation would be too costly. In written testimony, the Farm Bureau estimated that if it became law, the bill would result in a 41% increase in cost of production to retrofit the existing barns and an 119% increase in labor.

“By moving to a cage-free operation, the hen mortality rate increases significantly due to more bacterial habitat being introduced in the barn,” Colby Ferguson, the farm bureau’s government affairs director, said in his testimony. “Lastly, these farms are contracted with out of state companies that will just drop their contracts with the farms and then these farms will have to create a new demand for their eggs in a market where there is already an oversupply of cage-free eggs. This bill would put the few egg-laying farms, that farm this way, out of business.”

Ferguson also offered another reason why farmers objected to the legislation: “We oppose any legislation that would interfere with the right of farmers to raise livestock and poultry in accordance with commonly accepted agricultural practices,” he wrote. “Regulations imposed on agriculture shall be based on economically sound and scientifically proven research to ensure that agriculture, including livestock and poultry industries, remains viable and continues to be a strong economic base for Maryland. All regulations shall be subjected to a rigorous scientifically justifiable cost/benefit analysis.”

Opposition at the hearing also came from the Maryland Rural Council, the Wicomico County government and a few individuals.

Young said she and Terrasa are trying to tweak the language from the previous bill to make it more palatable to the agriculture industry and other opponents. Bevan-Dangel said the bill as originally written would not have outlawed cages altogether or prevented farmers from housing chickens indoors.

By Josh Kurtz