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News Maryland News

State Ramps Up Vaccine Equity Plan; Hogan and Scott Spar Over Doses, Funding

March 5, 2021 by Maryland Matters

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After weeks of pressure to boost the distribution of COVID-19 vaccine into communities hit hardest by the virus, Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) on Thursday announced new efforts to reach minority and low-income residents.

The campaign will give community organizations that want to host vaccination clinics the opportunity to apply for doses and support.

One such clinic, Hogan said, will open on March 16 at First Baptist Church of Glenarden, a site requested by Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D).

The site will be supported by the University of Maryland Capital Region Health. When fully operational, it will administer 900 doses a day, officials said.

Maryland National Guard Brigadier General Janeen Birckhead said other locations will be evaluated as their requests come in. The state, which will serve as a “clearinghouse,” will look at a range of statistics in the surrounding community — including vaccine disparities, household density, family incomes, vehicle access, and the percentage of seniors and single parents — in determining which applications to approve.

Birckhead leads the state’s Vaccine Equity Task Force, which Hogan formed in late January. She said the task force will assist local organizations in filling out their paperwork.

“It’s a top-down and a bottom-up approach,” Hogan told reporters at a State House news conference. “We’re trying to do everything we possibly can.”

Hogan said 60.4% of Maryland’s vaccines have gone to white residents; the state’s population is 58.5% white.

“We’re not where we need to be with the Black community or the Hispanic community,” he said. “We’re continuing to take every effort to ramp that up.”

Although the state’s three mass vaccination sites are located in majority-Black communities, residents of surrounding counties have swooped in to obtain the majority of the shots. A fourth high-volume site, in Waldorf, had a “soft launch” on Thursday, administering 500 vaccine doses. Charles County also has a majority-Black population.

In Prince George’s, only 10% of the first 32,000 doses administered at Six Flags America went to county residents. Alsobrooks, who has been reluctant to criticize the state, called that “unfair” and “outrageous.”

Like all states, Maryland has seen demand for the vaccine greatly outstrip supply.

But critics — including an array of Democratic local officials, state lawmakers, members of Congress and advocates for the disadvantaged — have accused the state of bungling its vaccine rollout.

They say the complicated system, with its layers of distribution points, favors people with flexible schedules, computer and internet access, and technological savvy.

The task force also announced Thursday that it is working to bring mobile vaccination clinics to Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. State-owned vaccination trailers will make stops throughout the Eastern Shore.

Maryland will coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to utilize larger mobile clinics on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland.

“We have listened and we will assist,” Birckhead said. “We still have a way to go.”

Raskin, Trone seek mass-vaccination site in Montgomery

In a Wednesday letter to Hogan, the Montgomery County Council said the state’s distribution campaign has mirrored the epidemic itself, with people of color and low-wage residents being impacted disproportionately.

“Black residents are dying at higher rates and we’re not getting vaccinated,” said Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando (D) in a statement. “Our Latino population has also been disproportionately affected by this disease.”

“We need a statewide approach that factors in race and ethnicity. We want everyone to have access and it needs to be done in a targeted way,” he added.

Two-thirds of Montgomery’s doses have gone to white residents, who make up 43% of the population, lawmakers wrote. Black people represent 19% of the population but have received only 8% of the doses, while 9% of the county’s Latinx residents, who represent 20% of the population, have been vaccinated.

Reps. Jamie Raskin (D) and David J. Trone (D) on Thursday urged the governor to establish a mass-vaccination site in the county. In a letter, the lawmakers noted that Montgomery is the state’s largest county and has both a majority-minority population and “a significant health care workforce and a substantial elderly population over the age of 75.”

Raskin and Trone said that — although the mass-vax sites in Baltimore and Prince George’s counties are open to Montgomery County residents — “this offer seems like cold comfort when so many logistical hurdles face lower-income, working-class, immigrant, and senior residents in Montgomery who are unable to arrange transportation or get time off from work to travel to distant sites.”

Hogan, Scott spar over doses, funding

Hogan praised the Prince George’s County Health Department, which he said had improved its vaccination program following a slow start.

But he ratcheted-up a war of words with Baltimore officials.

Hogan told reporters that the city had declined to accept $8.8 million in federal funds to support its vaccination efforts, and that Baltimore had requested that doses in its control be transferred to hospitals and retail pharmacies.

“I don’t want to be criticizing the mayor in any way,” the governor said. “But he kept saying that they weren’t getting enough [doses]. And the [city] health department kept saying ‘We have way too much. Please send them somewhere else.’”

Hogan suggested that Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, who took office in December, “talk to his health department.”

A short time later, Scott went before cameras at City Hall to refute Hogan’s charges, which he called “categorically untrue.”

The mayor said doses have been redeployed to Baltimore hospitals and pharmacies as part of an “equitable and rapid” strategy to reach residents across the city. The state has approved the city’s requests, Scott added.

He also denied turning down vaccination funding, saying the city prefers to deal directly with FEMA, from whom it can seek 100% reimbursement.

“The governor is aware that this is false but continues to repeat it,” Scott alleged. “While the governor continues to go back and forth about petty politics, people are dying from the virus.”

Health Commissioner Letitia Dzirasa said the use of hospitals and pharmacies helps residents who aren’t able to negotiate an online sign-up system which she likened to “a Hunger Games-style competition.”

“It allows us to ensure our doses are going to city residents who are eligible but that have been left behind by the state’s rollout to date,” she said.

The Hogan administration’s claims about the city first surfaced on Wednesday.

Scott called them a “Jedi mind trick” and a “distraction.”

By Bruce DePuyt

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Maryland News Tagged With: clinics, coronavirus, Covid-19, Gov. Larry Hogan, sites, vaccine

Local Elections Officials Urge Fewer Voting Sites Due to Poll Worker Shortage

August 6, 2020 by Maryland Matters

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Election officials from around Maryland urged the State Board of Elections to reduce the number of voting locations because they do not expect to have enough election judges to staff polls.

“This is your final opportunity to adjust course and save the election in Maryland,” David Garreis, the president of the Maryland Association of Election Officials (MAEO), told the board at its online meeting Wednesday.

So far, local officials estimate they are short about a third of the workers they would need to open all polling sites as Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) ordered last month.

Recruiting volunteers to work long hours steering thousands of voters through polling sites during a pandemic has been difficult. Many longtime poll workers initially agreed to work the election, but dropped out after consulting with families and friends, Garreis said.

Instead of opening every polling location, the association wants the State Board of Elections to allow jurisdictions to open several centralized voting centers.

MAEO’s plan calls for opening the same number of election-day voting centers as early voting sites, with the option of adding two additional centers in each jurisdiction, if needed.

Deputy State Elections Administrator Nikki Charlson said 79 or 80 early voting sites already are designated across Maryland.

The MAEO proposal allows up to 128 voting centers — far fewer than the more than 1,000 called for in Gov. Hogan’s plan. Vice Chairman Patrick J. Hogan (D) floated the idea of allowing local boards of elections to open even more centers.

Traditional polling centers, of the kind Gov. Hogan wants open for the November election, are neighborhood-based. But the voting centers MAEO recommends would pull voters from several precincts across a larger geographic area.

Garreis said local boards would seek large facilities for the voting centers, such as high schools, that would allow for more social distancing.

Under MAEO’s recommendations, voting centers would be open from Oct. 29 through Election Day, hosting both early and election-day voting.

The Nov. 3 election is about 90 days away, and Garreis said time is running out to change the election format.

“Failure to give us the tools we need to be successful is going to put the outcome of the entire election in doubt,” said Garreis, who is also Anne Arundel County’s deputy elections director.

State elections board member William G. Voelp (R) and Patrick J. Hogan agreed that the board may not have the authority to mandate the consolidated voting centers. The decision rests with the governor.

MAEO also asked the state elections board to set up a center to help local boards process mail-in ballot applications.

Board members will decide on the MAEO recommendations at a meeting at 2 p.m. Friday.

MAEO’s requests came days after Gov. Hogan slammed local officials’ requests to close some election-day polling centers.

Hogan issued his decision to hold a more traditional election after errors in the state’s largely vote-by-mail June 2 primary led to delayed results and long lines at polls.

In a letter to the State Board of Elections on Monday, Hogan wrote that Prince George’s County officials’ request to close 229 precincts and open only 15 could disenfranchise minority voters and keep many voters of color from making it to the polls.

But the governor didn’t seem to take issue with consolidating certain polling locations in that letter, and wrote that merging a few precincts is under local boards’ jurisdictions. The idea of opening such a limited number of polling centers as Prince George’s proposed, however, is one Hogan won’t entertain.

“Under existing state law, local boards do have the authority to make decisions regarding the consolidation of polling places in case of an emergency,” Hogan wrote. “However, merging two polling places into one is very different than closing 90% of all polling places in a county.”

In a statement Wednesday, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) defended her county’s request to limit in-person voting in the Nov. 3 election.

“Rather than mail ballots to homes as he did for the primary, the Governor wants us to believe it is in our best interest to put voters, election judges and volunteers at risk, or to engage in the unreliable and overcomplicated process of sending absentee ballot applications because he refuses to mail ballots to the homes of Marylanders,” Alsobrooks wrote.

“The fact that the Governor, who is well aware that Prince George’s County has experienced the greatest amount of COVID-19 illness and death in the state, mocked our concern regarding a safe and responsible voting process for our citizens, demonstrates his high disregard for the health and well-being of the people in my County.”

Vice-chairman Hogan and fellow board member Malcolm L. Funn, the two Democrats on the panel, still hoped to recommend a largely mail-in election to the governor.

Vice-chairman Hogan said he’d lost sleep worrying about the shortage of election workers, and urged Republican board members to recommend automatic mail-in voting.

“I’m pleading one last time for this board … to recommend mailing every registered voter a ballot, and having as many early voting sites, and as many election day sites as possible with the staffing that the [local boards of elections] can produce,” the vice-chairman said.

The five-member board previously split along party lines in recommending an elections format to the governor. Funn and Vice-chairman Hogan recommended automatic mail-in voting and the board’s Republican majority recommended applications for mail-in ballots, citing concerns over voter confidence and fraud.

Funn pushed back on those claims during the Wednesday afternoon meeting.

“There has been no factual indication that mail-in ballots has created fraud,” Funn said.

Republican Voelp said he wants to work to make Hogan’s plan work rather than change the board’s recommendation at this late stage.

Eleven Maryland counties say they won’t be able to open all of their polling locations for early voting and election day as they face a massive shortage of workers.

Allegany, Anne Arundel, Carroll, Charles, Frederick, Harford, Howard, Queen Anne’s, St. Mary’s, Talbot and Washington counties all requested polling location changes during the virtual meeting.

Board members will consider the consolidations at their Friday meeting, after they mull the MAEO recommendations.

Calls for the governor to reverse course and conduct a mostly mail-in election on Nov. 3 have grown since he decided to hold a more traditional election.

The governor has repeatedly said state law requires all polling centers to open, but voting rights advocates, local election officials and Democratic lawmakers say his plan will disenfranchise voters.

Advocates have touted the successes of the June 2 largely-mail-in primary — including very high voter turnout and a vast majority of ballots being delivered correctly — as reasons to hold the upcoming general election by mail.

Also at the meeting Wednesday, Del. Michele Guyton (D-Baltimore County) floated the idea of opening curbside voting for the Nov. 3 election. Guyton said curbside voting, wherein voters remain in their car to cast their ballot, would be safer for voters and election workers.

“I’m not willing to stand in line with a lot of other people at polling places, or to volunteer as a poll worker,” Guyton said, adding that many might be comfortable with both if curbside voting was in place.

In keeping with the governor’s decision, the State Board of Elections approved a draft for the state’s mail-in ballot applications Wednesday.

Board members also set the deadline for requesting a mail-in ballot to Oct. 20.

MAEO had requested the deadline be moved from Oct. 27 to give election officials more time to process vote-by-mail requests and send out ballots.

By Bennett Leckrone

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Maryland News Tagged With: election, Hogan, judges, mail-in, polls, sites

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