Governor
The Governor is the first and most powerful of three statewide offices with power over our spending. The Governor has primary control over the budget and executive functions of the state. They can, almost single-handedly, set the vision and direction of the state through executive action, appointments, and the budget. The Governor is one of three votes on the Board of Public Works, which approves state spending.
We sent our questionnaire to all filed candidates in the Democratic Primary. Candidates displayed in black in white did not respond to our questionnaire by the submission deadline. Responses marked with a [...] indicate the candidate didn't directly answer yes or no, but may have provided a written explanation. Responses were edited for typos, but not substance.
You can find the full candidate surveys below, or scroll down to see candidate responses side by side for agree/disagree questions.
CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR
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Answer Comparison
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Maryland and its jurisdictions should be required to “fix-it-first,” funding deferred maintenance of bridges and roads and safety retrofits like road diets, sidewalks, ADA compliance, and other infrastructure prioritizing vulnerable road users before spending on new roads and infrastructure.
We need to take the politics out of transportation, and our transportation plan outlines how we will promote equity in transportation funding. Part of this process must ensure transit, bike lanes, and pedestrian improvements are prioritized.
The Maryland Transit Administration is currently facing a $2 billion maintenance backlog and needs nearly half a billion dollars just to meet basic safety requirements. Thankfully, as a result of the billions in federal infrastructure dollars coming to Maryland, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure safe and reliable transportation here in Maryland while making the structural improvements needed to bring generational opportunities to our state, such as building the Red Line. As governor, I will ensure we swiftly address outdated and crumbling infrastructure while also making essential investments for the future.
Maryland should adopt a funding rubric for all transportation investment that follows a modal hierarchy prioritizing pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders over personal automobile use, and mandates that these investments prioritize racial and economic equity.
The cancellation of the Red Line and the diversion of funds for the project to roads in whiter, wealthier suburban areas is the perfect example of the unfairness and inequity of Maryland’s transportation funding. If we had a funding rubric prioritizing transportation methods besides personal automobile use and prioritizing racial and economic equity, the Red Line would have been built already.
We need to take the politics out of transportation, and our transportation plan outlines how we will promote equity in transportation funding. Part of this process must ensure transit, bike lanes, and pedestrian improvements are prioritized.
Highway User Revenues continue to decrease as cars become more efficient, and semi-autonomous driving technology is allowing more comfortable long distance commutes. To address this, Maryland should introduce and income-based Vehicle Miles Traveled tax.
I cannot commit to this without having a concrete proposal that outlines core details like rate, and whether it would be applied even to lower income earners.
Gas tax revenue has been insufficient to fund our transportation infrastructure for a long time now, and we have to adapt. We should certainly explore replacing the gas tax with a Vehicle Miles Traveled tax in conjunction with a comprehensive tax fairness initiative. While the growth in fuel-efficient and electric vehicles is overwhelmingly a good thing, cars still cause wear and tear on roads and we still need to fund their maintenance. A flat Vehicle Miles Traveled tax would inevitably be regressive, however an income-based VMT would even out the financial impact and not disproportionately land on lower income drivers. A fixed-interval, income-based VMT would have Montgomery, Howard and Calvert counties contributing the most of the additional revenue generated and are also the counties with some of the highest per-capita incomes in Maryland. Lower per-capita income counties including Somerset, Allegany and Garrett would contribute less.
Moving forward, we must prioritize the transition to electric vehicles while ensuring we have the necessary transportation funding to build a more equitable transportation system in Maryland. I look forward to working with transportation leaders, my running mate Aruna Miller who served as a transportation engineer for 25 years, and others as our state moves towards transitioning to electric vehicles.
We need to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. As we transition to a clean energy economy, it will become necessary to identify new sources of funding for highway maintenance. My administration will convene a group to look at what countries around the world and states around the country that are ahead of us on this issue are doing so we can devise a blueprint for action in order to move Maryland forward in this area.
Maryland should require and fund all-ages-and abilities bicycle infrastructure in retrofits of existing roads and construction of new roads, including fully separated infrastructure or sidepaths/trails on collector roads, arterial roads, state highways, and interstates.
Adding bicycle infrastructure will make it safer and more enjoyable for people to bike and encourage more people to travel by bike. This will decrease car traffic and make our air cleaner to breathe
Our comprehensive transportation plan demonstrates our commitment to expanding bicycle infrastructure, including efforts to include them in road improvement and new construction.
There has been a dramatic increase in car crashes that injure and kill people walking and biking, who are then frequently sued by a driver’s insurance. Maryland should move from a contributory negligence to a strict liability model for crashes involving vulnerable road users.
We also need police to prioritize deaths to pedestrians and cyclists and to go after reckless drivers.
We need to move away from contributory negligence. In an accident between a car and a pedestrian or between a car and a biker, the damages are going to be far worse for the person not in the car. Maryland is one of only 4 states plus DC that uses a contributory negligence model. It makes no sense that if a driver is 99% responsible for hitting a pedestrian and the pedestrian is considered 1% responsible that the pedestrian receives no compensation for what are likely severe injuries.
I believe we need to move to a model that will protect bikers and ensure that people who injure someone while driving recklessly on our roads can be held accountable.
Paired with a requirement for income-based fines, Maryland should authorize jurisdictions to utilize additional types of automated enforcement like bus lane cameras and stop sign cameras, remove geographic restrictions, and allow a reduced threshold for triggering speed cameras.
I have privacy concerns about license plate readers, but I do believe in reducing police interactions with commuters. So for example, I support police dash cams that could take a photo of the license plate and then mail you a ticket.
Enforcement mechanisms like red light and speed cameras have been shown to make pedestrians safer, which means they must be part of our strategy to make neighborhoods walkable and safe. However, I believe they must be implemented in a way where cities are not depending on them as a revenue source, as we have seen that sets up incentives to give as many tickets as possible through mechanisms like shortening yellow lights without notifying drivers. It’s important to avoid privatizing traffic enforcement cameras as much as possible, as private companies will not be incentivized to maintain accuracy and fix malfunctioning equipment as long as it generates profits and may not prioritize traffic safety as their main goal. The point of fines is to discourage dangerous behavior, and that must be the perspective we implement them through - the end goal should be to have no ticket revenue because drivers are obeying the law and pedestrians are safe.
I am committed to ensuring that every Marylander has the right and expectation to travel safely, regardless of mode, while balancing legitimate privacy concerns and ensuring it does not disproportionately impact communities of color. Too many families are experiencing the loss of a family member while driving, walking, or biking along our roadways. Even a single death is one too many. In the last three years, there have been over 500 fatalities per year on Maryland roadways. Prince George’s County had the highest number of fatalities in 2021 with 119, and Baltimore City had the second-highest at 68. The county with the least fatalities was Dorchester, with two. Greater focus and resources need to be placed in the jurisdictions with the highest number of fatalities, and we must continue to further reduce the fatalities in the counties with lower fatality rates. Our administration will provide the training and resources needed to help our local communities implement the Vision Zero strategy to greatly reduce traffic fatalities.
Maryland should allow local jurisdictions to lower their own speed limits based on roadway typology instead of based on expensive engineering studies for each road segment, and should set a statewide upper urban speed limit of 25 miles per hour.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials recommend that a default citywide speed limit should be 25 mph and that it can improve safety outcomes. They recommend even lower default speeds for non-major streets. The city of Edinburgh in the UK lowered its speed limit to 20 mph on almost every road and saw 371 fewer crashes per year, and data indicates cars become rapidly more deadly at some point between speeds of 20 mph and 30 mph. This makes 25 mph a more than reasonable urban speed limit.
Ensuring that every Marylander has the right and expectation to travel safely, regardless of mode, will be a key priority for my administration. As governor, I will always work in partnership with our communities to ensure their residents’ safety.
Maryland should require employers provide “Parking Cash-Out,” valuing the cost of parking subsidized or paid for by employers and allowing employees the option of taking that benefit as a cash payout in the amount of the parking subsidy instead.
Maryland workers should not feel obligated to drive if they receive subsidized parking from their employer while options like walking, biking or public transit have no financial incentive. “Parking cash-out” would be fairer to workers who cannot afford - or simply do not want - to commute by a personal vehicle.
A Moore-Miller administration will work with Maryland’s business community to encourage employees to utilize other forms of transportation. Biking to work has been shown to have significant benefits to both workers and employers, but we need to create the infrastructure and planning these commuters need.
As we explain in our detailed transportation plan, our administration will take several steps to plan and build in a way that makes sense; and as our transportation infrastructure is updated and improved, we need to make sure that we take advantage of that construction to update contiguous infrastructure, including bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Additionally, our administration will work to create “15-minute neighborhoods” where residents can access the amenities they need, all within walking distance. Salt Lake City was a classic case of dense and mixed downtown that then sprawled out in every direction across the valley with neighborhoods of single-family homes. Envision Utah changed that by strategically rezoning cross streets across the valley to create new mini mixed-use main streets and town squares in residential neighborhoods. This creates 15-minute neighborhoods so folks can walk to shop, eat, and work in their own neighborhoods. Our administration will see what lessons we can take from this, and other examples, to create walkable micro-neighborhoods to reduce congestion and provide people with safer access to the services and amenities they want.
Maryland should require jurisdictions to eliminate parking minimums and institute parking maximums in new development, as well as require the cost of parking be unbundled from rent, giving individuals the choice to rent without paying for parking.
I strongly support getting rid of restrictive parking minimum requirements. Not only does it create spaces that will not necessarily be used, it takes away space that could go to other needs like housing. Parking requirements for things such as grocery stores disincentivize stores from opening in densely-populated areas that are food deserts as it substantially adds to costs. Unbundling parking from rent would not tie up parking space for someone who chooses not to use it and does not want to, allowing more non-parking development.
It is unacceptable for Marylanders to be paying more than 20% of their income towards rent. Yet, with the average Marylander making $3,510 and paying $1,392 every month in rent, the average person is paying almost 40% of their income. We must focus on producing more affordable housing, preserving existing affordable housing units, and protecting renters. As governor, our administration is going to expand Maryland’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and create a dedicated source of revenue for organizations to build and maintain affordable housing units. But more broadly, we must continue to expand opportunities for work, wages, and wealth for every family in Maryland, with a commitment to equity, to address underlying affordability issues.
As governor, I will convene a task force of local governments and stakeholders to study the use of parking minimums and maximums in order to provide guidance to local jurisdictions on the best solutions to mitigate overparking.
It’s widely accepted that single family zoning advances racial and economic segregation. Maryland should ban single family zoning at the state level, allowing both single family and multifamily residences to be built in all zoning areas.
A key part of my housing platform is to dismantle Maryland’s restrictive local zoning laws, which have mostly stemmed from racist redlining policies. Exclusionary zoning that only allows single-family homes is partially responsible for our housing shortages and obstacles to increased density exacerbate our reliance on fossil fuels. Recent statewide zoning reforms in California and Oregon provide powerful models for change in Maryland and were recently highlighted by the Biden White House in a thoughtful piece entitled Alleviating Supply Constraints in the Housing Market.
While we should encourage multifamily zoning, and there are instances, like when state funds are used for transit-oriented communities, where it can be mandated, we do not support taking zoning authority away from local government.
Transportation and its adjacent land use can only succeed hand in hand with one another. We must increase housing density and further fair housing while respecting the historic commitment to local land use authority. The means the state must use its resources to incentivize progressive local land use policy. As a former local government official, I would convene a task force of state government, local government, and other key stakeholders to chart out a plan forward on how we address this critical issue.