Without the need to bamboozle the electorate with nice-guy poses, Maryland’s Guv is sounding more Trump-like every day. His latest move -- withholding needed funds with an "unprecedented level of hypocrisy" -- fits the emerging pattern.

At Progressive Maryland (and with our progressive allies) we work for environmental justice, reform of the criminal justice/policing system and cutting the school-to-prison pipeline, fair elections that loosen the grip of big money on our politics, and reform of the systems that keep our families trapped in poverty in the midst of wealth. Read more about our issues -- and how you can be a part of change and building power -- in the Memo, every week.

The $27 billion-plus Maryland faces in climate change defense over two decades puts the state at No. 5 when it comes to states facing massive expenditures to prepare for sea level rise, behind only Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and Virginia. That would be half the state’s current annual budget. And almost 3,000 miles of seawalls.

Prince George's advocate for returning citizens Kurt Stand describes testifying at a budget hearing about the need for the county to allocate funds for reentry services, specifically, to reestablish, this time with funding, a reentry advisory council that had passed as a county resolution in 2013. The advisory council never got off the ground because it was never funded in the county's budget and advocates asked that that, um, oversight be corrected.

It's the Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo, with upcoming events, actions taken and the permanent agenda of social justice in our state at all the points of the compass.  At Progressive Maryland (and with our progressive allies) we work for environmental justice, reform of the criminal justice/policing system and cutting the school-to-prison pipeline, fair elections that loosen the grip of big money on our politics, and reform of the systems that keep our families trapped in poverty in the midst of wealth. Read more about our issues -- and how you can be a part of change and building power -- in the Memo, every week. Get it here.

It's the Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo, with upcoming events, actions taken and the permanent agenda of social justice in our state at all the points of the compass.  At Progressive Maryland (and with our progressive allies) we work for change and building power, and progressive activism around the Free State, both Progressive Maryland’s action and those of our allied organizations and individuals, are in the Weekly Memo early every week. It’s a clearinghouse for folks who are building power together; and you can be in that environment of collective action. You can get the Weekly Memo by email; just sign up here.

The Maryland State Code allows parents to refuse to immunize their children by claiming a conflict with their religious beliefs. Such exemptions, Mathew Goldstein writes, place innocent children who are denied vaccinations at risk of suffering serious, long term, health impairments. And the Centers for Disease Control has noted "almost twice as many children are exempted from vaccination in Maryland for religious beliefs than for medical reasons." The state needs to revisit its exemptions policies, for its children's safety.

It's the Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo, with upcoming events, actions taken and the permanent agenda of social justice in our state at all the points of the compass.  At Progressive Maryland (and with our progressive allies) we work for environmental justice, reform of the criminal justice/policing system and cutting the school-to-prison pipeline, fair elections that loosen the grip of big money on our politics, and reform of the systems that keep our families trapped in poverty in the midst of wealth. Read more about our issues -- and how you can be a part of change and building power -- in the Memo, every week.

Some good paths for sustainable energy in Maryland – vulnerable like all states to the effects of climate change and particularly to sea level rise – emerged from the past legislative session, as Alli Gold Roberts outlines here in Maryland Matters. Clean power is critical for the coordinated attack on transportation, the single biggest chunk of our carbon footprint, through electric vehicles. But the CEJA and a companion bill kick-starting the multistate clean transportation effort open the door to activist agitation in official channels in up to a dozen states for taking on these two carbon sources – together amounting to nearly two-thirds of carbon emissions in our urbanized Eastern Seaboard.

The accompanying graphic is from Maryland Matters.

The wonders of the Public-Private Partnership (P3) have their skeptics, like columnist Frank DeFilippo here. What seems a handy way to offload expensive state projects (like toll lanes on I-495 and I-270) onto the private sector (wait, just why do they have all the money, again?) may turn out to cost users and leave the public on the hook for boneheaded decisions by private business.