Recently elected, the two first-time county execs of Montgomery County (Marc Elrich) and Prince George's County (Angela Alsobrooks) walked into the quite different environment of opening day at the 2019 General Assembly session to line up allies and network opportunities at the seat of state government, whence cometh a lot of their cash resources. Josh Kurtz of Maryland Matters trailed the two as they took their bows and made their visits, and reported on how our state's two biggest political units may fare in 2019 as education and its funding remains a top bone of contention.

The Maryland General Assembly begins its 2019 session today with a lot of handshaking and baby-carrying, as a large (though not record-setting) group of first-timers begins the process of settling in while some veterans in new positions of authority look to shore up their fiefdoms as early as possible.

Progressive Maryland and allies will be carrying an agenda for working families and empowerment to every part of the session from committees to the floor between now and the finish of business with April's sine die.

As the Assembly session opens and progressive groups call for big changes in the state's health care regime under the banner "Medicare for All," Assembly Democrats "are reintroducing their bill to establish a health care mandate, similar to the federal mandate that existed under the Affordable Care Act until Congress and President Trump eliminated it in the 2017 tax reform package," say Josh Kurtz and Danielle Gaines of Maryland Matters in their omnibus session preview. Progressive activists hope this is a wedge to do better in Maryland but understand that state legislatures are always reduced to playing small-ball where full-bore health care advances are concerned. But as Hal Ginsberg points out, the ground swell behind real health care reform -- Bernie Sanders's Medicare for All bill, doubtless soon to be refiled in the 116th Congress -- attracted major support from senators who are in the mix for the 2020 presidential nomination, including Sen. Kamala Harris of California (now an early and likely superheavyweight primary state).

WE ARE READY TO WIN IN THE MARYLAND GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION.

Progressive Maryland’s Dec. 29 Statewide Meeting connected and re-energized nearly 200 activists and We are refreshed and ready to struggle for real change, not business as usual, in our communities and at the General Assembly session that begins Wednesday, January 9.

What’s in store in Annapolis? Will what they do mean anything to the health of our communities? If we hold their feet to the fire, it will. Here is a roundup of previews of the session to get you started. Stay with the Weekly Memo by email every week to stay with the action; Sign up here.

The Kirwan Commission (education reform) is still working out the funding formula for sharing new costs for reforms that member Sen. Paul Pinsky says "will be the envy of all 50 states" ... but the delay allows Gov. Hogan and his legislative henchmen to put off questions of money for this 2019 Assembly session -- they think.

However, "the commission is pressing forward with a proposal that puts the new blueprint in place this year, spends at least $200 million and, hopefully, $325 million this coming year, as a down-payment, and sets a requirement that $1.5 billion, the amount originally proposed to be spent this year, is guaranteed in next year’s state budget," Pinsky declares in this post, which originally appeared Dec. 28 in Maryland Matters.

Racial discrimination in the Prince George's Police Department is discouraging the reporting of abuse committed by PGPD officers because Latinx and Black officers in the department experience retaliation for speaking out about it, spurring a lawsuit. New leadership in the county must take firm steps to enable full compliance and accountability in the department in order to end abuse of citizens by police.

Progressive Maryland’s Dec. 29 Statewide Meeting in Annapolis hosted nearly 200 progressive activists. We connected and re-energized after a draining midterm campaign; we met in breakout groups by local chapters; and we also broke out and strategized around issue campaigns. Read more in the first Memo of 2019.

Democratic candidates are beginning to cascade into the 2020 presidential race at an accelerating pace. On New Year's Eve Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the latest to form an "exploratory committee" and others will doubtless do so soon, for visibility and fund-raising reasons. Lower Shore Progressive Caucus chair Jared Schablein ticks off the reasons that getting caught up in the madness too soon means we will be taking our eyes off the prize locally, where important work needs to be done and where local politicians are hoping you will not watch them too closely. He speaks for the Lower Shore but every jurisdiction in Maryland should take heed.

Welcome to the last Weekly Memo of 2018. Our Statewide Meeting in Annapolis this Saturday, Dec. 29 will kick off 2019 on the good foot – prepping for a highly interesting General Assembly session beginning January 9 and rolling on from there to mobilize working families and activists across the state. Be there; RSVP here.

As the Kirwan Commission (“Innovation and Excellence in Education”) soldiered its way to completion of both policy and funding goals in nearly two years of hard work, the state’s leadership totally failed to do its part – both the Democratic-dominated Assembly and Larry Hogan’s executive branch blanched at the cost of doing the right thing by the state’s students and told the commissioners to, um, continue their work.

Few reporters in the state have devoted more effort to following the commission’s work than Len Lazarick, editor of the online Maryland Reporter. Here he outlines in an account headlined “Legislative leaders shelve new funding another year” the sorry performance of state leaders.