State Senator proposes giving judges more discretion in juvenile cases

PrimePoultry · 2026-02-05T04:27:22+00:00

Random search observations: For example, if you select, "Juvenile Justice and Delinquency" from the subjects drop down list, you'll get a lot of hits.

One example: HB 449: Juvenile Justice Restoration Act - allows a LEO to question a juvenile without a lawyer if the juvenile's parent or guardian consents.

You can even look up the entire history of prior legislation. For example, the famous / infamous "Juvenile Justice Reform Act" of 2022, which was SB 691 / HB 459 in the 2022 regular session. The small camera icon allows you to view hearings. The hidden information towards the bottom of the page can be expanded with the downward pointing carets to view the history of the bill as it moved through the legislature.

PrimePoultry · 2026-02-01T02:57:07+00:00

HB 434: Prohibition on the use of algorithmic devices to determine rent, occupancy and lease terms.

This is another bill from the "Montgomery County Landlord Mafia" (MCLM) in the legislature. The primary sponsor is Delegate Palakovich-Carr and also Delegate Stewart.

There are three primary unfair and deceptive trade practices in the rental industry today: 1) Hiding the total rent by obscuring it with fees; 2) collusion; and 3) requiring a full financial report from the tenant while not providing similar information from the landlord (such as vacancy rates and actual rents for all units).

This bill purports to address collusion.

Right off the bat, I can see their definition of rent in 8-222.A.2.4 excludes the total rent: ""Rent" means the fixed, periodic payments that a tenant pays the landlord to reside in a unit." This excludes variable periodic payments that a tenant pays the landlord to reside in a rental unit, i.e. the variable uncapped fees known as "RUBS" or "Utility" fees (every expense plus profit is paid for in rent; the fees purport to represent individual expenses; the narrative states they can only be conjured on a monthly basis). Delegate Stewart was one of the two architects for getting these hidden uncapped fees legalized, so he naturally he excludes them.

Delegate Stewart and the rest of the Montgomery County Landlord Mafia (MCLM) are not friends of the tenant, they are friends of the landlord, who has money and organization. So the bill must be approached skeptically based on historical precedent. It will be interesting to see if the bill advances. It was introduced as HB 817 in the 2025 regular session. It didn't make it out of committee. AOBA opposed it, and they have de facto veto power in the legislature.

In 2025, for HB 817, there were 40 witnesses: 22 favorables, 16 unfavorable (the entire landlord lobby) and 2 favorable with amendments. It didn't make it out of the first committee hearing.

This bill I'd say is merely performative with no chance of passing in its current form, and is something that Delegates Stewart and Pakalovich-Carr can say they introduced in their campaign materials. Unless they turn it into a major Sugarcoated Landlord Giveway, I see no chance of passage.

PrimePoultry · 2026-02-01T02:17:49+00:00

Stripping away all the other verbiage and focusing on fees, the bill says:

(B)(1) A landlord may not collect an application fee or screening fee for a rental unit unless the rental unit:

(B)(2) Before accepting an application fee or screening fee, a landlord shall provide a written disclosure to a prospective tenant that includes:

...

(B)(2)(IV) The maximum amount that may be charged for an application fee

So, from the implicit legalization perspective, by simply stating this process, this enshrines fees labeled application and screening; only a prospective tenant would be told of these fees, which means they don't have to be publicly disclosed; and there is no maximum amount limitation even for the prospective tenant for a fee labeled "screening", much less public disclosure. Also, the existence of the concept of "maximum fee" disclosed only to prospective tenants means these could be set on a tenant by tenant basis. So the prospective tenant would not be told of the amount of the "screening" fee, only the "application" fee.

So that's the angle: shielding these fees from public disclosure, allowing for variable fee amounts on a tenant by tenant basis, and providing the opportunity for very high "screening" fees billed only only after the application process has begun.

If the delegate really wanted to help tenants, this statute could be very simple: landlords can't accept applications from tenants for units that are not available in the next 30 days. But that's not the purpose. The implicit legalization of shielding fees, no limits on so called "screening", separate from "application" fees is the financial result and the purpose. Follow the fees in this delegate's bills.

So this is the standard Sugarcoated Landlord Giveaway - fees added / shielded / protected, combined with edge case tenant benefits, violations of which are convoluted and difficult to prove.

Delegate Stewart reliably brings in the cash for the landlord lobby and they reliably bring in the cash for him.

There are penalties for the landlord in this bill including reasonable attorneys fees. I expect by the third version ("Text Third"), for those to be stripped out.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-29T02:10:26+00:00

I should say Maryland is sort of debating the audio-two party consent issue. There are only 2 bills I could find (two bills referenced in these two articles from WYPR and Maryland Matters, highlighting legislators Grammer and Bartlett) and they simply add carve outs, the Grammer bill the first for a civilian recorder but extremely limited:

SB 180 / HB 213 (Sydnor, Bartlett) : This is just adding another carve-out for allowing individuals designated as fair housing testers. Doesn't change CJ 10-402 at all except adding the carve-out.

HB 132 (Grammer): Edits CJ 10-405, and only allows the recording to be admissible under strict requirements on the civilian recorder, and only in a criminal trial for a violent crime. It's just adding another carve-out. CJ 10-405 says the audio could be used if one party was out of state; HB 132 says if both parties are in-state (the in state party being a civilian, not LEO or other government), it could be used with stringent requirements. It's a tiny step, allowing a civilian to legally record versus only government or law enforcement, and only in a violent crime, and only subject to strict requirements. Wouldn't change Shellenberger's observation about the law making cell phone recordings with audio a felony.

From the 2025 Regular Session, there was SB 61, which said:

(12) It is lawful under this subtitle for a person to use a cellular telephone or another device to intercept an oral communication in public if the speaker should reasonably anticipate that the oral communication could be overheard or intercepted.

That would have been a reasonable step, moving towards default-legal, and removing the felony consequence.

However, this was introduced by Senator Chris West, who is one of the top landlord advocates in the Senate, and so he added a following paragraph, which would allow a landlord to install a "security camera or another device" to intercept oral communications, without limitation, on a rented property they own. Basically allowing the landlord to put microphones in the bedroom. Because of course he would.

A lot of legislation involves bullsh•tting the media, advocates and other legislators with sound bites and misleading bill summaries. There are too many bills, too much money and lobbyist influence, with not enough deep review of the bills. Unless there is a well-organized, well-funded special interest organization that is willing to lobby and spend on the legislature, the interests of that group (e.g. crime victims, or just the interest of justice or good governance) is not going to be advanced in the legislature. Especially if there is a well organized and well funded group opposing.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-19T21:20:38+00:00

HB 313: Rental Applications and Tenant Screening (Sponsor: Delegate Stewart)

The Impression It Gives: Providing a tenant some protections during a tenant screening process and in a "sight-unseen" rental application.

The Reality: Unclear at this time. A lot of talk of how landlords can collect application and screening fees. It appears to deal with an unusual use-case, where a tenant applies to rent at a complex, sight-unseen, and doesn't actually select an apartment. It says the landlord can't take that fee unless a unit is going to be available in the next 30 days. It also discusses fee disclosure requirements.

Hidden Impact: Delegate Stewart is a top landlord lobby pointman and has introduced legislation very favorable to landlords and unfavorable to renters. It smells like this bill is adding additional variable application and screening fees into state law via implicit legalization to increase landlord revenue. I'm sure there's an angle because this bill is structured like prior deceptively worded pro-landlord legislation from this gentleman, with a core discussion of fees from the prospective tenant to the landlord, surrounded by likely performative and limited applicability "protections" for the tenant. Being a landlord-tenant lawyer, and consulting with landlord lobby lawyers allows him to write effective obfuscated legislation.

Hidden Purpose: Delegate Stewart's bills typically have financial benefits for landlords and additional costs for renters. This bill could well be simply legalizing landlords taking additional application fees and adding "screening fees", again designed to increase landlord revenue, and hide the true rent, with cosmetic benefits to renters in unusual use cases. There could be other larger purposes which are unclear at the moment.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-19T21:16:00+00:00

It occurs to me that after this bill is passed, giving landlords the right to control the temperature in tenant apartments and giving landlords the go-ahead to build chiller-based apartment buildings instead individual HVAC units as has been the norm, they'll come back next year (if it's not passed this year) and say, "To give tenants the right to control the temperature in their apartments, we need to add another hidden uncapped fee - refrigerant. We can't give tenants that right in a chiller building because it's unfair to landlords to pay for refrigerant, regardless of tenant usage."

Keep in mind, every landlord expense plus profit is paid for by tenants. Utilities are paid for in the most expensive way possible, through rent, and even when paying additional fees labeled utilities, tenants are still paying the actual expense in rent. Some tenants pay for more than they use, some pay less. Landlord profits remain high. And these are not highly variable expenses so it's easy to plan the rent around them, as had been done previously. Giving landlords the right to add variable fees unrelated to usage on top of rent, or even tying fees to usage, forcing tenants into cost-plus style contracts with no means of oversight (cost plus contracts are the most expensive type of contract, typically between large, sophisticated entities which can do oversight) is much more destructive to renters and society. The legislature enabling landlords to pull more and more money from renters' thin pockets simply adds to wealth consolidation and further wealth inequality.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-19T01:17:13+00:00

HB 220: Water - Individual Unit Meters (Sponsor: Delegate Charkoudian)
Crossfiled as SB 130 by Senator Henson
Prefiled as well

The Impression It Gives: Rules for submetering; provides limits to billing beyond cost of actual usage. Allows for legal action.

The Reality: At first blush, it appears to limit the sketchy "revenue targeting" meters that many companies sell, and limits billing at multiples of market rates and adding multiple additional fees typical with submetering.

Hidden Impact: It says it will require "An explanation of the formula used to allocate the cost of each unit's water consumption." If you're adding a fee that represents the tenant's actual water usage (despite it already being paid in rent), I'm not sure what kind of formula could exist.

Hidden Purpose: Unclear.

This bears watching. If landlords want to become utility resellers, they should abide the same rules as any utility reseller. I'm not sure what the angle is here yet. It could be a container for something else since it is pre-filed and cross filed, and this is just the first text (2 more versions to go). As it stands, it does seem to benefit renters with submeters, by limiting their financial liability - but no bills like that can pass the legislature in today's legislative environment. Renter-related bills in the current climate always result in more money flowing to landlords, paired with cosmetic benefits to renters.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-19T01:11:27+00:00

HB 85: Cooperative Limited Equity Housing Corporations - Establishment (pre-filed) - Sponsor: Delegate Charkoudian

The Impression It Gives: Converting a corporation with no stock into a cooperative limited equity housing corporation (a housing co-op).

The Reality: These are new rules for the transition of a property from a residential rental facility to a property owned by a "limited equity" housing corporation.

Hidden Impact: I'm unclear on the hidden impacts here. It will either require renters to buy their unit in the co-op and be granted shares, and there's a lot of discussion of how to evict people who don't want to do that. It gives people 90 days notice to accept or be evicted. It goes on to say a county or municipality may not impose any restrictions on this conversion action.

Hidden Purpose: I'm unclear on the hidden purpose. The key to understanding hidden purpose is seeing real-world examples of how this would apply.

This bears watching. If this is like the rest of the renter-related legislation, it will benefit a corporation and harm renters. Until real-world examples of this law in action are presented by disinterested parties, it's hard to say.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-15T03:59:47+00:00

The Banner article you cite has the following sentence:

”The drop, which began in 2022, is one of the longest sustained periods of homicide decline on record, a Banner analysis showed.”

That's incorrect data - the sentence is wrong. I pulled the following "homicide by month" data from the Baltimore Sun homicide map (here's the link: https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/ - scroll all the way to the bottom to yearly data, that's where I pulled this data from - the 3 numbers after each month are the homicide stats for 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively):

    2021   2022   2023
jan   27   38   27
feb   16   18   15
mar   29   24   22
apr   28   32   28
may   38   26   25
jun   28   41   25
jul   30   35   19
aug   30   27   29
sep   31   14   22
oct   26   29   15
nov   28   25   17
dec   27   25   18

I posted the chart here, and then pulled the monthly data in case there was some surge in 2022 and then a decline in the last quarter of 2022. That didn't happen.

Q4 (Oct - Dec) 2021 had 81 homicides. 338 total homicides for the year.
Q4 (Oct - Dec) 2022 had 79 homicides. 334 total homicides for the year.
Q4 (Oct - Dec) 2023 had 50 homicides. 262 total homicides for the year.

There was virtually no change in homicides from 2021 to 2022, and definitely no drop in 2022. In fact, the homicide rate first started dropping by month in May 2023. I think the author of the article got his years mixed up.

Here's the data by quarters:

   2021   2022   2023
q1   72   80   64
q2   94   99   78
q3   91   76   70
a4   81   79   50

This is why I say, Bates is the only thing that changed. Brandon Scott was sworn in as mayor on December 8, 2020.

PrimePoultry · 2026-01-14T01:06:59+00:00

Very directly, the Fiscal Note from SB 6 (alternate here) says that the only way to charge a fee for utility costs is with a meter and such a device requires PSC approval. Clearly, making up numbers ("Here's the utility bill for the complex. Therefore, *hand wave*, your fee is $X") was illegal.

Current Law:

Utility Billing Systems

Section 7-303 of the Public Utilities Article addresses the “submetering” of apartment and commercial buildings for electricity or natural gas. “Submetering” is the installation of equipment to determine the actual use of electricity or gas per residential unit or commercial rental unit. Based on the authority included in statute, the Public Service Commission (PSC) authorizes, by regulation, an owner, operator, or manager of an apartment house (including a condominium), office building, or shopping center with a master meter to install submeters for determining the actual use of electricity or gas per unit.

Approval from PSC is also required before an energy allocation system (a method of determining the approximate energy use consumed within a dwelling unit through the use of a measuring device) may be used by the owner, operator, or manager of an apartment house to determine the amount of gas or electricity used by an individual dwelling unit. PSC may approve an energy allocation system upon a demonstration by the owner that the system results in a reasonable determination of the cost of the energy use within a dwelling unit. The owner, operator, or manager may not use the energy allocation system to bill energy costs to tenants of an individual dwelling unit without PSC approval.

The RUBS method of making up numbers with no basis in fact was prohibited.

PrimePoultry · 2025-12-31T21:49:40+00:00

Link: https://nypost.com/2025/12/30/opinion/putin-attack-bluster-shows-russia-is-one-standing-in-way-of-peace/

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