WHY WE'RE MAKING THIS STAND TOGETHER

Marylanders are being squeezed by electric bills that keep climbing - not because we’re using more power, but because of sky-high delivery fees, riders, and surcharges that utilities tack onto every bill.

At the same time, data centers and AI are driving enormous demand for electricity nationwide. In major data hub regions, wholesale electricity prices have spiked up to 267%, and Maryland is feeling the pressure.

But what did Annapolis do?

They passed the Next Generation Energy Act, which opens the door to 3.1 GW of new gas-fired plants - more than $3 billion in construction - with a fast-track permitting lane that puts utilities and developers first, and puts families and frontline communities last.

Environmental and justice advocates warn what this really means:

⚠️ More pollution in already overburdened neighborhoods
⚠️ Bigger profits for utilities
⚠️ Higher bills for ratepayers

Even Maryland’s own regulators admit most of the projected load growth in our grid is coming from data centers outside Maryland - not from Maryland homes - yet our households are the ones paying for it.

What Bobby Will Fight For...

✅ 1. Cap and Roll Back Junk Fees

End predatory delivery fees and riders that quietly inflate bills while utilities rewrite the rules to their advantage.

✅ 2. Stop Fossil Fuel Plants in Overburdened Communities

Stop polluters from dumping more emissions on South Baltimore and other Black and brown neighborhoods that already bear the brunt of industry.

✅ 3. Make Data Centers Pay Their Share

Data centers are eating up farm land and space for affordable housing. This practice needs to end. We must reinstate zoning regulations and implement a dedicated surcharge on high-demand commercial load to fund bill relief, community clean energy, and local infrastructure - not just corporate profits.

✅ 4. Real Clean Energy, Not Gas Plants

Invest in solar, wind, storage, and modern grid upgrades that lower bills long-term. No more gas plants disguised as “clean” or “dispatchable” that used fracked natural gas to run.

✅ 5. PSC & BGE Transparency

Marylanders deserve plain-language bills that show exactly where their money goes - and who’s getting paid.

⛵️ Bobby’s Bottom Line...

Maryland’s energy future should be cleaner, cheaper, and fairer - not another corporate giveaway disguised as progress. Working families shouldn’t be subsidizing out-of-state data centers while breathing dirtier air and paying higher bills. I’ll fight for an energy system that works for the people who actually live here, not for the corporations cashing in on it.

Maryland has quietly become part of the federal deportation machine. Under ICE’s 287(g) agreements, local sheriffs in several counties allow correctional officers to act as ICE agents inside Maryland jails - questioning people about immigration status, issuing detainers, and holding people for deportation even before trial or conviction.

In 2025, the General Assembly debated the Maryland Values Act, which would have fully ended 287(g) agreements statewide. But under the direction of Senate President Willam Claiborne Ferguson IV, protections in the bill failed. 

That means immigrant families across Maryland still live with the fear that a traffic stop, a minor charge, or a local arrest could lead to deportation.

This isn’t public safety - it’s politics.
 

Immigration enforcement shouldn’t turn local police into ICE. And it shouldn’t be used as a weapon against workers, families, or entire communities.

What Bobby Will Fight For...

✅ 1. End 287(g) in Maryland for Good

No more ICE deputization. No sheriffs or officers acting as federal immigration agents - full stop.

✅ 2. Due Process for ALL

No one should face deportation before trial. No deportation pipeline through local jails.

✅ 3. Firewall Protections

Schools, hospitals, clinics, and local agencies must never be used to trap or intimidate immigrant families.

✅ 4. Statewide Legal Defense Fund

Guarantee access to counsel for Maryland residents facing deportation - because the difference between staying and being torn from your family often comes down to having a lawyer.

✅ 5. Protect Workers - Regardless of Status

Immigrant workers are often threatened with ICE retaliation when they speak out about abuse. We need statewide whistleblower protections so employers can’t use immigration status to silence or exploit people.

⛵️ Bobby’s Bottom Line... 

Maryland is strongest when all our families feel safe - not when local governments help ICE divide our communities. Ending 287(g) statewide is a pro-family, pro-worker, pro-safety policy that builds trust and keeps our neighborhoods stronger.em.

For generations, neighborhoods like Curtis Bay, Cherry Hill, Brooklyn, Westport, and West Baltimore have been treated as sacrifice zones - places where industry could pollute, where housing could crumble, and where politicians could make promises that never arrived.

Curtis Bay is surrounded by heavy industry - an open-air coal terminal, incinerators, diesel truck routes, hazardous facilities, and the legacy of an explosion that covered homes in coal dust. Cherry Hill and Brooklyn have lived through decades of environmental harm, toxic air, underinvestment, and government neglect.

Now these same communities are facing a new threat: “revitalization” without protections.

New zoning changes, redevelopment incentives, and streamlined permitting can easily accelerate displacement unless the residents who paid the price for pollution can actually afford to stay when the investment finally comes.

Housing justice and environmental justice are the same fight. A neighborhood isn’t “improving” if the people who built it get pushed out the moment it becomes profitable.

💛 What Bobby Will Fight For...

✅ 1. Stronger State Oversight of Industrial Pollution

No more rubber-stamping permits in Black and brown communities. We need:

• Health-based pollution caps
• Real enforcement
• Steep penalties for repeat violators
• Independent monitoring -  not self-reporting

Marylanders shouldn’t breathe coal dust or incinerator smoke so someone else can profit.

✅ 2. Right-to-Stay & Right-to-Return Protections

Any project using state money, whether housing or zoning changes, must guarantee:

• No displacement
• First priority for existing residents
• A right to return if temporarily relocated
• Rent stabilization tools
• Long-time homeowner protections against rising taxes

Investment should lift people up, not push people out.

✅ 3. Tie State Funding to Anti-Displacement Plans

If a developer wants public money or zoning favors, they must:

• Prove the project won’t displace residents
• Include affordable units based on actual neighborhood incomes, not AMI fiction
• Support community land trusts, co-ops, and permanently affordable housing

Public money should create public good, not private luxury.

✅ 4. Environmental Health Monitoring & Mitigation

In overburdened neighborhoods:

• Real-time air quality monitoring
• Public dashboards
• Funding for filters, HVAC improvements, weatherization
• Community-led medical support and studies

People deserve to know what they’re breathing, and the state should help fix it.

✅ 5. Community-Led Planning. Not developer-driven planning. Not machine-driven planning. Not lobbyist-driven planning.

Residents decide what “revitalization” means — with real power over:

• Land use
• Design
• Affordable housing requirements
• Industrial buffer zones
• Community benefits agreements

Baltimore doesn’t need another wave of projects for communities. We need projects by communities.

⛵️ Bobby’s Bottom Line...

Baltimore’s working-class neighborhoods - overwhelmingly Black, brown, and immigrant - have survived toxic air, industrial dumping, collapsing housing, and political abandonment. They should be the first to benefit from clean air and new investment - not the first to be displaced.

Environmental justice is housing justice. Housing justice is racial justice.

And none of it happens unless we put communities, not corporations or developers, in charge of their future.

Maryland works because workers do - teachers and paras, firefighters, EMTs, grad workers, hospital staff, warehouse workers, sanitation workers, childcare providers, hospitality workers, and the people who keep Baltimore running day and night.

But for too long, politicians prioritized corporations, nonprofit giants, and politically connected institutions over the people who make this state function.

Right now, too many workers across Maryland aren’t protected, aren’t respected, and aren’t paid fairly.

💛 What Bobby Will Fight For...

✅ 1. Stronger Staffing & Safety Standards for Baltimore City Firefighters

Currently, Baltimore firefighters are working dangerously long shifts with outdated equipment, crumbling firehouses, and understaffed companies making response times stretch thin across neighborhoods. That’s not just dangerous for them - it’s dangerous for the entire city. 

The people running into burning buildings deserve the full support of the people writing the laws. I will fight for:

• State capital support for equipment upgrades
• Minimum staffing requirements
• Mandatory firefighter safety audits
• A firefighter-focused seat at state emergency planning tables

✅ 2. Safe Working Conditions for Every Industry

• A statewide Workplace Safety Bill of Rights
• Whistleblower protections
• Penalties for employers who hide or falsify safety violations

A job shouldn’t come with a side of danger.

✅ 3. Full Collective Bargaining Rights for All State-Funded Workers

That includes:

• Adjuncts & grad workers
• Higher-ed support staff
• School workers
• Firefighters & EMTs
• Public health workers
• Transit workers

If you serve the public, you deserve the right to negotiate for fair pay, hours, and conditions.

✅ 4. Protect Warehouse & Amazon Workers

Maryland’s warehouse workers, especially in Baltimore, face unreasonable production quotas, injury rates above the national average, and surveillance and retaliation for union organizing.

I’ll push for:

• Strict quota transparency
• Heat & injury protections
• A ban on retaliation
• Access to union organizers

No one should get hurt or fired because an algorithm says they’re too slow.

✅ 5. Stronger Anti-Wage-Theft Enforcement

Wage theft steals more from working people than every robbery, burglary, and shoplifting incident combined.

I’ll fight for:

• Joint corporate liability
• Criminal penalties for repeat offenders
• Automatic restitution
• A statewide wage-theft hotline & enforcement unit

✅ 6. First-in-Line Hiring for Baltimore Residents

If a company takes state contracts, tax credits, or subsidies...then Baltimore residents should be first in line for jobs and apprenticeships - especially in construction, infrastructure, and green jobs.

⛵️ Bobby’s Bottom Line...

If we want safe neighborhoods, good schools, functioning hospitals, and reliable transit - we must protect the workers who make all of that possible.

Firefighters deserve respect. Teachers deserve planning time and fair pay. Warehouse workers deserve to go home uninjured. Nonprofit workers deserve bargaining rights. And all workers deserve a union and a living wage.

Maryland doesn’t work unless workers do - and workers deserve the power they’ve been denied for far too long.