Early voting in Maryland begins on Thursday, and voters in Baltimore County that will have the longest ballot in our region this fall. In addition to president, Congress, various judges, and the statewide ballot question 1 on abortion, voters in Baltimore County have 12 local ballot questions to decide - questions A through L. 

WYPR’s Matt Bush spoke with John Lee, who covers Baltimore County for WYPR, about all the ballot questions.  

Matt Bush: You’ve spent a lot of time already covering the saga of expanding the Baltimore County Council. That's question A. That's only the beginning — literally — for voters in Baltimore County this fall. After they decide whether or not to expand the county council from seven to nine members, they have various other questions to decide, most of them bond issues, but question B isn't one of those. What is question B?

John Lee: Question B is the inspector general's office and should it be enshrined in the county charter? And what that's all about is that the inspector general is still a relatively new position, it came into being in early 2020. And so the inspector general, Kelly Madigan, her job is to root out waste and fraud and abuse in county government. She has come under fire at various times from council members and from the county executive, [Johnny] Olszweski's administration. And so the idea is to put her office in the charter. That means it would be protected from any sort of political attack. If it were to be changed in any way going forward, it would be up to the voters to make those decisions. 

So, Matt, basically what this means is some council member gets their nose out of joint because of something the inspector general is doing, they can't just, like, pass legislation or take action themselves to do something about the inspector general; they would have to take it to the voters. 

MB: Then there's questions C through L. These are all bond issues. What are those and what are they going to fund?

JL: Well, it's real money. It's almost $600 million, and it's an array of things. The big enchilada is schools. More than half of it would go to school construction, and a big chunk of that money would go to high schools. We have heard for years about a new Dulaney High School, and what they call a ‘like new’ Towson High School. These schools cost a lot of money, and so more than $330 million of this bond referendum would go to the county schools. That's the big one. 

There's others: you have public works is another $55 million, and this is for stuff like road surfacing and gutters and sidewalks. And Matt, this is the bread and butter stuff of local government, right? I mean this is what the council members are going to get called on and the county executive. And what County Executive Olszewski has said multiple times, what's happening here is that from town halls he's held and that sort of thing, he's heard about a lot of needs from residents. And so for that reason, there's all these bond questions.

MB: And very quickly, why so many this year? Why is there this backlog of all these to the point where there are 10 bond issues that voters are going to decide?

JL: Yeah, it's a good question. I should also add that all council members, including the most conservative members of council who you think might have an issue with this, they're all supportive of it. And a lot of it, what they would tell you is just a pent-up demand - that there were many years where a lot of these basic needs weren't being met. And so for the past three, four, five, six years during the Olszewski administration, he's been hearing from the residents, and he would say that, and the council members would say, they're trying to kind of make up for lost time and projects that were put off.