When it comes to Gov. Wes Moore’s major legislative agenda items, the chief executive came on top this year with all of his bills passing in some iteration or another before lawmakers adjourned Sine Die on Monday night.

The governor’s agenda focused on affordability, expanding economic opportunity and growing affordable housing, but his hands were also full with an early redistricting push and tackling a $1.5 billion structural budget deficit.

Moore passionately lobbied the General Assembly to redraw Maryland’s Congressional map ahead of this year’s midterm elections to favor Democrats.

He cited the need to push back against Trump administration policies and protect Black elected officials as his main reasoning behind redrawing the map before its usual scheduled reevaluation in 2030.

While the House of Delegates heeded his words, Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and the majority of his Democratic senators could not be persuaded, pointing to timeline and legal concerns.

While Moore may have lost the redistricting battle for now, redrawing maps and national redistricting reform remains a topic of interest across the nation.

Additionally, Moore provoked some strong criticism from unionized state workers this budget cycle after electing not to give workers a raise that meets the rate of inflation.

Moore sat down with WYPR’s Sarah Petrowich to discuss all this and more: will Marylanders wallets see relief, what is the Old Line State’s relationship with redistricting moving forward and is wage negotiation reform and robust salary increases in the cards for state workers?

FULL TRANSCRIPT

PETROWICH: There are three main bills that your administration is backing that are based around affordability, the Protection Against Predatory Pricing Act, which bans dynamic pricing in grocery stores, the Maryland Transit and Housing Opportunity Act, which will spur affordable housing developments near transit using state land. And then we have the Utility RELIEF Act, this massive energy omnibus that has a lot of provisions within it for cost saving measures.

We could obviously talk at length about all of those, but I'm most curious about, how are you communicating to Marylanders who are feeling financial strain right now, how these three bills will work in tandem to create actual, tangible affordability results for them? Because it's difficult to explain them, right? So how are you communicating this message on what you've accomplished this legislative session?

MOORE: You know what's happening to so many Marylanders right now is not fair, and when they say, ‘We need relief,’ my answer is, ‘You're right.’

We're watching how Marylanders are getting hit on so many different fronts. They're getting hit when they go to the grocery stores and they're watching prices continue to rise. They're getting hit when they go to the gas pump, and we've seen how gas has now gone up over one dollar in the past month. They are getting hit when they are going out and trying to buy a home because mortgage rates continue to jump. They are getting hit when they're getting their energy bill, because they've seen how energy has gone up by over 13 percent in the past year alone.

This new federal administration has brought nothing but rising costs since they've come on board, and while I can't control that, no governor can, the thing that we are going to do is do everything in our power to make things a little bit easier and drive down costs for Marylanders where we can.

And that's why we prioritize things like energy, where with this energy bill, you're going to see how Marylanders are going to save hundreds of dollars in their energy bill. How, when you look at pricing and price gouging, where I can't control the fact that food prices continue to go up because of these illegal tariffs that the president's putting on board. But what I can do, is make sure these corporations are not doing price manipulation on you when you walk in there, and we can make sure that we're making housing a little bit easier, streamline it, make it faster and utilizing state-owned land to be able to build more affordable housing.

And so everything that we can do to protect our people, we will, and that's the thing that I want the people of the state of Maryland continue to know.

PETROWICH: I want to pivot now to what seemed like the hottest topic of the session, and it’s almost completely fizzled out at this point, which is redistricting.

This started with President Trump calling on Republican states to redraw their Congressional maps to favor the GOP ahead of the election. Some Democratic states responded – Maryland has been a part of that conversation. There are some Democrats within the state, including yourself, that pushed for a new Congressional map that would favor Democrats in Congress for Maryland. That map passed in the House, but has stalled in the Senate due to large opposition from Democratic Senate President Bill Ferguson, and the majority of his colleagues.

There was a “compromise bill” that was introduced a couple of weeks ago that would change language within the Maryland constitution to help an 8-0 map withstand legal challenges, and again, that passed in the House, held up in the Senate.

I bring all this up to say, whenever Senate President Bill Ferguson was asked about that compromise bill and it not being brought forward, he said that it's not something he feels needs to be prioritized right now, as well as he may not necessarily want to take up redistricting until 2030 when the census happens, and when it usually happens.

From your perspective, with where things are at now – I know there are other things that you've been taking a focus on – but do you think that there is still a conversation to be had for Maryland to take a look at its map prior to 2030, or would you like to see how the election results go and then maybe pursue redistricting again, before the census?

MOORE: The Senate President and I just have a fundamental disagreement on what this moment requires and the assault that we're seeing in this moment, and I don't think this issue is going away.

You know, the President of the United States is utilizing every tool in his power and even breaking rules in order to try to manipulate the November elections and beyond. So this issue is not a dead issue because, in fact, you're seeing just last week, we had to sue the federal government because they were trying to take away mail-in balloting. You're going to see other states continue to move in this direction.

And I still stand by the fact that the House, the bill that the House introduced and passed, was a bill that I supported. I still believe in that. I also know that my focus for this session was really on making sure we can drive down costs for the people of the state of Maryland, that we could make sure we're protecting our people from the onslaught that we're seeing from the federal government, and we've been very successful with the bills that I've introduced, and not just been successful, many of them passed bipartisan – both Democratic and Republican support.

And so I think this fighting for our democracy is something that's important, and I'm never going to stop fighting for our democracy, and that has nothing to do with an election cycle. But I also know that we're going to make sure we are meeting Marylanders at the kitchen table on issues that they care about.

PETROWICH: Would you be supportive of a nonpartisan, independent commission taking charge of redistricting instead of the General Assembly?

MOORE: Absolutely. I actually think there needs to be national redistricting reform. I think the fact that we continue to have states who have the ability to do this mid-decade, and do it on their own, is a challenge. I think Congress needs to do their job. And I would 100 percent support national redistricting that could get rid of political gerrymandering, because right now, over 92 percent of all Congressional seats, they're not competitive.

Right now, we have a broken system as we speak. Yet, until that day happens, and until Congress does it, I do think it's important for states to be able to protect democracy and to protect their rights of their individual citizens.

PETROWICH: Moving to another large accomplishment other than affordability – although they go hand in hand – is the state budget, passed, balanced, as it is constitutionally required to do.

There was a projected $1.5 billion deficit that your administration closed, largely by proposing some fund swaps, no tax or fee increases, but as well as some cost-saving measures that included not granting salary raises for state employees at the rate of inflation.

I do want to be clear, your administration did make some work on making salary steps more equitable, and there has been some progress there, but to be candid, AFSCME Maryland has been pretty frustrated with how negotiations went, which is the largest union within the state employee sector.

And so there is a bill that passed this session, the Arbitration Reform For State Employees Act of 2026, which requires neutral arbitrators in these negotiations, and then also creates guidelines if an impasse is declared.

And so I’m curious, are you supportive of negotiation reforms because of what has happened this past year and prior, but also with larger deficits coming in the future, how do you see working on getting state salaries up in an equitable way, being prioritized when we have such dicey fiscal

waters ahead of us?

MOORE: Yeah, well, so one is, I am in favor of negotiation reforms, even though I have not seen the final language of the bill that is being proposed, but in theory, it is something that I do believe in, and I believe in the idea that collective bargaining actually does matter and is something I support.

The other thing I support, though, is our state workers, where we've given a raise to our state workers every single year that I have been the governor. And one thing that I think is important to acknowledge is that has not been the case for my predecessors and other governors. We had governors who came before me who were willing to balance the state's budget on the backs of workers and on the backs of working families, and that's something I have always said, I will not do that. I will not balance our budgets on the back of our workers, and we haven't.

And so, you know, while I know we've got to make sure that we get this budget under control – Maryland had a fundamental spending problem where we were spending 70 percent increase over over the past seven years, but we weren't growing, and we've got to be able to fix that dynamic. And I do not want to pass off a multi-billion dollar structural deficit, like what I inherited from my predecessor. But we need to make sure we're not doing it on the backs of our workers, and that's a commitment that I've made, and it's commitment that I've held to.