Dear Friend,
We are now over halfway through the legislative session and things are getting busy!It was great to see so many of you at District 20 Night. We had a chance to celebrate and honor the Silver Spring Justice Coalition, Daniel Koroma, Annie Tulkin, and Eric Rasch for all of their incredible activism and service to the District 20 Community.
Over the last two weeks, hearings were held on six of my bills:
HB 607: Establishing a Crisis Intervention Team Center for Excellence to ensure law enforcement responds to mental health crisis in a way that supports treatment rather than incarceration.
HB 589: Organics Recycling and Waste Diversion to build out the compost infrastructure in Maryland.
HB 722: Heat Stress Protection Act to establish standards to protect workers in increasingly hotter summers.
HB 982: Low Income Energy Efficiency Standards to ensure priority investment of energy efficiency measures in the homes of low income individuals.
HB 531: Public Service Commission – Consideration of Climate and Labor Issues to require the PSC to consider climate change and labor in their decision making.
HB 1081: Medical Debt Protection establishing guardrails to limit predatory collection of medical debt.
The Medical Debt Protection legislation has received considerable attention, including the following: Maryland Matters, the Baltimore Sun and WMAR (Baltimore Channel 2).
On a lighter note, the Running Caucus, of which I am a proud member, also got some coverage last week. Here is the WAMU story.
DELEGATE SCHOLARSHIPS – UPDATED INFORMATION As a Member of the House of Delegates, I am able to provide my constituents with academic scholarships. This scholarship is available to students who attend or are planning to attend a Maryland community college, a four-year university, or a graduate school during the 2020-2021 school year. Applications must be completed and submitted by May 13, 2020. Awardees will be informed by June 15, 2020. The application can be completed here.
As always, feel free to stop by my office in Annapolis any time – Room 226, Lowe House Office Building, 6 Bladen St. Annapolis, MD 21401. My phone number is 410-841-3423. Please e-mail constituent issues to lorig.charkoudian@house.state.md.us.
Onward,
Lorig Charkoudian