The Maryland legislature hits a key deadline Monday, signaling the final weeks of a 90-day session marked by budgetary woes and continual blows from the federal government.

Monday is Crossover Day, which is the deadline for a bill to pass its chamber of origin to guarantee it receives a hearing in the opposite chamber.

House and Senate lawmakers labored long hours over hundreds of bills last week and into the weekend to ensure their priority legislation will make it across the finish line before Monday’s deadline. The legislative session is scheduled to adjourn when the clock strikes midnight on April 7.

But not everything — including the state’s roughly $3.3 billion-and-growing state budget deficit, which will dominate the final three weeks of the session — will be solved by the end of the day.

“We are facing questions that are harder and deeper than anything that I think any General Assembly has had to face in several decades,” said Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat.

Though they’re not required to pass the budget by the crossover deadline, negotiations between the governor and House and Senate Democrats are still up in the air as each party pushes for their preferred solutions to the most severe budget crisis in modern state history.

Moore has proposed a combination of $2 billion in spending cuts and $1 billion in tax reforms that focuses on raising income taxes on the wealthy, eliminating itemized deductions and doubling the standard deduction. About two-thirds of Marylanders would get a modest tax cut, businesses would see a decrease in the corporate income tax rate in two years, and the corporate tax system would be expanded to capture more revenue.

Democrats in the legislature mostly agree on those provisions but said they are putting additional options on the table — primarily, a 2.5% sales tax on business-to-business services. The idea has been widely rejected by both the business community and progressive economic groups that have lined up on opposite sides of other parts of the tax debate. But Ferguson and others have doubled down, saying they will likely approve the idea with amendments that reflect some critics’ frustrations.

A technical deadline of March 31 is set for when the budget should pass both chambers, but that date is flexible, and leaders have said their work will likely continue through the first week of April.

At least one major question in the budget process was eliminated Friday, when the U.S. Senate gave final approval on a federal budget resolution that will keep the government open through September. State officials had been bracing for a shutdown, which Gov. Wes Moore had said would be “disastrous” in our state, which relies heavily on federal government spending. Additional cuts to the roughly $20 billion in annual federal funding that flows down to Maryland also worried state officials, though the latest actions could extend the conversation about those cuts to later this year.

“As we monitor the chaos in Washington, the Presiding Officers and the Governor are working together to deliver a budget that protects Marylanders from the consequences of federal uncertainty,” Ferguson, Moore and House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, all Democrats, said in a joint statement Friday. “We will come to an agreement that delivers critical funding to grow our economy, fund our public schools, and ensure the safety of our communities. Nothing is more important than protecting Marylanders at this moment in time, and that is what we will do.”

Fighting against federal actions

Democrats have spent much of the 2025 legislative session combatting President Donald Trump’s slew of executive orders.

Acknowledging the damage done to Maryland residents laid off in the wave of mass firings implemented by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), House Majority Whip Jazz Lewis, a Prince George’s County Democrat, sponsored The Protect Our Federal Workers Act to create a fund for those who suddenly find themselves unemployed. The bill, which passed out of the House, would provide Attorney General Anthony Brown an extra $1.5 million to sue the Trump administration in an effort for former federal employees to get their jobs back.

Additionally, multiple lawmakers have filed bills to protect undocumented immigrants in their communities.

Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith of Montgomery County is sponsoring the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which would prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from entering schools, public libraries, health facilities, and shelters unless they obtain a warrant from a state or federal judge.

Smith, Senate President Pro Tem Malcolm Augustine of Montgomery County and Baltimore Del. Elizabeth Embry, all Democrats, brought forth a bill to expand qualifications for Maryland’s U nonimmigrant status petitions, which are filed on behalf of non-U.S. residents who assist law enforcement in investigating crime.

Del. Nicole Williams, a Prince George’s County Democrat, filed legislation to create a statewide standard requiring local jails to hold people for 48 hours to facilitate ICE detainers. If ICE does not retrieve them, the individual would be released. The bill would also prohibit state and local law enforcement and government entities from entering into 287(g) program agreements with ICE.

In Maryland, three counties are currently in 287(g) agreements with ICE to turn over people who have been arrested and are in jail. There are other program models to create local immigration enforcement task forces and to execute warrants.

Debating the bill during a rare Saturday session, House Republicans — many of whom invoked the death of Rachel Morin, whose alleged assailant entered into the country illegally multiple times — defended preserving the ability of jurisdictions to enter into the jail enforcement model agreements that currently exist in the state.

House Minority Leader Jason Buckel, an Allegany County Republican, argued for the success of the partnerships, known as 287(g) programs, noting that one county currently participating allowed for the successful apprehension of people affiliated with gangs who were in possession of large amounts of fentanyl.

“Maryland does not and should not have its own immigration laws. We cannot,” Buckel said. “It makes no sense, because if we have one, I guess maybe a state that’s a more shade of crimson — perhaps in the South — they can adopt one that says, ‘Yep, we want our cops to go out on the street every day, and if you don’t look like you’re from, say, Alabama, we’re just going to pick you up and run you through a system and get you deported.’”

Williams said the intention of the bill is to prevent counties from entering into the other, more aggressive types of ICE agreements. She noted that ICE recently apprehended a person in Prince George’s County, which does not participate in the 287(g) program.

“ICE was able to do their job in my county without a 287(g) agreement, and so, therefore, it is not necessary for them to do their job,” she said. “We should allow the federal government to do their job, but we should not be paying our local law enforcement officers to do their job for them.”

Williams’ bill received preliminary approval on the House floor Saturday.

Restructuring the Blueprint

Funding for the out years of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s landmark education plan, has also been a question this session.

The decade-long policy is fully funded through fiscal year 2027, but the money is poised to run out for the remainder of the program’s implementation.

Moore’s administration proposed legislation to pause funding increases for community schools, or schools that receive Concentration of Poverty grants, for two years and delay the onset of teacher collaborative time by four years.

The House chamber passed Moore’s bill last week, but not without restoring the full funding for community schools and shortening the pause on teacher collaborative time to one year instead of four.

Before its passage, Buckel said it would have been better to support the governor’s bill with its original language rather than the version before the chamber that stripped it of funding cuts.

The Senate has yet to amend its version of Moore’s bill or to debate it on the floor.

Ferguson said Friday that public school education is “fundamental” and “absolutely essential for the state of Maryland.”

“It also has to be sustainable,” he said.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Ben Barnes, a representative of Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties, said he thinks that “the governor, the House and the Senate are in alignment 98%” regarding the legislation.

What won’t make it by Monday night

A high-profile package of three energy bills aimed at lowering Marylanders’ utility bills over the long term will not pass before the crossover deadline.

Last week, House and Senate lawmakers railed against energy company representatives for issuing increasingly high utility bills to their residents over the past several months.

Ferguson and Jones are sponsoring the New Generation Energy Act, a multi-faceted bill that seeks to lower the amount of energy that Maryland relies on from other states, reduce the need to build additional transmission lines and allow the state to determine which sources — like natural gas, nuclear, solar, or other generation — its energy comes from.

Additionally, Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee Chair Brian Feldman of Montgomery County and House Economic Matters Committee Chair CT Wilson from St. Mary’s County, both Democrats, are sponsoring the Renewable Energy Certainty Act, which would set statewide standards for solar energy and battery storage projects.

And House Economic Matters Committee Vice Chair Brian Crosby of St. Mary’s County and Sen. Katie Fry Hester of Howard and Montgomery counties, both Democrats, are sponsoring the Resource Adequacy and Planning Act, which would create an independent office within the Maryland Public Service Commission to relieve Maryland’s reliance on PJM, the company that owns the energy grid that Maryland is on, for energy load forecasting.

Though they won’t meet Monday’s deadline, the package is likely to make it to Moore’s desk before the end of the legislative session.

Wilson’s legislation to limit the window that survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of government employees can sue the state will also not pass by Crossover Day.

In February, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled that the Child Victims Act, which removed the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse survivors to file civil lawsuits against those responsible, is constitutional, potentially leaving the state on the hook for $3.1 billion in settlements while it simultaneously contends with a fiscal crisis.

As written, Wilson’s bill, which has yet to receive a hearing, would only allow survivors to sue the state until Jan. 1, 2026.

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