He rocks with Cardin and Van Hollen, Moore is not keen on taxes, more MACo notes

Sample Hughes support

Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes (D-Lower Shore) missed her own fundraiser last year due to COVID-19 illness, but she wasn't about to let that happen again. On Friday, she was all smiles at the Dry 85 restaurant, where she wore an orange dress that matched some of the campaign signs outside the restaurant.

While hundreds attended Senator Ben Cardin's final town hall meeting as part of the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference Friday morning, Sample-Hughes' guests enjoyed a brunch of fruit, coffee, chicken and waffles. Aside from poultry being a major part of the East Coast economy, “I also like chicken, so that had to be on the menu,” Sample-Hughes said.

Three of her colleagues attended: Reps. Shaneka Henson (D-Anne Arundel), Mike Rogers (D-Anne Arundel) and Kent Roberson (D-Prince George's). Roberson and Sample-Hughes are members of the House Judiciary Committee.

“It is wonderful to be with the people on the committee [and] to show my support to those who have supported me in the past,” Roberson said. “I am grateful for her friendship and her leadership on the committee and for serving the public for over 18 years and sharing that knowledge with me and others who are willing to listen.”

Sample-Hughes calls Rogers “Colonel” because he served in the Army for three decades. Both are committed to veterans' issues. She calls Henson “a true friend.”

“These are real people I enjoy working with in the legislature,” Sample-Hughes said of her three colleagues.

After saying a few words to those in attendance, she told a story about learning to shoot a firearm during a family vacation in North Carolina last week. She was traveling with her eldest son, Jordan, a police officer in Somerset County, and showed how she held an AR-15 pointed downward toward the ground.

“He said, 'Don't hold it like that,'” she said, laughing. “My 25-year-old son taught me.”

Her youngest son, 20-year-old Noah, is entering his senior year of aviation studies at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. “He needs to be a pilot so I can travel and get some free flights somewhere,” she joked.

Sample-Hughes will travel to the Democratic National Convention next week as a delegate for the 1st Congressional District.

Solar panels and cannabis

You may think that cannabis and solar panels have nothing in common.

You are wrong about that.

House Economic Affairs Committee Chairman Del CT Wilson (D-Charles) sees an important connection: districts that want to use zoning and other laws to block the development of solar panels and cannabis companies.

Last year, Wilson championed a bill that would limit local governments' ability to use zoning to restrict the locations of businesses that grow, process and dispense cannabis.

“The same thing I did for cannabis, I will do for tier one resources, which is essentially we will not ban it from our community,” Wilson said.

Wilson described public opposition to the construction of solar power plants on agricultural land as “crazy” and said farmers should be able to decide for themselves how to use their land.

“If that's a solar farm, I know he's producing something. It's electronics. We're using those electrons. We may not be using the soybeans or the corn, but he's still a producer,” Wilson said.

“And when we're done, that farmland won't be destroyed, because the people who argue with me about the beautiful farmland don't mind if he sells that nasty thing and divides it into apartment buildings and townhouses. That seems fine. But now when we talk about solar energy, everyone is clutching their pearls,” Wilson said.

He called the opposition to solar farms “brazen … because it doesn't destroy anything. It's very frustrating because some people just don't agree with this kind of technology.”

Data centers and transmission lines – NIMBYism

Wilson had more to say about the growing voices seeking to block a proposed 70-mile, 500,000-volt power transmission line through parts of Frederick, Carroll and Baltimore counties. He called it “weird.”

The transmission lines, part of the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, would help power the data centers the state wants to attract.

“There is a certain area of ​​the state that wants a new data center, but they don't want power lines,” he said of opponents. “They want all the benefits of that data center. But how dare we put power lines – the electricity needed to run the data center – through their neighborhood? You can't have both.”