The only constant is change, and so it will be for Howard County in 2026.
From elections with few incumbents to a new inspector general and legislation aimed at curtailing infighting, here are the local issues to watch heading into the new year:
Historic primary election
If we had to characterize Howard County’s 2026 election in one word, it would be “turnover.”
Just one of five County Council members is seeking a third term in 2026. Additionally, County Executive Calvin Ball cannot run again for the county’s top job again because of term limits.
Candidates have until Feb. 24 to file, but the incumbents’ moves all point to a shakeup coming to local politics.
Four Democrats — state Del. Vanessa Atterbeary, Council members Deb Jung and Liz Walsh and businessman Bob Cockey— have launched campaigns for Howard county executive. Del. Jessica Feldmark was running but dropped out in early December to focus on reelection to the House of Delegates following a cancer diagnosis.
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The entry of three women in the county executive’s race this spring gives Howard County voters a chance to elect the first woman to lead the county in 40 years. Atterbeary would be the first Black woman ever to hold the position.
With Jung and Walsh running for county executive, their seats — and those held by Councilmen Opel Jones and David Yungmann, the county’s only elected Republican — are also up for grabs. Yungmann announced in the spring that he would not seek reelection. Jones confirmed in December that he is not seeking a third term.
That leaves just Councilwoman Christiana Rigby, a Democrat who has held her seat since 2018, seeking a third and final term. Council members are limited to three terms.
With open races in nearly every district, about a dozen other Democratic candidates have filed to run for the County Council.
School budget gaps
Each spring, Howard County’s elected leaders begin the difficult task of putting together a budget for the coming fiscal year. The greatest challenge in recent years has been balancing the school system’s needs against what the county can afford to spend.
Last year, the school system estimated that it would need $107.3 million more than what the county was legally required to contribute. Ball’s administration and council members approved a plan to fund about $53.8 million of the request — in part by dipping into the county’s reserves.
That still left the school system with a significant funding gap. The Howard County school board later cut $11.3 million in costs and eliminated 127 positions.
It’s too soon to say what will happen in 2026, but the school system is facing a roughly $194 million backlog of deferred maintenance. At the same time, Howard County ended the fiscal year with a surplus of $38 million.
Some county and school leaders want to see that money go to the schools, but Ball has other ideas.
Ball said about $7.1 million of the surplus is an “unspent appropriation” that was previously allocated to the health department and is needed to get matching state funds. He said he preferred to put the remaining $30.8 million into the county’s rainy-day fund to maintain the county’s AAA bond rating and prepare for any surprise financial needs.
The county executive typically submits a budget proposal to the County Council in April, which is then followed by a series of public hearings and work sessions.
New inspector general
Howard County residents voted overwhelmingly in November to create an inspector general’s office and charged it with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in local government.
For much of the year that followed, a seven-person search committee sorted through 58 applications from candidates looking to become the county’s inaugural watchdog. They settled on Kelly Madigan, Baltimore County’s first inspector general.
Madigan will leave her post in Baltimore County on Friday and turn the reins over to her deputy, Steve Quisenberry. Her decision to appoint him as interim inspector general raised a few eyebrows since Quisenberry served on the search committee in Howard County. He and other committee members said he recused himself from any discussions concerning his boss.
Once in Howard County, Madigan will need to hire a staff, set priorities and begin the work of investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse in local government.
During her four years in Baltimore County, Madigan’s investigations included probes of low-level corrections officers taking COVID relief funds, off-the-books taxi businesses and a former permits director waiving millions of dollars in fees for a well-connected developer who gave him a free parking space.
Zoning turmoil
A few days before Christmas, Jones, the County Council chair, pre-filed a bill for 2026 to curb council members and their staff from “hindering, obstructing, or disrupting the deliberations and decisions” of Howard’s boards and commissions.
The legislation, co-sponsored by Rigby and Yungmann, signals that a majority of the five-member council is willing to put a check on its own influence over those they appoint to influential entities like the Board of Appeals.
The bill comes after months of fighting between the appeals board and council members in 2025.
It’s still unclear what effect the bill will have on quelling those tensions, which were largely fueled by a series of high-profile zoning disputes. They focused on W.R. Grace’s plan for a pilot plastics recycling plant in Columbia, an unsanctioned go-kart course on a western Howard County property and Manor Hill Brewing’s operations as a farm brewery near Ellicott City.
Three Board of Appeals members — Gene Ryan, Lynn Foehrkolb and Felita Phillips — announced plans to resign by the end of the year and accused two council members, Jung and Walsh, of attempting to interfere with their deliberations. Jung and Walsh said that they did nothing wrong and that they had a right to support their constituents involved in disputes before the board.
The resignations posed a crisis for Howard County’s main vehicle for settling property disputes. Three vacancies would have left the five-member board without a quorum, effectively halting the process for property owners to appeal land use and zoning decisions.
Several council members scrambled to limit the fallout by meeting publicly with the three Board of Appeals members. Ryan, Foehrkolb and Phillips later signed a joint letter asking the council to rescind their resignations. The move created confusion for elected leaders and the county’s office of law over how to move forward.
Jones called a special meeting on Dec. 22 to discuss the matter. Most of the three-hour meeting took place behind closed doors and included several motions, Jones said. The council eventually voted to allow Ryan and Phillips to rescind their resignations, but couldn’t agree what to do about Foehrkolb. Jones said that means Foehrkolb would continue to hold her board seat in 2026, though he acknowledged the conflict could carry into the new year.
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