Lawmakers are back in Annapolis for the annual 90-day legislative session, where they’ll take on a budget shortfall, a hostile administration in the White House and more.

Here’s what we’re watching on Day 3 of 90:

• 💡 Gov. Wes Moore is heading to the White House on Friday to discuss an agreement aimed at reducing power prices. Marylanders have faced escalating energy costs amid an unprecedented surge in demand, and lawmakers have struggled to land on a solution. Other governors from states within the PJM grid will attend the meeting.
• ⏳ Is there time for redistricting? Top lawmakers disagree on the answer. Moore says it’s “deeply disingenuous” to say there’s not enough time to draw new legislative maps, while Senate President Bill Ferguson says time has run out.
• 🌉 Moore and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy “made significant progress” during a meeting about the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the American Legion Memorial Bridge, the two said in a joint statement Thursday night. It was a conciliatory message from leaders who have sometimes been at odds. Read more.

That’s it for the first week of the legislative session. Here’s what happened on Friday:

• Gov. Wes Moore said he plans to work together with the feds on accelerating the Key Bridge rebuild
• Moore also went to the White House for a surprise announcement on energy affordability
• Senate President Bill Ferguson suggested the time is not right to end auto-charging of children as adults

— Madeleine O’Neill

2:30 p.m.: Change how kids are charged as adults? Maybe not this year.

For years, criminal justice reform advocates have pushed to limit the automatic charging of children as adults for certain crimes, a practice that disproportionately impacts Black youths in Maryland.

Reformers believe this is their year, and they have the backing of Senator Will Smith, who chairs the powerful Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. But Senate President Bill Ferguson signaled during a news conference Friday that he will not prioritize new limits on auto-charging during the 2026 legislative session.

Ferguson said that while he believes changing the practice will eventually be the right move for Maryland, it is too early in the tenure of Betsy Fox Tolentino, the acting Department of Juvenile Services secretary who still needs to be confirmed by the Maryland Senate.

“I do think that eventually we will be moving down this path,” Ferguson said. “I don’t know that the timing [is] right now, as we have a new secretary in her very first year making changes.

“There’s great signs of progress,” Ferguson continued. “We’ll have to see whether that’s sufficient enough to get there this year.”

Ferguson did not mention that it’s an election year, but there are certainly political pressures at play. Centrist Democrats see themselves as vulnerable on public safety issues, and sensationalized reporting on youth crime has cemented juvenile justice reform as a taboo subject for many in the legislature.

In the meantime, youths will continue being automatically charged as adults for 33 offenses, including misdemeanor gun crimes. Though Black children account for 31% of Maryland’s youth population, 81% of young people. charged as adults between 2021 and 2023 were Black, according to a report from the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative. The MEJC is co-chaired by Attorney General Anthony Brown and Public Defender Natasha Dartigue.

Auto-charging often means that children will be sent to adult jails, at least initially, while they wait for their cases to proceed. In an op-ed published in June, outgoing Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi cited Maryland’s “draconian” practice of auto-charging children as adults as the foremost reason for his departure.

“My participation in this harmful farce left a stink on me that won’t soon wash off,” he wrote.

Legislation proposed last year would have limited the number of crimes for which youths can be automatically charged as adults, but would not have ended the practice entirely. It failed to gain traction in the House or the Senate.

— Madeleine O’Neill

11:50 a.m.: Empty seats in the Maryland Senate

Most of the Maryland Senate got a bit of a break Friday: instead of all 47 members filing onto the floor for a brief session to introduce bills and wave to guests in the observation gallery, only a few top-ranking members met for what’s called a “pro forma” session.

The Senate’s first pro forma session lasted five minutes and 16 seconds, which — believe it or not — is actually on the long side for a pro forma session. In past years, they’ve sometimes breezed by in just two minutes.

Pro forma sessions are a throwback to the coronavirus pandemic, when the need for social distancing pushed leaders to find creative ways to keep the legislative process churning without putting all of the lawmakers in the same room more than necessary.

The result was pro forma sessions, where just a few top legislators meet briefly to keep official business moving. The Senate President (or in the case of the House of Delegates, the speaker) is joined by the majority and minority leaders for the abbreviated floor session.

As Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, gaveled the session to order and took the attendance roll call Friday, he noted that “three of the most critical” senators were present. Those three were himself, Senate Majority Leader Nancy King from Montgomery County and Republican Sen. Mary Beth Carozza. “Your presence is exceptional,” he said to Carozza, who represents the Eastern Shore and was filling in for the Republican minority leader.

Pro formas stuck around after the pandemic as an early session convenience. For the first few weeks of each legislative session, there is little work that requires the entire Senate or House to convene. Bills are still moving through committees and Gov. Wes Moore hasn’t introduced the budget yet.

As things heat up over the next three months, pro forma sessions will disappear from the legislative calendar.

— Madeleine O’Neill and Pamela Wood

10:10 a.m.: Moore talks energy, Key Bridge

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore spent 10 minutes fielding questions from the State House press corps Friday morning. Here are some highlights.

On Thursday’s meeting with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy on the rebuild of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore:

“We acknowledge and agree that when we come to cost-sharing, that Maryland has significant skin in this game right now. In addition to the insurance, but also the fact that we put additional up-front capital into it, that Maryland is already financially vested in making this happen.”

“We are going to work together with our federal partners to be able to ensure that we can both accelerate the timeline and also control the cost of rebuilding the Key Bridge, because I’m intent on making sure that the Key Bridge can and will get rebuilt during my time.”

On attending a White House event Friday on energy issues:

“I’m thankful that the White House is acknowledging something that we have been saying, literally since the start of my administration, that we have got to get PJM doing a better job of actually streamlining pipeline and accepting projects.”

“Critical infrastructure growth has to be done in partnership with communities. … But also, in addition to that, we can do smart data center development where it doesn’t look like what we’re seeing in Northern Virginia, where they just get whatever they want.”

— Pamela Wood