BALTIMORE — Gov. Wes Moore and Democratic lawmakers left Annapolis this week with a pin in the 2025 session and — more than ever in their time together at the helm of Maryland politics — some hard feelings.

In a high-pressure year that featured what many lawmakers are publicly and privately referring to as a “communications breakdown” between the governor’s office and the Maryland General Assembly dominated by Moore’s own party, neither side got everything it wanted.

For the first time, Moore’s entire slate of bills that he introduced and personally fought for didn’t cross the finish line.

And by the end of the final bill-signing ceremony of the session on Tuesday, Moore had likewise stifled more of his allies’ priorities than ever, vetoing two-dozen bills in a way that shocked lawmakers, some of whom said they’d been led to believe the governor backed their efforts.

“It really doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Del. Lorig Charkoudian, a Montgomery County Democrat and leading voice on energy issues in the State House, who said she was surprised, disappointed and still confused about Moore’s rejection of multiple energy-related bills.

Sen. Karen Lewis Young, a Frederick County Democrat who sponsored one of those bills, said she was taken aback when the governor’s office called her last Friday.

Her top priority this year was legislation to study the energy needs of data centers that are set to pop up in her community. She thought the $500,000 investment would be well worth it.

“The same person who told me it was going to be vetoed told me the governor’s office fully supported the bill, and I never heard anything in between to know that there was any problem or issue,” Lewis Young said. “So yes, I was surprised.”

Moore, who has talked about his aspirations for “partnership” more than almost anything else since his election in 2022, has, like always, focused on the mostly positive aspects of his relationships with the Maryland General Assembly.

In a year when he and legislative leaders ultimately agreed on how to resolve a shifting $3.3 billion budget deficit that sparked the toughest funding debates in years, Moore and many lawmakers say the budget conversation alone was evidence of a strong working relationship.

An administration official involved in the governor’s legislative work who was not authorized to speak publicly also said it was not surprising that some viewed communications as strained — especially as changes from President Donald Trump’s administration altered how Moore decided to act on bills even after the session ended on April 7.

“The situation deteriorated so much over the last 60 days of session and then after,” the official said. “It’s just one of these scenarios where it’s not going to feel like perfect communication because the situation changed so quickly.”

Still, Moore also aimed his disappointments more directly at the legislature than he had in the past, particularly as three of his nine bills failed to pass.

Lawmakers “missed an opportunity” and “failed” in choosing not to pass his bills aimed at building more housing, attracting businesses and adjusting the state’s clean energy strategy, he said in a statement on the last day of the session. In an interview later with The Baltimore Sun, he indicated he was prepared to use more of his own powers as governor as a result.

“There’s a lot of power in executive authority, and I feel very confident that I can utilize my constitutional powers to make sure that our state is more competitive,” Moore said, though he declined to specify further what actions that might include.

Moore’s own bills falling short

The breakdown, according to elected officials and others involved in State House politics, began at the start of the annual 90-day session in January.

Moore and Maryland General Assembly leaders entered their third year together with the budget deficit as their most significant challenge yet.

Some Democrats quickly and publicly opposed aspects of Moore’s budget proposal, like scaling back the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and funding for disability services. Most of them agreed on the larger framework — which reflected progressive lawmakers’ long-held goals to increase taxes on the wealthy and to capture more corporate income tax — and Moore said further adjustments led by legislators aligned with his vision.

But the difficulty and time it took to get to that final agreement put a strain on almost everything else.

“In a budget crisis, everything’s different. Everything feels edgy,” said Michael Sanderson, executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties. “That does have a ripple effect on everything in town, and on every relationship in town.”

Sanderson’s organization represents the interests of local officials and has a significant presence in state policymaking. It had a particular stake in one of the governor’s bills that didn’t pass, known as the Housing for Jobs Act. The bill, in part, aimed to spur more housing development by limiting local governments’ abilities to block plans.

At a March 4 hearing, a MACo representative expressed frustration with both the policy and the process, saying his team had tried to meet with Moore’s office after they found out about the bill in December but were told to wait until the hearing.

“We are willing to move heaven and earth to work with this administration to serve our mutual constituents, but there are substantial gaps that we’re going to have to cross,” MACo director of intergovernmental relations Dominic Butchko said at the hearing.

Sanderson, in an interview this week, said that framing “overstated the case about the lack of outreach” and there were elements of a “communication breakdown” on both sides. Both sides had initial discussions about the bill and higher-level meetings occurred after the hearing, he said.

Though the bill was amended and discussed throughout the morning of the last day of the session, it ultimately did not pass. Neither did the DECADE Act, an economic development bill Moore sponsored but that local officials also initially opposed. Another Moore bill, known as ENERGIZE, that would have included nuclear energy in the state’s clean energy goals was partially amended into other legislation but largely came up short.

While lawmakers say they would have liked more communication about their own bills, some observers also say Moore’s team didn’t engage enough on his own priorities.

“The governor’s team did not do enough to have leadership at the table on these big legislative matters in the off-session, and so the General Assembly was learning about these bills at the same time as the general public,” said someone who works in state politics but declined to be named for fear of impacting their work. “That obviously rubbed them the wrong way and set a lot of these legislative priorities up for disappointing results.”

It wasn’t the first time Moore’s priorities were slashed. His more-than two-dozen bills across the last two years were often amended — some significantly — even as he talked afterward and sent fundraising emails about “going twenty-six for twenty-six” and “batting 1.000.”

No such phrasing has creeped into his campaign messaging this year, though he and his team maintain there were wins across the board.

“The State of Maryland achieved something this legislative session that was only possible with close collaboration between the governor and the state legislature — turning a $3 billion deficit into a surplus with $2 billion in strategic cuts while providing a tax cut or no change in income taxes to 94% of Marylanders,” spokesman Carter Elliott IV said in a statement for this story.

Legislators caught off guard

The bill that sparked the most intense backlash on the list of vetoes was the establishment of a Maryland Reparations Commission.

A longtime priority for the Legislative Black Caucus — which describes itself as the largest such group in the country — the commission would have studied whether the state should provide reparations to Marylanders impacted by the state’s history of slavery and inequality.

Moore, the state’s first and the nation’s only current Black governor, has often acknowledged that history. He said in his veto letter that he would pursue immediate actions rather than spending “time for another study.”

Legislators say that perspective was misplaced.

Reparations, specifically, have never been “formally examined or studied in Maryland,” said Del. Jheanelle Wilkins, a Montgomery County Democrat who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus. She said in a statement that the study was a key part of more than 40 bills the group has focused on in the last three sessions “to confront historical injustices and improve the lives of Black Marylanders.”

“We are proud of the progress made and we deeply believe that Black Marylanders deserve even more, including direct redress of historic injustices that make these bills necessary,” Wilkins said.

Del. Brian Crosby, a St. Mary’s County Democrat who is not in Wilkins’ caucus, called Moore’s action on the bill “abhorrent” and “hypocritical” while comparing him to Trump — a show of criticism that few Democratic officials, if any, have leveled at Moore.

“With so much uncertainty as President Trump tries to act like a dictator and force congress to bend the knee, it’s sad that Governor Wes Moore seems to be following the same playbook,” Crosby wrote in a Facebook post.

In an interview, Crosby said he’s eager for better “collaboration and partnership.”

“It just kind of feels like there’s a lot of people who have worked their tails off, and then out of the blue, when we don’t hear anything during the session, there’s a veto,” Crosby said. “A lot of this could be preventable just through communication.”

Lewis Young, who sponsored the data center study, similarly said she would “like to see some significant improvement in communications” from the governor’s office. She said she has talked in passing with Moore but has been unable to land a formal meeting with him since he entered office.

“As the only Democratic senator in Western Maryland, I have not been able to sit down and talk to the governor about priorities and concerns,” Lewis Young said.

Charkoudian said she was scratching her head about why one of her bills to get local farm-grown food into school meals was vetoed when she put effort into keeping its cost low and setting it up so that part of it would only go into effect when money was available.

Another bill she backed, known as the RENEW Act, was the top priority for environmentalists this year. It would have required the state to analyze the possibility of major fossil-fuel-emitting companies paying penalties for their emissions — with the proceeds going toward climate mitigation work.

Charkoudian said it was ironic that in a tight budget year, Moore’s stated reason for eliminating the study was cost, even though its supporters believe it will have a significant return on investment for the state.

“I have a huge amount of respect for the governor, for the legislative team, for the [Maryland Energy Administration] and the [Maryland Department of the Environment],” Charkoudian said. “It’s a huge mistake. There’s no question in my mind.”

Climate activists who have largely supported the governor have been reeling from the move.

“Moore gave no warning before doing this,” Chesapeake Climate Action Network executive director Mike Tidwell wrote in a scathing message to his group’s supporters this week. “He gave disingenuous reasons for his actions afterwards. He defied the will of the Maryland General Assembly while giving comfort, intentionally or not, to the biggest carbon polluters in the world.”

Sen. Katie Fry Hester, a Howard County Democrat who sponsored the bill along with four others on Moore’s list of 23 vetoes, said she was “surprised and disappointed.”

Moore, for his part, cited cost pressures from the federal government and the increased burden on state agencies for rejecting RENEW and other studies. And the administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly stressed that those reasons made the studies “not realistic” at a time when the state is continuing to defend against unpredictable moves like the winding down of the U.S. Department of Education and welfare benefits.

House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson have been exploring whether to override Moore’s vetoes, a process that requires supermajority approval and that Democrats successfully utilized during former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s two terms.

Jones and Ferguson have not joined the chorus of pointed criticism since Moore’s vetoes. Like Moore, they and their leadership teams have largely tried to strike a conciliatory tone whenever discussing differences between the two branches of government.

“We live in a democracy. We don’t have to agree on everything, and his feelings actually aren’t hurt when we have policy differences, because we’re able to talk,” House Majority Whip Jazz Lewis, a Prince George’s Democrat, said on the final day of the session when asked by reporters about the governor’s failed bills.

“I really appreciate that he offered a number of novel ideas over the interim and the beginning of session,” Lewis said. “Some of them we agreed with. Some of them we didn’t, but we knew that we were all committed to the same goal. And I think we got there.”

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