Amid flurry of parole reform measures are two that tackle the parole process itself
Amid high-profile proposals to make it easier for long-serving inmates to seek sentence reductions and to make work safer for parole agents are two largely overlooked efforts that supporters say are no less important: Reforming the parole process itself.
'Looking at the process of parole may seem, you know, not as big, but it is, especially for those incarcerated. Just trying to increase … a little bit more transparency and predictability,' said Del. Elizabeth Embry (D-Baltimore City). 'I'm just saying [there's] room for improvement, and we hope this bill will advance us toward that improvement.'
Embry is the sponsor of House Bill 1147, which calls for an annual report by the Maryland Parole Commission breaking down the number of cases it has heard and approved in a year, broken down by race, and requiring that inmates who are rejected for parole get a report detailing the reasons why. Currently, they have to ask for that information.
Del. N. Scott Phillips' (D-Baltimore County) House Bill 1156 would increase the number of Parole Commission members from the current 1o to at least 15 but no more than 20. More importantly, those members, currently nominated by the secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, would be nominated instead by the governor, from a list of candidates drawn up by a new commission made up of law enforcement officials, public defenders, health and education officials and more. The Parole Commission nominees would still need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Both Phillips' and Embry's bills are scheduled to be heard March 4 before the House Judiciary Committee.
'Parole [reform] will be something we will definitely take a look at,' Del. Luke Clippinger (D-Baltimore City), chair of the committee, said in an interview earlier this month.
Clippinger said the two bills 'generally, but not specifically' resemble legislative priorities from Campaign Zero, a national social justice organization led by a Maryland native DeRay Mckesson.
Mckesson, one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, served on a Maryland task force in 2023 to evaluate data collection and policies within Maryland's state's attorneys' offices, and to assess whether prosecutors' practices are fair and equitable.
Mckesson said attempts to reform of the Parole Commission are welcome.
'We need to modernize the structure of the Parole Commission. So few people understand the parole process. We just want fairness in the parole system,' he said in an interview earlier this month.
The Parole Commission, a part of the department within correctional services, is a full-time body that holds parole hearings on a case-by-case basis to determine whether those serving six months or longer should be granted parole. The commission chair draws a $132,000 salary and commissioners are paid $117,000, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
The 10-member board is scheduled to meet every other Wednesday but currently it has three vacancies. The department declined comment on the two latest bills, except to say that it 'recognizes the critical role legislation plays in building a more just and effective correctional system in Maryland.'
Embry's bill calls for additional data that is not currently required in the commission's annual report of its work to the governor, such as figures 'disaggregated by race of relevant incarcerated individuals.' Some of the other information must highlight the number of cases in which the commission granted or denied parole; the number of people granted administrative release; the number of parole hearings and purpose of each hearing; and the number of people eligible for parole but never granted it.
Hearing examiners who review each incarcerated individual's case and make a recommendation to the commission for or against parole would have one week, instead of the current three, to deliver a report the to the inmate, the commission and the Department of Corrections, spelling out the reasons for the recommendation. In addition to including the 'reasoning and justifications for the recommendation,' an individual denied parole would have to get another hearing scheduled 'not later than two years' from the denial. Currently, there's no requirement to when a subsequent parole hearing must be scheduled.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
The bill also specifies that, 'The Commission does not have the authority to permanently deny parole.'
'There's a need for [parole] improvement and we hope this bill will advance us toward that,' Embry said in a recent interview.
Phillips' bill would take hearing examiners out of the process of recommending parole approval or denial. Under the current law, the commission can skip a hearing on a parole case if there are no objections from the inmate or the department, in which case the hearing examiner's recommendation become the final decision.
Phillips' bill would also alter not only who serves on the Parole Commission, but how members are appointed for a six-year term.
When there's a vacancy on the commission, a 12-member panel would submit at least three nominees to the governor. Those panel members would include the public defender, president of the Maryland State's Attorney's Association, the executive director of the Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission and four appointees of the governor – three from the general public and a prisoners' rights advocate.
Some advocates noted the Parole Commission should diversify its panel. DPSCS confirmed that three former department employees are now parole commissioners: Chair Ernest Eley, Robyn Lyles and Lisa Vronch.
Second Look Act draws hours of testimony in House Judiciary Committee
Maryland is currently one of just four states, along with Kansas, Michigan and Ohio, that do not allow the governor to directly choose person to serve on a parole commission.
'This is to start a conversation about really looking at how the Parole Commission operates, particularly who's on the Parole Commission and what workload do they have right now,' Phillips said in a recent interview. 'Really having people to be a little more accountable in the process.'
Clippinger said he wants to see action this year on one parole measure that has been reviewed for several years — removing the governor from the medical parole process.
That bill, sponsored since 2022 by Del. J. Sandy Bartlett (D-Anne Arundel), vice chair of the Judiciary committee, will be heard Tuesday by Judiciary. A companion Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George's), was held Feb. 13. The measure passed the Senate last year, but did not get out of Judiciary.
'We want to get the medical piece done this year. We're going to try and make that happen,' Clippinger said, standing near Bartlett.
'We're going to get it done,' Bartlett said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
5 days ago
- CBS News
Baltimore City considers new trial or reduced settlement in opioid case
Baltimore city leaders still have not decided whether they will accept a reduced settlement in the case against two major drug companies, despite an August 8th, 2025, deadline given by a Baltimore City judge. It comes after a jury ruled against the two major drug companies, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, blaming them in large part for the opioid crisis in our city. According to our media partners at the Baltimore Banner, federal drug dispensing data shows the two companies supplied about 60% of the half a billion opioids that flooded Baltimore and Baltimore County between 2006 and 2019. A jury ruled that the two companies contributed to the opioid crisis, punishable by a $266 million settlement. A judge later ruled the jury put too much blame on the companies, and reduced that settlement by about 80 percent, down to $52 million. The city has already reached settlements from other companies totaling $402.5 million, money that has been placed into a restitution fund to fight the crisis. In a July 29th public safety committee hearing, Baltimore City Council member Mark Conway said, "I believe that it is integral to the success of our city on this issue to talk about it openly. That we get folks out of the shadows and some of the difficulties and shames that come with addiction to talk about what we're experiencing in our city, if we're ever to reduce first, the number of people that are overdosing and dying. But then also to break the cycle of addiction." The other option given by the judge is for the city to opt for a new trial. A statement put out by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott in June reads in part, "As the only municipality in the country to secure verdicts against these two companies, which were responsible for the bulk of the opioids flooding into Baltimore, we will continue to fight — just as we have fought for our city every step of the way through this litigation process." "We have received the court's abatement ruling and are considering all options at this time," the mayor's office wrote in a statement. "We remain committed to securing justice for all Baltimore residents disproportionately impacted by the opioids crisis. We will respond in due time in the appropriate judicial forum."
The Hill
6 days ago
- The Hill
In a liberal society, equity is a false idol
Over the last two decades, progressive activists have introduced lots of sententious words and euphemisms into the U.S. political lexicon. Examples include microaggression, intersectionality, cisgender, BIPOC, Latinx, 'the unhoused' (that is, the homeless), returning citizens (ex-convicts) and 'pregnant persons' (formerly 'women'). For those not up to speed on the latest academic conceits and ideological fads, including non-college voters streaming out of the Democratic Party, progressives might as well be speaking Esperanto. They have also infused old words with new meanings. Take 'equity.' Specifically, it means ownership in a house or stocks. But in its new meaning, it is used more generally as a synonym for fairness. Now, it has become a pillar of DEI — the hallowed trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion that defines today's 'social justice' ethos. In this context, 'equity' conveys a demand for something stronger than mere equality. The National Association of Colleges and Employers, an enthusiastic advocate of DEI, parses the difference by defining equity as 'fairness and justice' that is 'distinguished from equality.' 'Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.' After the George Floyd-Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, bureaucracies set up to inculcate DEI spread like kudzu throughout government, colleges and public schools, philanthropies and private companies. Job applicants were taxed with describing how they would endeavor to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in their daily work. Democrats duly clambered aboard the equity express. On his first day in office in 2021, President Biden ordered federal agencies to develop Equity Action Plans to advance 'racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government.' But DEI's reign was brief. Working class voters, across racial lines, saw it at best as a distraction from their struggles with high living costs and worries about immigration and crime, and at worst as a coercive regime set up by self-righteous elites to correct their thoughts and speech. Their antipathy toward progressive moralizing played a significant role in sinking Kamala Harris and the Democrats last year and returning the failed coup plotter, President Trump, to the White House. The president believes he won a mandate to stamp out all vestiges of DEI in America. His minions are firing anyone in the federal government associated with diversity and affirmative action programs. In yet example of executive overreach, Trump also is threatening private colleges, businesses and civic institutions with political retribution if they don't fall in line. How should Democrats respond to this MAGA version of cancel culture? The same way they should have responded to the left-wing original — by standing up unequivocally for liberty of conscience and free speech. But they should also reflect on the ferocity of the public backlash against a sectarian identity politics that subordinates the general welfare to the pursuit of 'equity' for favored groups. Maybe it wasn't such a bright idea for progressives to abandon Martin Luther King's dream of a colorblind society in favor of group preferences, DEI, critical race theory, and related ideas that fragment Americans along lines of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Fixating on the differences between groups makes it impossible to build a broad, center-left alliance, especially when non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, are either left out of the left's hierarchy of victimized groups or assigned the oppressor role. Democrats, however, should reject race essentialism and equity not because they're unpopular, but because they are illiberal. In America's liberal tradition, individuals have inalienable rights and liberties, not groups. That many originally were excluded from equal citizenship is reason to apply these principles universally, not discard them. Liberals from Jefferson to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama also have drawn a clear line between the aspirational goal of equal opportunity and utopian guarantees of equal outcomes. Show me a country that claims to have achieved the latter, and I'll show you a totalitarian society that oppresses its subjects and relies on a privileged class of apparatchiks to rule them. The late sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset (a mentor and friend) identified our native strain of liberal anti-statism as the reason European socialism never took deep root here. Americans, he noted, invested heavily in universal public education to give everyone an even start, while Europeans built welfare states to 'correct' markets' failure to distribute wealth evenly. The Mandarin left deems Europe's social democracy as morally superior to America's liberal democracy. But U.S. working families don't rank reducing inequality as a top economic priority. They're more interested in pro-growth economic policies that generate abundant opportunities for upward mobility, keep inflation and debt down, lower the cost of life's essentials, curb illegal immigration and help them acquire the skills necessary to get ahead in a fast-changing economy. To them, equity connotes elite attempts to rectify past injustices at their expense. Social reform movements in this country succeed when they invoke the liberal universalism of the American creed rather than imported political doctrines like democratic socialism. That's why liberals and Democrats should depose the false idol of equity and rededicate themselves to fighting discrimination in all forms, promoting equal opportunity and advancing the common good. The old rallying cry of Jacksonian democracy still illuminates the way forward: 'Equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none.'
Yahoo
27-07-2025
- Yahoo
These 11 companies have left California over the years
Big companies continue to leave California. Overall, research shows the number of companies leaving is small. But the departures include some of the nation's largest companies. Big companies continue to leave California. Some executives, including Tesla's Elon Musk and Palantir's Alex Karp, have made it abundantly clear why they left. "This is the final straw," Musk wrote on X in 2024 after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that barred school staff from informing parents of a student's gender identity. The number of companies leaving California is small. According to a 2025 report from the Public Policy Institute of California, only 3% of firms in California moved to a different state. However, larger companies are more likely to leave than smaller ones. Outside of businesses, people, too, have been leaving California at a high rate. US Census data from October 2024 showed nearly 700,000 people left California between 2022 and 2023. Lifestyle and affordability were the main factors for moving elsewhere. Company relocations are trending upward. Business Insider compiled some of the biggest names so far. McKesson Corp. Pharmaceutical giant McKesson left California in 2019. In terms of public companies, only Apple loomed larger in the Bay Area. Then-CEO John H. Hammergren said that McKesson was moving its headquarters to Las Colinas, Texas (near Dallas) to "improve efficiency, collaboration and cost-competitiveness, while providing an exceptional work environment for our employees." McKesson remains the highest-ranking Fortune 500 company to leave California in recent years. Chevron Oil giant Chevron had deep roots in California, going back to the 1870s when an early predecessor discovered oil north of Los Angeles. That didn't stop the company from moving to Houston in 2024. Looking back on its move, the energy giant says that California's leaders have taken steps that made it "unappealing." "While our relocation has very real benefits to our business, we also believe California policymakers have pursued policies that raise costs and consumer prices, creating a hardship for all Californians, especially those who can least afford it," Ross Allen, a spokesperson for Chevron, said in a statement to Business Insider. "These policies have also made California investment unappealing compared with opportunities elsewhere in the US and globally." Tesla Like some of his fellow tech CEOs, Elon Musk grew frustrated with the limitations of the Bay area before Tesla left for Austin in 2021. "There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area," Musk said at the time. Before the move, Musk had also clashed with officials over keeping Tesla's Fremont, California, factory open despite COVID-19 orders. Oracle In 2020, Oracle left its longtime home in California. The computer technology giant isn't done moving yet. Last year, CEO Larry Ellison said the computer technology giant would move its headquarters from Austin, where it had been for less than half a decade, to Tennessee. "Nashville is a fabulous place to live," Ellison said, according to an Associated Press report. "It's a great place to raise a family. It's got a unique and vibrant culture .... It's the center of the industry we're most concerned about, which is the health care industry." CBRE Global real estate company CBRE monitors the number of companies leaving California. The firm itself left Los Angeles in 2020. "Designating Dallas as CBRE's global corporate headquarters formalizes how our company has been operating for the past eight years," Lew Horne, head of operations in the Southwest, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times in 2020. Charles Schwab Charles Schwab left for Westlake, Texas, in 2019 after it agreed to buy Omaha-based TD Ameritrade. Schwab chairman and founder Charles Schwab singled out the business climate in California as motivation for the move: "The costs of doing business here are so much higher than some other place" he told Forbes. The companies said in a joint statement that their new home would "allow the combined firm to take advantage of the central location of the new Schwab campus." In 2023, SFGate reported that Schwab further reduced its presence in San Francisco, its former home. "We've had an extremely positive experience in Texas," a spokesperson from Schwab said in a statement to BI. "From day one, the energy, innovation, and welcoming spirit of North Texas has far exceeded our expectations." Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) In 2020, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced it was leaving California, another COVID-19 era departure. "Houston is also an attractive market for us to recruit and retain talent, and a great place to do business," CEO Antonio Neri said in a statement announcing the move. Neri praised HPE's new home in Spring, Texas (a Houston suburb), but stressed that the company was not leaving Silicon Valley entirely. "Our San Jose campus will remain a hub for technological talent and innovation," he said. Palantir Software giant Palantir left Silicon Valley in 2020. Before the tech company moved, CEO Alex Karp said he had concerns about California. "I'm pretty happy outside the monoculture in New Hampshire," Karp told Axios in May 2020 when asked if he would move back to California as the COVID-19 pandemic was receding. Karp said at the time that Palantir was narrowing down its list of future homes, which potentially included Colorado. Palantir has been in Denver since August 2020. SpaceX Elon Musk promised to move SpaceX to Texas in 2024, part of a series of announcements that positioned his companies away from California. In announcing SpaceX's relocation, Musk singled out a California law that forbids schools from requiring staff to inform parents of a student's gender identity. "This is the final straw," Musk wrote on X in July 2024. "Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas." AECOM Global consultancy firm AECOM left Los Angeles in 2021, saying that Texas offered more benefits. "Dallas has emerged as a US hub for corporate headquarters and a compelling corporate talent magnet, particularly among our peers and public companies in the engineering and consulting sectors," a company spokesperson told The LA Times. FICO Financial data analytics firm FICO, officially known as the Fair Isaac Corporation, quietly moved to Bozeman, Montana, sometime in 2021. The company, best known for its FICO score, previously moved its corporate headquarters from Minneapolis to San Jose in 2013. It's not entirely clear why FICO left California. Read the original article on Business Insider
