The Baltimore County Council will expand. Here’s what you should know.
Rona Kobell
The Baltimore Banner
November 8, 2024
Process will take years and cost several million dollars
On Tuesday, Baltimore County voters overwhelmingly agreed to expand the County Council from seven members to nine, ending decades of debate over how large the council should be and how it could best represent the increasingly diverse county.
The change to the county’s charter amendment capped off what County Council Chair Izzy Patoka has long called a “historic moment” on which he campaigned and worked tirelessly to bring to fruition. Patoka routinely criticized a governmental body that he said was “parked in 1956″ in terms of its makeup.
The council is all male and nearly all white, with one Black representative, Julian Jones, who presides over a district carved out about two decades ago to serve the county’s growing Black community. Since the county established the council eight decades ago, Jones has been one of only two Black representatives, with both he and former councilman Ken Oliver, who served from 2002 to 2014, coming from the same district. The county has only had five female members, all of whom were white.
The two additional seats won’t be on the ballot until November 2026. Here’s what to know:
1. The Council has to sort out the maps
Normally, when a legislative body redraws political lines, the process takes years and involves multiple public hearings. Not so for the Baltimore County Council. Members and their staffs drew the maps among themselves, dividing the county’s more than 850,000 residents into nine districts containing about 95,000 each, as opposed to the current 122,000 per district. Patoka engaged in what he called “shuttle diplomacy” to retain the bipartisan balance of the council, which now has four Democrats and three Republicans, and will likely have a 5-4 split under the new maps.
Councilman Wade Kach, a Republican, added an amendment to the map. Many Democratic legislators and two Democratic councilmen complained about both the resulting maps and the process of making them. But Patoka has said repeatedly that without Republican support, the bill would not have passed, and that he could not get their support without maps that retained their representation. The maps stayed.
“Not only did Baltimore County voters support a historic change to the council, but also redistricting reform,” said Republican Councilman David Marks, who represents Perry Hall. “This validates our bipartisan bill and repudiates those partisan activists and state legislators who attacked us throughout the summer.”
Marks said not to look for those public hearings anytime soon. The council’s current priority is to name an interim county executive before Johnny Olszewski Jr., a Democrat who has held the job since 2018, heads to Congress in January.
2. Public financing available
In his first month in office, Olszewski established a system for public funding for county elections to bring in more diverse candidates. It’s still unclear how much will be available, but the public financing system is scheduled to be up and running by 2026, when the two new seats will be on the ballot.
“In 2026, there will be a perfect storm of opportunity for people of color and women to gain elected office in Baltimore County,” Patoka said. “With the expansion and the public financing in place, the County Council can better reflect the demographics of Baltimore County.”
3. More than 2 seats will be up for grabs
Besides the two additional seats, interested council candidates may have other opportunities. Patoka and Jones have indicated they plan to run for county executive in 2026. Kach is retiring. Pat Young, a Democrat who represents Catonsville, has said he’s also interested in running for the county’s top job.
4. Making room for 2 new council members.
County officials calculated that two new council members would increase the operating costs by about $1.4 million. Renovating the council office to accommodate new council members will cost $12 million over four years based on a $7000-per-square-foot construction rate. There may be additional costs, but council operations remain a fraction of a percent of the county’s $2.7 billion general fund budget.
5. Diverse candidates won’t necessarily run, or win
Several of the white male councilmen serving now ran against either a woman or a Black candidate in their primaries or general elections, and still won. Whether or not women or members of the county’s growing Hispanic, Indian or Black communities decide to run will depend on many factors.
Kathleen Beadell, a well-known real estate agent, planned to run for Kach’s seat representing the northern district; she declined when Del. Nino Mangione announced he would seek the position. Shafiyq Hinton, a Middle River community activist who narrowly lost to Democrat Councilman Mike Ertel to represent the Towson district, said he was disheartened that the proposed council expansion passed with what he considered flawed maps. Once voters see the final map, he predicted, they will feel “bamboozled.”
He’s currently not planning to run again, unless the map changes. “You have no interest in running a race that you know you are highly likely to use.”