05/12/2026
Here are Liz Walsh’s answers to HCCA 9 questions for County Executive Candidates.
1. What do you feel makes you stand out compared to your opponents, and how would you implement the experience and qualities you could bring to the position? Please include your most timely plans you have for new legislation or plans for the County.
1. Uncompromising Independence. I am the only Executive candidate in this race who does not take money from special interests. Not one cent. Not in $300 increments under public financing limitations. Not in $6,000 checks from the business-as-usual land-use LLCs and lawyers. Never have. Never will. I am not for sale. I do not owe favors. I serve—exclusively and always—the public good.
2. Legislative Record. Look what I’ve advanced and alreadyaccomplished over nearly eight years’ local public serviceas confirmation of what further I will do as Executive. For our schools and green spaces, for housing affordability, andfor workers’ rights and human dignity. For good governance and transparency. For a gold-standard Office of the Inspector General.
Look what I vote against: a sprawling, 1200-unit Ericksondevelopment, to be built beyond existing water and sewerlines, on top of a Patuxent River headwater, withoutpossibility of a single affordable home; a ten-year general land-use plan that hardly changes the free-for-all of the planbefore it: build in whatever you want, profiteers, whereveryou want to.
3. Land-Use Expertise. I first got involved in local government because of land-use policy gone so wrong in old Ellicott City, my hometown. As a civil engineer-turned-construction attorney, I could read the developers’submitted plans, I could find applicable local and State laws. And I knew that none of those clear-and-scrape projects up in the hills around me complied. It was madness. It still is. What DPZ doesn’t rubber-stamp still can be obtained by appeal to a three-person-majority on the Board of Appeals that remains—steadfastly—untethered by fact or law or reason. On behalf of my constituency and before even I first was elected, I’ve taken part in or observed many, many land-use hearings before the Board of Appeals, Planning Board, Historic Preservation Commission and the Hearing Examiner.
Local government is land use. And land use is everything: schools, trees, flooding, electrification, affordability, jobs, taxes. Everything.
4. Local Budget Expertise. In my second term particularly, my Council District office dug deep into the County’s $2B annual budget/audit cycle. We met extensively with HCPSS budget administrators, Board of Education members, the County’s Department of Finance, the County’s outsideauditor, and outgoing Administration representatives. All to solve the seeming riddle of why can’t we seem to fund our schools’ basic needs, year after year after year. We confirmed—not deficits, or zeroing out of accounts, or even just barely squeaking by, but rather—end-of-year surpluses, often vast. In seven years, the County’s general fund balance had ballooned from $141M to $393M, even while prior years’ surplus fund spending also ballooned—from FY21 through FY26, cumulatively nearly $560M. That is, over the same several years that the County amassed an additional $252M in general fund balance, the outgoing Administration also spent down from that same balance by more than half a billion dollars. For the last two fiscal years, I’ve persuaded a supermajority of the Council to reclaim and deliver back to HCPSS those annual surpluses. To fix our ailing schools buildings. In Fiscal Year 2027 alone, that means an extra $38M to address so many, many different schools’ needs, for water heater and generatorreplacements, roof and HVAC repairs, and fire system updates.
As County Executive, my immediate plan is to—from the very top, down—re-dedicate our local government to public service. We will steadfastly serve the public good, not bend to the will of the profiteers we are supposed to be regulating. My Department of Planning and Zoning will actually, pro-actively plan. My Department of Housing will actually house people.
2. How do you see Hoco by Design being implemented? Specifically, which zoning and land use changes do you see having to be made to implement it?
I was the only vote against the new general plan. To me, it was no different than the last other than 1) the vaguely defined andsited “activity centers” and 2) the Elkridge “Civic District.”
Conceptually, activity centers make sense: infill residential development throughout the overvast parking lots that encircle our older shopping centers.
The Elkridge “Civic District” originally was proposed to be one of those activity centers—even though that particular arealacked any existing retail. That is, the new plan proposed even more of highest-density residential posing as mixed-use to be jammed in along Route 1. No public amenities except the undersized Elkridge Library and 50+ Center across Route 1. No green space. No thank you.
I filed Amendment 1 to that latest general plan after significant discussion with DPZ and the outgoing Administration. We ultimately agreed that that area would be better if re-designatedfor purely civic uses, like a high school, or open space, or a community center. Amendment 1 passed unanimously; the County purchased a collection of properties there soon afterwards; and Elkridge—finally—will have a Community and 50+ Center as part of that Elkridge Civic District by 2028.
3. How will you ensure that the roles of all entities involved in “Columbia Governance” are clearly defined so that Columbia’s redevelopment moves forward in a clear, consistent and transparent way and reflects the original vision of the planned community.
Note: Most recently the “New Town Task Force” has met for a year without any input from the Columbia Association and Howard Hughes so we are no nearer to defining “Columbia Governance.”
I strongly believe that the decades-long chokehold Howard Hughes claims across the entirety of Downtown Columbia—and much beyond—may no longer be legally enforceable. It’s stifledcompetition within local real estate and led to soaring pricing of rental homes, particularly. I also strongly believe it’s time to re-examine the 2016 Development Rights and ResponsibilitiesAgreement applicable to Downtown Columbia. And, at some point, I imagine the County will have to address seeming continuing breaches of fiduciary duty owed its membership by the Columbia Association, dating back to a potentially disastrous stream restoration/funding scheme through very recent reveal of a highly redacted, highly generous five-year CEO agreement.
As noted above, as County Executive, my Department of Planning and Zoning will regulate in service to the public good, not Howard Hughes’ or others’ profit. We will adhere to and enforce the law. We will proactively plan for and execute the betterment of our community at large.
4. The Aging in Place Tax credit has a 10 year limit on it. Would you seek to eliminate that limit? Also, what are your high priorities for immediate action in the Howard County Age-Friendly Action Plan?
Yes. We have to figure out a way to allow our elders to age in place without pricing them out of their own homes by assessing even the same rate of property tax on an increasingly higher assessed property value, plus other fees. Whether that’s simply eliminating the existing ten-year limit on existing aging-in-placecredits, folding eligible properties into land trust exemptions, or likely something more, will be the subject of my Administration’s thorough and definitive analysis.
I see three key priorities for keeping our aging population here, engaged and thriving: 1) Affordable housing—whether not getting taxed out of a family home, or more downsizing and/or more accessible options in County; 2) Transportation; and 3)50+ programming. In the last six months, I know of at least three abrupt, heartbreaking cancellations of beloved senior care: the Compass program in Glenwood, for dementia and memory loss; the Rock Steady Boxing program in East Columbia, for Parkinson’s, and Tai Chi, also in East Columbia.
My Administration will enhance not eliminate each of these three key priorities. My Office of Aging will expand our elders’ access to low-cost transportation, social gatherings, personal grooming and health and fitness options, preventative medicine and prescriptions, and group memory and mental health care. That same Office of Aging will dedicate personnel to proactively find and check in on our most at-risk elders, whether veterans, with disabilities, or otherwise, where they are. My Department of Agriculture will assist in improving the not-always-so-great food quality and availability at every 50+ center.
5. Do you support a strong APFO? Please be specific, andnote your position on the main issues recommended by the most recent County APFO Review Committee. Please note how you would balance "missing middle" and "increasing housing supplies" such as with the ADU legislation, and retaining open space, and balancing infrastructure.
Yes. In my first term, I advanced legislation to strengthen the APFO schools test both before and after comprehensive schools redistricting by the Board of Education. Voting that bill down the first time, District 3 indicated that she would support the same legislation after the Board redistricted. She did not in fact support the re-filed legislation after the Board redistricted. The “related documents” file for my second attempt at that schoolsovercrowding remedy—CB1-2020–includes DPZ’s assessmentthat actual wait times averaged significantly less than the statutorily prescribed duration of five years. After “waiting” just two years, most developments were permitted to build in without regard to whether or how much the schools they fed into had space to receive new children.
I would include, additionally, hospital capacity to strengthenAPFO. I have no interest in weakening it.
6. How would you implement prioritizing school budget funding?
We have the revenues already to pay for what we should—schools especially—even as the State has pushed down to local government more and more unfunded mandates. As County Executive, I will ensure that the County’s Office of Budget honestly projects our overall annual revenues and expenditures. For my last seven years in office, the outgoing Administration hasn’t—not before the pandemic shutdown, not during, and not since.
And as Executive, I will work with the Schools Superintendent and the Board of Education to identify and address multi-year operational funding needs. We will do the same to as expeditiously as possible address schools’ near $200M maintenance and repair backlog.
7. When will your constituents see enactment for the long overdue Comprehensive Zoning, APFO updating and the Development Regulations Assessment refer to -https://www.howardcountymd.gov/planning-zoning/development-regulation-assessment to be used to revise the Zoning Code?
Promptly, lawfully, fairly, and in service to the people who live here? Right after you elect me Executive
8. Are you using public financing (CEF) for your campaign? Why or why not?
Of course I am a publicly financed candidate, now in the second election cycle that the County’s Citizens’ Election Fund has been available. Even before there were matching funds from public financing, in my first race in 2018, I did not accept contributions from corporations, LLCs, PACs, or their affiliated donor networks. And I am the only Executive candidate in this race who is not taking money from special interests. I am 100% uncompromised.��I do not take money from landowner/developers seeking plan approvals—like Howard Hughes, Waverly, H&H Rock, Security Development, Costello, or Elm Street Development. Not from those entities proposing redevelopment of the Long Reach Village Center. Not from Erickson in Clarksville. Not from any of the beneficiaries of the special deals and laws this County already has doled out to the owner/operators of Merriweather Post Pavilion, Turf Valley, Doughoregan Manor, Manor Hill Brewery and Savage Stone. Not from any of those entities’ principals, and not from those principals’ own family members. And not from the three or four land-use attorneys and lobbyists who represent them. ��I have seen first-hand the corrupting force of special interest donors on every aspect of local land-use policy and decision-making. And, in local government, land use is everything.��Public financing is why we now have competitive primaries. No longer the singular criteria for our Democratic Executive and Council nominees is who has amassed the most cash from the profiteers. It's our first chance in a long time to elect a County Executive who will prioritize our public good over donor profits.
9. In 2024, Howard County voters approved a Charter Amendment to create an independent Office of Inspector General (OIG). Council Bills were passed, to bring this important office to our county. How will you ensure this office remains fully funded and politically independent during your administration?
A gold-standard Office of Inspector General was my singular planned legislative agenda in my second term. I had promised as much in my 2022 re-election campaign. And I was on the right side of a 3-2 Council amendment vote to keep that office independent not just from Executive influence, but also Councilwhen my bill finally passed.
Of course, I was delighted at the Commission’s hiring of the County’s first IG—finally—in January 2026. But, as part of the Council’s ongoing review of this fiscal year’s proposed budget, we heard from that new office that the IG still does not have requested access neither to the various digital platforms that the County generally employs, nor that only certain Departments do. I subsequently confirmed directly with the Department of Planning and Zoning which specific platforms that should include. And I have proposed to my Council colleagues that we condition our approval of some relevant part of this year’s budget on the IG’s immediate, unfettered—albeit read-only—access to the entirety of the County’s electronic resources. As we already had mandated by Code. In the meantime, I have also advised that the IG take affirmative measure to prevent the destruction or loss of any communication and other documentsbelonging to recently departed high-level Administrative staff.
As County Executive, I will continue to ensure that this vital part of good government is fully funded by deferring to recommendation of the advisory board. Very likely, that funding recommendation will include pay for additional investigating personnel as that office builds out in the coming years. And I will ensure that office’s continuing political independence by supporting legislation in Annapolis—as attempted unsuccessfully this year—to mandate certain disclosures and access to duly investigating IGs as a matter of State law.
