Home monitoring program to restart

The program to fund home monitoring devices for low-income Marylanders pretrial that abruptly ended in mid-February is set to restart Monday, officials confirmed Thursday.

According to Brad Tanner, a spokesman for the judiciary, all defendants who participated in the program prior to its cancellation on Feb. 16 will be covered.

Tanner said the program is anticipated to run through June 30, 2025.

“They’re going to reenroll everyone that was enrolled, and then be able to take new folks, as well, so it’s good news,” said Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith.

The program, introduced under a 2021 bill and funded by federal dollars Maryland received under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, ended with little warning in February. Judge John P. Morrissey, chief judge of Maryland’s District Court, told a Senate subcommittee last week that the judiciary was aware that funding was near to running dry as far back as December 2023.

Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, publicly criticized the judiciary for its lack of communication with the legislature, which is responsible for negotiating and passing the state budget during Maryland’s 90-day legislative session. The Senate president also said he’d be checking in with the judiciary’s spending habits.

Sen. Sarah Elfreth, an Anne Arundel County Democrat, said last week that the judiciary habitually returns around $5 million in unspent budgeted funds to the state every year. Ferguson asserted that a portion of that excess could be utilized to keep the program running.

In a text to The Baltimore Sun Thursday afternoon, Elfreth said she’s hoping to have a better sense of future funding for the program next week, when the Senate moves the state budget.

Ferguson said Tuesday that he had spoken with officials from the judiciary about the program, and that they were working in partnership to resolve discrepancies about language in the law stating that only federal funds would continue the services.

A letter sent Thursday to Maryland Supreme Court Justice Matthew J. Fader from House Appropriations Committee Chair Ben Barnes and Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chair Guy Guzzone, both of whom are Democrats, read that the General Assembly “never intended to prohibit the judiciary from using its own general or special funds to supplement the Program.”

“I feel confident that we’re all closer to the same page,” he said.

According to Smith, the judiciary will fund the program when it is up and running again, and that the legislature will “find a permanent stopgap” to continue it down the line. His committee will hear a bill this session that would establish a task force to recommend options for oversight for the program.

“I’m confident that we’ll find a permanent fix,” Smith said.