Commerce Wrote In. They Were Right.
November 10, 2026
The Maryland Department of Commerce wrote in about my piece last week, the one about Matthew Cimino and the money now sitting at Commerce. Daniel Leaderman, their senior communications manager, said I got two things wrong. He was right about both.
So here is the correction, in full, in its own piece. I make mistakes. I will keep making them. What I will not do is bury them.
The Biotech Bill That Wasn’t
Last week I wrote that SB 247 converted the Biotechnology Investment Incentive Tax Credit into a straight grant program inside Commerce, a 10 million dollar fund, effective July 1. That is not what happened. The bill never became law.
Here is the history. Senator Pamela Beidle’s bill passed the Senate 42 to nothing in February. It went to the House, and the House passed it 111 to 20, with amendments, on April 13, the last day of session. Then it went back to the Senate, and the Senate never concurred in the House changes. The bill died. The cross-file, Delegate Mark Chang’s HB 400, never got out of the House Ways and Means Committee.
So the credit is still a credit. It is a refundable tax credit, 10 million dollars for the fiscal 2027 cycle, first come, first served through the online queue that opened September 1. The conversion is a live idea for January. It is not law.
How did I get it wrong? I checked the bill against the fiscal note, and the fiscal note describes what a bill would do as if it had already happened. I read that as proof the bill passed. It is not proof of anything except what the sponsors wanted. The check I should have done, the one I did after Commerce wrote in, is the bill’s history, to the very end. Concurrence, chapter number, governor’s signature. I will not make that mistake twice.
The Gatekeeper Who Isn’t
The second thing I got wrong is the word in the headline. I called Cimino the gatekeeper. I meant it as a description of the job he actually holds: Managing Director of Policy and Government Affairs, the policy and government-relations front door to the money Commerce now holds. Commerce says that goes too far, and on the mechanics they are right. Cimino does not have the rank or the authority to decide how the department’s business assistance money is spent. The Secretary and Commerce’s finance and business-attraction professionals build the incentive packages and approve them. Cimino does not sign the checks.
I will keep the part that is true. He is the front door. That is his title, that is his portfolio, and he came to the job through the strategic-industries side, which means he knows the sectors the money is aimed at. But the sentences in my piece that made his shop sound like the choke point for the money overstated it. The path to the money runs through Commerce, and inside Commerce the money decisions sit with the Secretary and the finance and business-attraction teams. Cimino frames the policy and runs the government relations. That is the correction.
None of the rest of the piece was disputed, and it stands. The DECADE Act moved the Sunny Day Fund into Commerce as the Strategic Closing Fund. Build Our Future put out roughly 7 million dollars across 11 grants in June. The department’s fiscal 2027 budget is 267.2 million dollars. The consolidation is real. What was wrong was the biotech paragraph and the reach of the gatekeeper line, and both are corrected here.
Here’s the Deal
I am writing this as its own piece for a reason. A correction buried at the bottom of the old piece is a correction nobody reads. If you are going to tell your readers you got something wrong, tell them plainly, tell them what was wrong, and tell them what is right instead.
That is the deal I am offering, to Commerce and to everybody else who reads this. I will make mistakes. When you find one, tell me, and I will correct it in the open. A publisher who corrects his mistakes is a publisher you can talk to. A publisher who buries them is one you stop calling. I would rather be the first kind.
Mr. Leaderman also said to call the communications team next time I have a question about a Commerce program. I will take him up on that. It is a fair offer, and the next time I write about Commerce’s money, I intend to have talked to the people who run it first.
That is the correction. If you see something wrong in something I wrote, tell me.