TREASURER DAVIS’ BANDWIDTH PROBLEM: WHY IS HIS CHIEF DEPUTY TREASURER RUNNING STATE RETIREMENT AGENCY AND STATE TREASURER’S OFFICE AT THE SAME TIME—TWO JOBS, NEARLY $100 BILLION AND ALMOST ONE YEAR LATER?
In February 2025, Treasurer Dereck Davis’ own office told Maryland lawmakers that the Maryland 529 transfer had “significantly added to STO’s workload” and that only a handful of employees had the “experience and capacity” to serve as the Treasurer’s designees. Seven months later, Chief Deputy Treasurer Jonathan Martin took on something considerably larger: running the State Retirement Agency. Almost one year later, he still holds both roles.
Two consequential State roles.
One senior executive.
Nearly $100 billion in pension and StStateate investment assets across the two institutions.
Almost one year.
And one question created by the Treasurer’s Office’s own testimony:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BANDWIDTH PROBLEM?
In February 2025, the Maryland State Treasurer’s Office went to the General Assembly making an unusually candid case about workload and executive capacity.
STO explained that the General Assembly’s 2023 decision to abolish the Maryland 529 Board and transfer the programs to the Treasurer had expanded its responsibilities considerably.
The office told legislators that integrating Maryland 529 and addressing the program’s existing problems had:
“significantly added to STO’s workload.”
Then came the sentence that takes on considerably greater significance today:
“Only a handful of STO employees have the experience and capacity to serve as designees for the Treasurer.”
The office explained that these responsibilities went far beyond attending meetings. Experienced STO employees had to coordinate briefings, collect background information, work with agencies and public officials, and prepare the Treasurer for discussions and votes.
And STO identified the Treasurer’s two most time-consuming board responsibilities: the Board of Public Works and the Board of Trustees of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System.
The office was literally asking lawmakers to remove the Treasurer from another responsibility so staff could devote working time elsewhere.
That was February 2025.
Seven months later, Davis’ Chief Deputy Treasurer took on another job.
Not a commission seat.
Not another board assignment.
Not an advisory committee.
Not an occasional designation.
ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE STATE RETIREMENT AGENCY.
SRA says Martin began serving as Acting Executive Director on September 9, 2025.
And he never stopped being Chief Deputy Treasurer.
So What Happened to the Bandwidth Argument?
This is where the governance question becomes difficult to ignore.
The State Treasurer’s Office describes the Chief Deputy Treasurer as the executive who “coordinates and leads the operations” of STO.
Those responsibilities include Budget and Financial Administration, Treasury Management, Debt Management, Insurance, Information Technology and Maryland 529.
The Chief Deputy also advises Davis on legislative policy, planning, technology, long-term operational challenges, opportunities and strategy while coordinating operational functions with other State agencies.
That is Martin’s regular job.
SRA’s own biography goes even further, saying Martin “leads the day-to-day management of the State Treasurer’s Office and its nine divisions.”
So Martin’s STO responsibilities were hardly disappearing.
Maryland 529 had been added.
STO itself said the transfer had significantly increased its workload.
STO itself said experienced staff capacity was limited.
STO itself sought relief from additional board responsibilities.
And then its principal operational executive took responsibility for running SRA.
That produces a question that does not require speculation about anyone’s motives:
If bandwidth mattered when the General Assembly wanted another board responsibility, how did the Chief Deputy have the bandwidth to run SRA?
And almost a year later:
Why does he still have to?
This Isn’t About Whether Martin Is Qualified
Martin’s résumé is not the problem.
He is plainly experienced.
He spent years at Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services and later worked at DBM’s Office of Budget Analysis. His official biography says he has more than 20 years of experience in State government finance and operations.
He became Chief Deputy Treasurer in 2022.
No credible public evidence identified in this review establishes professional misconduct by Martin.
That actually makes the governance question cleaner.
This isn’t:
Can Jon Martin do important work?
Clearly he can.
The question is:
Why does Maryland apparently believe he needs to do so much of it?
One Man. Two Major Fiscal Institutions.
Martin isn’t merely advising SRA.
He is its Acting Executive Director.
Meanwhile, he remains Chief Deputy Treasurer.
SRA’s current organizational structure identifies Martin as Acting Executive Director and Derrick Johnson as Deputy Executive Director.
And official 2026 SRA records continue documenting Martin performing the Acting Executive Director role.
That means the same executive whom SRA says leads STO’s day-to-day management is simultaneously responsible for leading the State Retirement Agency.
Temporary cross-agency assignments happen.
Emergency stabilization happens.
But duration matters.
September 9, 2025 was almost one year ago.
At some point, an emergency solution becomes a succession question.
And SRA Already Has a Deputy Executive Director
That makes the arrangement still more worthy of explanation.
SRA has its own executive infrastructure.
Its current organizational chart places Derrick Johnson, Deputy Executive Director, immediately beneath Martin.
The Board was under no obligation to elevate Johnson. And there may have been perfectly legitimate reasons for choosing Martin.
Perhaps the Board needed Martin’s particular fiscal experience.
Perhaps the circumstances surrounding former Executive Director Martin Noven’s departure required an executive whom Davis and other trustees already knew.
Perhaps Martin was simply considered the best available person to stabilize the institution.
Those possibilities could explain why Martin could have been chosen temporarily.
They do not explain why Maryland should remain dependent upon him almost a year later.
Where Is the Search?
And here the public record becomes particularly interesting.
At the November 18, 2025 SRA Board meeting, the official minutes record:
“A question was asked regarding initiating a search for an executive director…”
Martin advised the Board that the issue would be discussed at its December meeting.
That was nine months ago.
Yet as of August 2026, SRA’s official organizational materials continue identifying Martin as Acting Executive Director.
Compare that with what SRA did the last time it needed a permanent Executive Director.
In 2021, SRA announced that it had conducted a nationwide search through Denver-based EFL Associates.
That search resulted in Martin Noven being selected as permanent Executive Director, effective July 1, 2021.
Maryland therefore already has a blueprint.
Search.
Recruit.
Interview.
Select.
Transition.
Executive-search firms exist precisely because sophisticated organizations should not have to depend indefinitely on the people already standing inside their immediate circle.
SRA did it before.
It can do it again.
Which makes the question unavoidable:
Why hasn’t it?
And This Is Where Maryland 529 Matters
The Maryland 529 history is important here—but it needs to be presented accurately.
Dereck Davis did not create the underlying Maryland 529 problem.
The Prepaid College Trust’s problems predated Davis becoming Treasurer in December 2021.
A 2019 State audit had already identified problems with oversight and recordkeeping, and the dispute over how earnings should be credited had roots preceding Davis’ tenure.
That distinction matters.
But there is another distinction that matters just as much:
A leader does not have to create a problem to become responsible for how leadership responds once the problem becomes known.
Davis became Treasurer—and therefore an ex officio member of the Maryland 529 Board—in December 2021.
Martin became Davis’ Chief Deputy in 2022.
And during that period, the Maryland 529 problem did not quietly disappear.
It snowballed.
Then Maryland 529 Blew Up
By January 2023, the problem had escaped the boardroom and landed squarely before the Maryland General Assembly.
Parents said they could not access all the money they expected from their Prepaid College Trust accounts.
Lawmakers were furious.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Ben Barnes declared during the January 19 hearing:
“We’re gravely concerned about what we are seeing at Maryland 529.”
He then made the governance implications explicit, telling Maryland 529 officials that legislators were considering whether “we need some big changes.”
Members of two House committees grilled Maryland 529 officials for nearly an hour. House Speaker Adrienne Jones sat in on the proceeding.
Lawmakers heard about poor communications.
Missed deadlines.
Families taking out loans.
Families using tuition payment plans.
Families tapping retirement accounts.
And confusion over how people harmed by the situation would be compensated.
The political fallout was immediate.
Maryland 529 Board Chair Peter Tsirigotis resigned the next day, following what The Washington Post described as withering criticism from lawmakers.
This was no longer an internal administrative problem.
It had become a public governance crisis.
Davis Didn’t Create the Problem. But Leadership Still Had to Answer for It.
This is where criticism of Davis should be precise.
The historical record does not support saying that Davis created the underlying 529 crisis.
Nor does the evidence reviewed here establish that Davis or Martin deliberately allowed it to worsen.
But by 2022–23, Davis occupied a seat on the governing Board while the controversy escalated.
And by February 2023, Davis himself was publicly discussing the possibility that the General Assembly would abolish the existing structure and transfer Maryland 529 to his office.
He told legislators that if they did so, they needed to give him the resources necessary to succeed.
By March, Davis was asking for staffing, budget resources and patience as lawmakers considered the transfer.
The leadership lesson is therefore subtler—and more consequential—than simply assigning blame.
Davis inherited the problem.
He did not cause its origins.
But it nevertheless became a major public crisis while he was part of the governing structure.
And eventually the legislature decided the governance structure itself needed to go.
The General Assembly Didn’t Just Complain. It Abolished the Board.
The General Assembly’s response was extraordinary.
Senate Bill 959 expressly abolished the Maryland 529 Board, made the State Treasurer its successor and transferred administration of the Maryland 529 Program to STO.
Governor Wes Moore signed the legislation.
The transfer became effective June 1, 2023.
The Washington Post reported that lawmakers had criticized Maryland 529 during hearings for poor communication with families, dismissiveness toward financial harm and failure to meet deadlines.
The legislature’s answer was structural:
End the Board.
Transfer the programs.
Put the Treasurer in charge.
When STO assumed control, Davis was explicit about where accountability now rested:
“The buck starts and stops with me.”
And Davis subsequently did take consequential action. In July 2023, he announced that affected prepaid accounts would receive a retroactive 6% earnings rate, providing significant relief to account holders.
That part of the record belongs in any fair assessment too.
But Fixing 529 Came With a Price: Bandwidth
This is where the story returns to February 2025.
STO had warned lawmakers in 2023 that absorbing Maryland 529 would require resources.
Its written testimony said the office then had only 63 employees and laid out the staffing and technology implications of taking over the programs.
Two years later, STO confirmed what had happened.
The 529 transfer had “significantly added” to its workload.
Only a handful of employees possessed the “experience and capacity” necessary to serve as the Treasurer’s designees.
And one of the Treasurer’s most time-consuming existing responsibilities was already SRA.
Then seven months later, Davis’ Chief Deputy became the executive running SRA itself.
That isn’t an allegation.
It’s a timeline.
And the timeline deserves an explanation.
Is Maryland’s Fiscal Leadership Becoming Too Insular?
There is no evidence presented here that Davis and Martin are hiding wrongdoing.
There is no evidence presented here that Martin’s dual service is inherently unlawful.
And there is no evidence that SRA is experiencing anything comparable to the Maryland 529 financial controversy.
Those distinctions are important.
But legality is not the only measure of good governance.
Governance also involves succession.
Distribution of authority.
Independent perspectives.
Institutional resilience.
Checks and balances.
And avoiding excessive dependence on individual executives.
Consider the structure.
Davis is Treasurer.
Martin is Davis’ Chief Deputy.
Martin leads STO’s day-to-day management.
Davis chairs the SRA Board.
Martin became SRA’s Acting Executive Director.
SRA has a Deputy Executive Director.
The Board discussed initiating an Executive Director search in November.
Yet almost a year after Martin’s appointment, he remains Acting Executive Director while continuing as Chief Deputy Treasurer.
None of that proves favoritism or improper motive.
But it does make the structure unusually concentrated.
And it raises a legitimate question:
Why does so much institutional responsibility keep flowing through the same small circle?
What Does This Say About Treasurer Davis’ Governance?
There is a charitable explanation.
Davis trusts Martin.
Martin has extensive State fiscal experience.
SRA needed immediate stability.
The Board had someone available who understood Maryland government, budgeting and finance and could walk into the position quickly.
That could be perfectly sound crisis management.
But crisis management has an expiration date.
Eventually, temporary stabilization becomes succession planning.
And after Maryland 529, Davis has particular reason to understand the consequences when governance problems remain unresolved until the legislature and public begin demanding answers.
The question isn’t whether Davis caused Maryland 529.
He didn’t.
The question is what lesson Maryland’s fiscal leadership took from it.
Because good governance isn’t merely finding someone capable of carrying two enormous responsibilities.
Good governance also means building institutions that don’t need one person to carry them.
And What Does This Say About Martin’s Executive Judgment?
There is a legitimate question for Martin too.
His official responsibilities include advising Davis about long-term operational challenges, opportunities and strategies.
Capacity is an operational challenge.
Succession is an operational challenge.
Executive bandwidth is an operational challenge.
And organizational resilience is an operational challenge.
Martin accepting the SRA position temporarily does not establish poor judgment.
But the longer the arrangement continues, the more reasonable another question becomes:
At what point does a senior executive conclude that two major jobs should have two dedicated executives?
That question should be answered based on performance and organizational needs—not speculation.
But it deserves an answer.
The Nearly $100 Billion Question
And then there is scale.
As of April 30, 2026, the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System reported a pension fund size of approximately $80.6 billion.
STO’s FY2025 Annual Report says its General Fund investment portfolio ended June 30, 2025 at approximately $18.821 billion. In fact, all portfolios actively managed by STO totaled approximately $20.17 billion.
Using the narrower General Fund figure produces approximately:
$80.6 BILLION + $18.821 BILLION = $99.421 BILLION.
That does not mean Martin personally manages $99.4 billion.
Investment authority and responsibility are distributed among boards, professional investment staff, managers and other State officials.
But it demonstrates the scale of the two institutions in which Martin now occupies pivotal executive positions.
Two jobs.
One executive.
Nearly $100 billion across the two institutions.
Almost one year.
And an office that months earlier told the General Assembly that its workload had significantly increased and experienced staff capacity was limited.
Maryland 529 Should Be the Warning—Not the Accusation
There is presently no evidence that SRA is another Maryland 529.
That isn’t the argument.
Maryland 529 is the governance warning.
It demonstrated how an internal administrative problem can become a public controversy.
It demonstrated how frustrated families can become frustrated legislators.
It demonstrated what happens when lawmakers lose confidence in a governance structure.
And ultimately, the General Assembly didn’t merely demand another report.
It abolished the Board.
That experience should make Maryland’s fiscal leadership more sensitive to unusual governance arrangements—not less.
Nobody needs to wait for a crisis before asking basic questions.
Why is Martin still doing both jobs?
How is his time divided between STO and SRA?
What analysis determined that he possesses sufficient capacity for both?
What safeguards ensure STO receives the full executive attention its responsibilities require?
What safeguards ensure SRA does too?
Why wasn’t SRA’s existing executive infrastructure used for the extended interim period?
What happened after the November 2025 discussion about initiating a permanent Executive Director search?
Has a nationwide search been launched?
If not, why not?
And if Martin is considered the best permanent candidate, why not conduct a competitive process and resolve the question?
Those aren’t accusations of corruption.
They are governance questions.
And Maryland’s own public records make them reasonable questions to ask.
The Question Treasurer Davis’ Own Testimony Leaves Behind
Maryland 529 made STO bigger.
Maryland 529 made STO busier.
STO told lawmakers the transfer had “significantly added” to its workload.
STO said only a handful of employees possessed sufficient “experience and capacity.”
STO sought relief from another board responsibility.
That was February 2025.
Seven months later, its Chief Deputy Treasurer became Acting Executive Director of SRA.
Almost a year later, he remains both.
So Maryland’s fiscal leadership should answer the question created by its own words:
IF BANDWIDTH MATTERED WHEN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY WANTED TO ADD ANOTHER RESPONSIBILITY, WHY DOESN’T BANDWIDTH MATTER WHEN THE ASSIGNMENT IS RUNNING THE STATE RETIREMENT AGENCY?
Sources
Primary government records include the Maryland General Assembly February 2025 STO testimony on workload and staff capacity; STO’s March 2023 testimony concerning resources required to absorb Maryland 529; SB 959, the Maryland 529 reform legislation; SRA’s official Jonathan Martin biography; SRA’s November 18, 2025 Board minutes discussing an Executive Director search; SRA’s announcement describing its 2021 nationwide Executive Director search; SRA’s current organizational structure; SRA’s current pension-fund information; STO’s official description of the Chief Deputy Treasurer’s responsibilities; and STO’s FY2025 Annual Report.
Contemporaneous reporting consulted includes The Washington Post’s January 2023 report on the Maryland 529 legislative hearing; The Washington Post’s report on the abolition and transfer of Maryland 529; The Washington Post’s June 2023 interview with Treasurer Davis; Maryland Matters’ coverage of Davis seeking resources for the 529 transition; and Maryland Matters’ coverage of the General Assembly’s move to abolish the Maryland 529 Board.
These are both agencies that are responsible for the money Marylanders plan to use to realize their: hopes, dreams, goals, and plans.