Wired Maryland 10/05/2026 NOTES & MEDIA ROUNDUP
Quick reads, lateral moves, and verified news from around the Free State.
CVS and Walmart pharmacists are cold-calling Marylanders about flu shots
If your phone rang this week and the caller ID showed your local retail pharmacist — an actual human staff member, not an automated text — asking when you plan to come in for your annual flu shot, you are not alone. Across Maryland, from Montgomery County strip malls to suburban Anne Arundel storefronts, Walmart is telling customers their doses are “reserved” while local CVS pharmacists are being handed direct outbound telephone queues — a corporate answer to a multi-year collapse in vaccination volume that threatens hundreds of millions in high-margin retail revenue, driven by post-pandemic vaccine fatigue, shifting federal messaging and public skepticism. In Annapolis the push lands in a high-stakes fight over pharmacy reimbursement, public health mandates and the future of the state’s unique health-care cost framework. (via The Maryland Wire)
Source: The Maryland Wire
Barry’s Week in the Village: a partner shakeout, a deeper budget hole, and data centers as the new lobbying fight
Saturday’s paid week-in-review counts down the week that moved the village: a large Annapolis firm lost its second partner this year, the budget hole got deeper, and data centers became a real lobbying fight — Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly (R) holding the line on the only outright county data-center ban in Maryland, Del. C.T. Wilson carrying the pause argument in the House, and Rep. Jamie Raskin opening a probe into data-center “gag orders” with letters to Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle demanding their NDAs with officials since 2021 — plus Kumar P. Barve’s Public Service Commission ending the multi-year rate plan pilot, launching a comprehensive utility-rate reform process, and awarding the state’s first energy-storage contracts, Chalk Point’s 400 megawatts and Jade Meadow III’s 40. (via The Maryland Wire)
Source: The Maryland Wire
Del. Carolyn J.B. Howard, the “unsung hero” who mentored a generation of Annapolis lawmakers, is remembered tomorrow
Carolyn J.B. Howard, the Prince George’s County Democrat who represented District 24 for nearly 30 years and served as deputy speaker pro tem from 2007 until her 2019 retirement, died September 19 at 87; her funeral is Tuesday, October 6, at the First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover, with visitation at 10 a.m. and the service at 11 a.m. Colleagues remembered the former public-school teacher and principal as a prolific mentor — former Del. Melony Griffith, Treasurer Dereck E. Davis, Dels. Anne Healey, Jheanelle Wilkins and C.T. Wilson, and former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III all recalled her even-keeled counsel, her backyard fish-fry fundraisers and her motto for thorny moments: “When the horse is dead, dismount.”
Source: Maryland Matters
Maryland Association of Counties is hiring a paid Legislative Fellow for the 2027 session — applications close October 19
The Maryland Association of Counties (MACo) is recruiting a paid, hybrid Policy Fellow to join its Annapolis policy team for the January-to-mid-April 2027 General Assembly session, about 20 hours a week at $18 an hour, with bill tracking, hearing coverage, Conduit Street writing, and possible testimony; graduate students are preferred, undergraduates may apply, and applications are due via LinkedIn by 11:59 p.m. on October 19.
Source: Conduit Street (Maryland Association of Counties)
Luigi Rosa’s first $4.1 million in B&P Tunnel community grants lands in West and Central Baltimore
Amtrak Assistant Vice President Luigi Rosa, who leads the B&P Tunnel Replacement Program, awarded more than $4.1 million in first-round Community Investment Program grants to 11 West and Central Baltimore organizations — the Baltimore City Office of Information Technology, Higher Achievement Program, Parity Baltimore Incorporated, The Be Org, Wide Angle Youth Media, Baltimore Montessori Inc, Bentalou Recreation Council, Edmondson Community Organization Inc, Dent Education Inc, Green Street Academy and Eutaw Place Non-Profit Corporation — for computers and digital-skills training, after-school and STEM programs, streetscape and park work, youth workforce training and Emerson Mansion restoration; U.S. Representative Kweisi Mfume, Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott, Baltimore City Councilmember John T. Bullock, Comptroller Brooke E. Lierman and Maryland Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary for Project Development and Delivery Joe McAndrew all praised the awards, part of Amtrak’s $50 million community-investment commitment over the tunnel’s 10-year construction, with the next grant round opening in Spring 2027; award amounts are preliminary pending final funding agreements.
Source: Amtrak
Kim Coble takes a Governor’s Citation home from Maryland LCV’s Changemakers night
Wes Moore awarded Maryland League of Conservation Voters Executive Director Kim Coble a Governor’s Citation at the Changemakers event, honoring more than 30 years of environmental advocacy, the last seven at Maryland LCV, ahead of her retirement; Senate President Bill Ferguson hand-delivered a Senate resolution, former State Treasurer Nancy Kopp announced the new Kim Coble Environmental Advocacy Fund, Steny Hoyer received the John V. Kabler Environmental Leadership Award, Howard County Deputy Chief of Staff Tim Lattimer accepted the Climate Champion Award for the Howard County Office of Community Sustainability, and Comptroller Brooke Lierman joined Maryland Energy Administration Director Kelly Speakes-Backman on the evening’s roundtable.
Source: Maryland League of Conservation Voters
Washington County’s data-center rules take shape while Hagerstown sets an October 27 annexation hearing
Washington County staff will take draft data-center standards — 1,000-foot residential setbacks, a 50 dBA property-line noise limit, energy and water plans, and Planned Industrial zoning by special exception only — to Planning Commission workshops in October and November, with a draft zoning amendment expected in March 2027; the county’s 12-month moratorium covers only unincorporated areas, and Hagerstown has set an October 27 hearing on annexing the 171.88-acre Martin Farm property at 12440 Burkholder Lane, which would move planning and zoning authority for that site to the city.
Source: LocalNews1.org
The Queen of the Pink and Green
A morning salute to Dr. Juanita D. Miller of Prince George's County
There is a room in Prince George's County politics where the real business has always been settled, and for more years than most of us can count, the woman at the head of that table has been Dr. Juanita D. Miller of Mitchellville.
Before she was a doctor of education, before she was a delegate in Annapolis, she was a young teacher from Washington who believed that children come first and that credentials open doors. She earned her way up the hard way: a bachelor's degree from D.C. Teachers College, a master's degree and a doctorate in education from George Washington University. She taught. She ran special-education programs. She administered school systems in the District of Columbia and in Prince George's County, and she taught the next generation coming up at Bowie State University.
Annapolis called her in 1987. For the 25th Legislative District of Prince George's County, Juanita Miller sat in the House of Delegates, served on the Economic Matters Committee and the Special Committee on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, chaired the Legislative Committee of the Women's Legislative Caucus, and served as secretary of the Legislative Black Caucus. A generation later, when Prince George's needed a steady hand on its Board of Education in 2021, the call went out again, and Dr. Miller took the chair.
The list of her service runs the way a life of service should: vice-chair of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission in 2000, the Prince George's NAACP executive board, the Board of Visitors at the University of Maryland, College Park, the United Way, the county Family Crisis Center, the Foster Care Review Board. Educator. Legislator. Administrator. Neighbor. She has held nearly every kind of trust a community can hand a person, and she has carried each one the same way: prepared, composed, and impossible to move off the mission.
But ask the women who know power in this county where her real crown sits, and they will tell you about the pink and green. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, founded at Howard University in 1908, is the first Greek-letter sorority founded by Black college women, first among the Divine Nine sororities by common courtesy, and Dr. Miller has been a soror of AKA for decades. In a county where the sorority network is a genuine force in public life, she is, by common consent, the most powerful AKA in Prince George's County, the successor in spirit to the standard Gloria Lawlah set for her generation: the former state senator, former Secretary of Aging, and founder of the 1000 Maryland Women who mentored a generation of women into office. Sorors across the Divine Nine will debate the rankings, the way families debate anything, but in Prince George's County the top of that table has a name, and it is Juanita Miller.
Power, with her, was never the point. The point was the children in the classrooms, the young women learning how a meeting is run, the soror who needed an introduction, the neighbor who needed a door opened. That is the kind of power that does not expire with a term, and it is why she is still the call that gets returned.
So this morning we salute Dr. Juanita D. Miller: educator, delegate, chair, and the reigning queen of the pink and green in Prince George's County. Long may she reign.