Wired Maryland 10/11/2026 NOTES & MEDIA ROUNDUP
Quick reads, lateral moves, and news from around the Free State.
Diesel emergency: dyed fuel OK’d for ag and forestry haulers at harvest
Wes Moore signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency as record diesel prices threaten the 2026 harvest: qualifying agricultural and forestry vehicles may run dyed (untaxed) diesel on public roads under state law, with fee waivers for 30-day Exceptional Hauling Permits. Per AAA, diesel is up 76.2% in 12 months to $6.467 a gallon on October 5 — the all-time high, above the 2022 peak of $5.82 — driven by global oil-supply disruptions from the war in Iran. The Comptroller’s office will suspend enforcement for qualifying haulers, The Equiery reports, and horse-farm commodities — hay, bedding, grain, and horses themselves — are covered by the relief.
Source: Office of Governor Wes Moore
The Hired Guns: Who the Power Companies Field in Annapolis (via The Maryland Wire)
Chicago made the revolt official; back home the industry’s side of the fight is already on the field. The Wire’s weekend deep dive maps all 59 registered advocates pulled from the State Ethics Commission portal this week. BGE runs 19 deep on the contract-firm model: Harris Jones & Malone — Lisa Jones’s firm, the $2.67 million number-one earner of the 2024 cycle — fields Gabriel Auteri, Guy Joseph Guzzone Jr., Lisa Jones, Sean Malone, Caitlin McDonough, and Valerie Skvirsky; Schwartz Metz, Venable, and the in-house team round out the roster. Pepco counters with 24, the biggest army: seven from Rifkin Weiner Livingston (Matt Bohle, William Castelli, Obie Chinemere, Camille Fesche, Michael Vernon Johansen, John Reith, and Joel Rozner), five from Cornerstone, plus G.S. Proctor, Kress Hammen, and the in-house crew. Constellation fields 16 the revolving-door way — former House majority whip Talmadge Branch, former senator Roger Manno, Gordon Feinblatt’s Michael Powell and Jason Weintraub, Sasscer, Clagett & Bucher’s Michael Adams, HB Strategies’ Lisa K. Smith. Paid post.
Source: The Maryland Wire
The Vote Wes Moore Didn’t Cast (via The Maryland Wire)
When the Board of Public Works voted October 7 to approve taxpayer-funded lawyers for Gov. Wes Moore’s defamation suit, the governor wasn’t in the room. Treasurer Dereck Davis told the Wire in a Friday phone call that Moore was tied up in meetings — Davis believed they were Democratic Governors Association meetings — and Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller sat in as his proxy. Then Miller did the thing everyone had been arguing about all week: she recused herself from the vote on the governor’s legal bills, leaving the decision to Comptroller Brooke Lierman and Davis himself. Davis said Lierman offered an impassioned defense of the governor before the vote; it passed with no objections. The outcome is exactly what former Attorney General Brian Frosh had suggested in advance — the governor’s chair filled, the governor’s vote not cast.
Source: The Maryland Wire
The $22M Local Infrastructure Drop (via The Maryland Wire)
Following this week’s Board of Public Works session, $22 million in state capital funding is formally released to Maryland county governments, per the Conduit Street/MACo breakdown. Barry O’Connell’s read: skip the press-release gloss on parks and municipal buildings — these Program Open Space and municipal infrastructure grants require rapid capital deployment under strict fiscal-year rules, so county purchasing offices are the live procurement pipeline this fall. The paid post carries the county-by-county allocation lists, local matching requirements, and how contractors position on eMaryland Marketplace Advantage. Paid post.
Source: The Maryland Wire
Cox: ‘not pursuing’ Trump’s backing in rematch with Moore
Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox told the Washington Examiner in a Friday interview that he has had “no conversations” with anyone in Donald Trump’s orbit and is not pursuing an endorsement: a president getting involved in a Maryland endorsement, he said, wouldn’t be within “the importance of his work,” and Republicans “have to be smart to win” in a blue state. Cox — whom Trump’s 2022 embrace lifted past Kelly Schulz in the primary before he lost to Moore by more than 32 points — spoke days after Trump visited Tradepoint Atlantic to tout the Anduril submarine-component project.
Source: Washington Examiner
Moore announces $60 million for victim services in FY27
Gov. Wes Moore and the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy announced nearly $60 million in Fiscal Year 2027 funding for victim services organizations across Maryland — counseling, legal advocacy, emergency shelter for survivors of sexual assault, violent crime, and domestic violence. GOCPP Executive Director Dorothy Lennig says the state received over $81 million in requests, well past the available funds; Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller joined the announcement, framing the investment as the other half of the administration’s public-safety pitch amid the drop in violent crime.
Source: Office of Governor Wes Moore
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Dr. Mileah Kromer Knows What Maryland Thinks
If you have quoted a Maryland poll in the last dozen years, you have probably quoted Mileah Kromer.
Kromer spent twelve years at Goucher College, where she founded and ran the Goucher Poll out of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics. It became the state's most trusted read on what Marylanders actually think — approval ratings, horse-race numbers, and the public mood on everything from school funding to the direction of the state. When Annapolis wanted to know where the public stood, it waited for Kromer's numbers.
In the fall of 2024 she carried that reputation across town to UMBC, where she is the inaugural director of the university's new Institute of Politics.
She is also the author of “Blue-State Republican: How Larry Hogan Won Where Republicans Lose” (Temple University Press) — a step-by-step account of Hogan's rise built on published sources and interviews with the people who ran the campaigns, including Hogan's own pollsters and strategists. It reads like someone who was paying close attention, because she was.
That is the thing about Kromer. She is not a pundit with a hot take. She is the person whose numbers the pundits argue about.