Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Centreville
The results of the October 2 election are in and Ashley Kaiser and Jeff Kiel have won the two open seats of the Centreville Town Council. The official results are:
• Ashley H. Kaiser – 255 Votes
• Jeffrey D. Kiel – 281 Votes
• Steven K. Kline – 192 Votes
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A looming federal government shutdown could destabilize Maryland’s budget outlook.
Minor decreases in projected revenues announced Thursday by the Board of Revenue Estimates represent a mostly flat budget picture compared to March projections.
State fiscal officers warned that inflation and a shutdown, if House Republicans cannot agree on a plan to fund the federal government for the fiscal year that begins on Sunday, pose a potential risk to the state’s revenue picture.
Robert Rehrmann, director of the Bureau of Revenue Estimates, said the new forecast represents “only minor adjustments, and we are largely consistent with our forecast” and that it includes modest growth rates.
“Unfortunately, we are still in a situation where we do have elevated risks, not only from recession, but from this potential federal government shutdown,” Rehrmann said.
A federal shutdown could have dire impacts on the finances of both residents and state government.
“The impact will very much depend on the type of shutdown, its duration and if there’s significant spending cuts, as far as any agreement to end the shutdown,” said Rehrmann.
Overall, Maryland may feel the pinch more acutely than many states.
More than 160,000 federal jobs — not including federal contractors — are based in Maryland. The total is equal to more than 4% of all jobs in the state.
“At the March board meeting, I noted that revenue forecasts indicated a flashing yellow light for Maryland’s economy,” said Comptroller Brooke Lierman (D), chair of the Board of Revenue Estimates. “I think that remains true now. As we just heard, from unknown trends associated with a post-COVID economic recovery to deeply concerning implications of a looming federal government shutdown, the warning lights are still flashing. Any full or partial shutdown could mean delayed paychecks for federal employees and contractors, federally supported researchers, service providers and others who contribute to Maryland’s employment and income tax base. We could see a slow down in state tax receipts and reduced economic activity statewide as well.”
One in nine households benefited from either a federal paycheck or federal retirement income, according to the Office of the Comptroller.
“Despite Republican extremists’ refusal to govern, the Moore-Miller Administration is taking steps to ensure that state government will continue to operate, that households in need continue to receive assistance, and that hospitals and other institutions that provide essential services can continue to function,” said David Turner, a spokesperson for Gov. Wes Moore (D).
“In the near-term, we plan to use a portion of our state cash reserves to bridge fund services that rely on federal support — but only for a limited period of time and only if we maintain confidence that the federal government will reimburse the State after the shutdown,” Turner said. “State agencies are ready to employ contingency plans to ensure continued operations.”
Included in that effort is a plan to offer no-interest loans to affected individuals through a coming Federal Government Shutdown Employment Assistance Loan program. The loans, offered through the state Department of Labor, would have to be repaid at the conclusion of the shutdown.
Senior administration officials told reporters Thursday morning that the state is prepared to use $1 billion of its $5 billion in cash on hand as part of a strategy to ease — perhaps temporarily — the impact of the shutdown.
But they said that cash could be expended in less than a month.
Two shutdowns, one for 16 days in 2016 and a 35-day partial shutdown in 2018-2019, had little impact on the state, according to Rehrmann.
Budget sequestration during a fight over the federal debt limit in 2013 “had significant impacts on the Maryland economy,” causing a slowing of state tax withholdings and economic output that took years to recover, he said.
In three counties — St. Mary’s, Charles, and Prince George’s — more than 20% of gross income from salaries or retirement income comes from the federal government.
In Calvert, Anne Arundel, Howard and Harford Counties, federal paychecks and retirement payments make up more than 10% of gross income.
Total wages and retirement income from federal sources equals $31 billion or 10.5% of all income earned in Maryland, according to the Office of the Comptroller.
“Most urgent at this current moment is that we’re just days away from the potential federal government shutdown, that as you can see from the dips that we saw during sequestration, could have a devastating impact on the state,” said Lierman. “And so, I certainly reiterate my admonition and urge House Republicans to come together and put the nation at the forefront of their thinking. There are families, there are businesses who are depending on them to do their job and to ensure that we do not have a shutdown and that we continue to fund the federal government services.”
The three-member board unanimously approved what amounted to only minor changes to revenue estimates for the current budget year.
The board also provided the first look at fiscal 2025, which begins next July 1.
In the current year, analysts now project revenues of nearly $24.6 billion — a decrease of roughly $14.1 million from the March estimate.
Growth in nearly every revenue category was offset by a projected $301 million decrease in personal income taxes and more than $46 million in projected interest on investments.
State revenue is projected to grow by less than 1% compared to the previous year.
In fiscal 2025, analysts project that personal income tax collections will rebound as corporate taxes decline. The state is projected to collect nearly $25.1 billion — a roughly 2% increase compared to the current budget year.
“These low growth rates do not keep pace with growth in expenditures and the structural deficit that we face,” said state Budget Secretary Helene Grady, a member of the Board of Revenue Estimates. “The administration has been clear from day one that the factors that drove our state’s cash surplus by the fall of 2022…like many states around the country, were external to Maryland and would not be sustained.”
Maryland’s budget is projected to grow by roughly 5% in the coming year, according to the Department of Legislative Services.
“To put today’s forecast in context of budget planning, the forecast makes the structural deficit a little worse than projected by DLS over the summer,” Grady said.
“As we prepare to introduce our next budget for fiscal year 2025, come January, the administration’s work is cut out for us,” she said. “We will continue to be selective, disciplined and intentional with our investment decisions.”
In June, the Department of Legislative Services projected the fiscal 2025 budget will start with a $418 million deficit — a $650 million decrease compared to the January estimate.
Senate Republicans called for reducing spending in order to prevent tax increases.
“Today’s announcement by the Board of Revenue Estimates confirms what we already knew — a surplus this current fiscal year, with significant challenges in the coming years,” said Sen. Paul Corderman (R-Washington), a member of the Budget and Taxation Committee. “Our economy is changing and the influx of Federal COVID dollars is over. We must reign-in overspending now, or else all Marylanders will see tax and fee increases in the very near future.”
By Bryan P. Sears
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For many years now, the Spy has been interviewing candidates for local elections using the long-form format to discuss their motivation for running and their priorities without an artificial time limit for their answers. Giving those running for office quality time to explain a position or advocate a cause is the most effective way for citizens to fully understand the most critical issues at stake.
And we are pleased to keep this tradition alive and well at the Centerville Spy.
On October 2, Centreville will go to the polls to elect two Town Council members. Those running for those seats are incumbents Ashley Kaiser and Steve Kline, and Jeff Kiel, a former member of the council.
The Spy interviewed each over the last two weeks to share their thoughts about Centreville and its future.
These videos range in length from eight to twelve minutes.
Ashley Kaiser
Steve Kline
Jeff Kiel
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Dorchester’s County government has lost a key credit rating in the latest fallout from years of overdue financial audits that are only now becoming available.
Moody’s Investors Service late last week formally withdrew Dorchester’s credit rating when county officials failed to produce financials under a 30 day deadline. Moody’s cited the lack of information from Dorchester in wiping out its credit rating.
County Council President Lenny Pfeffer said Dorchester officials are engaged with Moody’s to try to fix the information. The county posted the oldest of the overdue audits, for fiscal year 2021, on its website Monday.
“We’ve instructed (Moody’s) that as soon as we receive the audits that are complete, we will make sure that they have that information,” Pfeffer said. “But in the meantime, we’ve sent them everything else that we could up to this point.”
With no credit rating, the county would be forced to pay much higher interest rates on any bonds or capital leases. The difference could be 12 to 15% higher than the desirable municipal bond rating it had enjoyed until now. That’s more taxpayer dollars going to pay for higher interest.
The lack of a credit rating also means a likely discount in the resale value of at least $30 million worth of bonds the county previously issued. S&P Global, another rating service, withdrew its rating for Dorchester in April.
The county government has failed to file legally required financial audits to the state since 2020. With the 2021 audit complete, the county is still overdue on the 2022 audit. The fiscal year 2023 audit is due by the end of October.
Officials previously cited high turnover in the finance department and a 2020 computer hack as reasons for the delay. But multiple extensions granted by the state last year had expired with no completed audit submitted. Pfeffer said the current delay is a matter of time auditors need to work.
“We’re at the mercy of the third party independent auditor, so we can only go as fast as they go,” Pfeffer said. “We’ve tried to supply as much information as personnel that they’ve asked for, but we’re still at their mercy.”
Pfeffer said at a council meeting September 5th that the audits were 99 percent complete and predicted the oldest missing report, for fiscal year 2021, would be ready in two weeks. The posting on Monday of the 2021 audit comes one day inside his prediction. Pfeffer said he expects progress will accelerate.
“FY21, since they had to translate a lot of data for the system that was lost and stuff that was put in incorrect or whatever, the new information going into 22 should go much faster,” he said.
The county can submit a fee to Moody’s to reevaluate a credit rating once it has the required financial reports finished. Moody’s did not indicate how long it could take to reestablish a credit rating after financial audits are delivered.
By Jim Brady of WHCP Community Radio
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University of Maryland Shore Regional Health’s plans for construction of a new Regional Medical Center (RMC) in Easton have moved a step forward as hospital officials have received notice that the Maryland Health Care Commission has docketed the application for the project’s Certificate of Need (CON).
MHCC provided public notice of the docketing in the Maryland Register on August 11th, which initiated a 30-day window for public comment. As of today, no comments have been posted, and the CON application is now ready for MHCC’s review and anticipated approval in the coming months.
Docketing of the application not only keeps the project moving forward as is required by MHCC’s procedural regulations, but also allows MHCC to gather any supplemental information needed to render a decision.
The total projected cost of the new Shore Regional Medical Center is $550 million.
The schematic design phase of the project, which has been completed, involved the participation of multiple departments in refining layout plans and creating new external renderings. The design development phase is now in progress, focusing on the design of individual rooms for optimal workflow.
Plans to build the new Shore Regional Medical Center in Easton are critical to the comprehensive health care delivery plan for Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties. The new location on Route 50 at Longwoods Road will promote better access to care, the new design will accommodate advances in high-quality care and improve patient satisfaction, and the new facility will enhance UM Shore Regional Health’s ability to recruit and retain health care providers and staff.
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The Queen Anne’s County League of Women Voters held a forum for candidates for the Centreville Town Council on Thursday, Sept. 14. Steve Kline, an incumbent seeking reelection, and Jeff Kiel, a former member of the Town Council. Ashley Kaiser, who is also an incumbent seeking re-election, is unable to participate in person or via Zoom due to a family commitment in Florida.
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Using one of Maryland’s toll bridges and tunnels could become more expensive.
The state has not seen an increase in tolls in more than a decade. Joseph Sagal, executive director of the Maryland Transportation Authority, said that era, which included two toll reductions, may be at an end within the next four years.
“We started looking at the last time tolls were raised, that was nearly a decade ago,” Sagal said at a meeting of the Transportation Revenue and Infrastructure Needs Commission in Annapolis.
“There was a subsequent reduction around 2016 and with that toll revenue decline we saw during the pandemic era and … increased costs,” it is triggering a need for toll revenue increases in the 2028 fiscal year, he continued.
The last time tolls increased was in 2011 under then-Gov. Martin O’Malley (D). At that time, the authority voted to raise cash tolls for cars crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from $2.50 to $4.
Cars crossing the former Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge in Charles County would cost $4, an increase of $1.
Tolls on both then increased again to $6 in 2013.
Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) ran his 2014 campaign criticizing O’Malley and Democrats for overtaxing state residents. He cut tolls twice — once in 2016 and again in 2019 — during his two terms in office.
During that time, the state demolished the old Nice Bridge and replaced it with a modern Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas ‘Mac’ Middleton Bridge.
Maryland Budget Secretary Helene Grady asked Sagal for details on the impact of toll recent reductions.
“What was the sustainability plan at the time the tolls were reduced and to what extent have the assumptions about that sustainability plan by the previous administration been realized or not realized?” Grady asked.
The need for an increase was attributed to “operating costs being so high, especially as it relates to personnel, equipment, repairs” and other concerns, according to Sagal.
Frank Principe, chair of the commission, said he has discussed the issue of tolls with Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld “as well as the overall performance relative to the toll revenues.”
Principe said the toll rates “is something that the commission will be interested in discussing further at another meeting. I’m sure we’ll get to that in due course.”
The 31-member blue ribbon panel — referred to commonly as the TRAIN Commission — is charged with reviewing, evaluating and making recommendations on how transportation projects should be prioritized and funded.
Last month, commission members were briefed on the need to seek alternative funding sources to bolster declines in state gas tax revenue.
The authority is funded only by tolls from eight facilities in Maryland.
The authority has more than 180 projects in its six-year plan totaling $2.7 billion. The total is a nearly $170 million increase over last year’s six-year planning document.
Included in that are the replacement of eight bridges that are each 50 years old or more, as well as an ongoing study of a third crossing of the Chesapeake Bay.
Sagal spoke in broad terms and offered no specifics related to timing or the amount of an increase.
Sagal’s talking point left some commission members looking for more information.
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore) said Sagal did not offer enough justification for toll increases.
“I think the important thing that he said, he said the $400 million that they have in operating costs is fine,” said Hershey. “They’ve been able to meet that. So, then you have to look at what the projects are. I think he said the $600 million in projects. I don’t think he came up here and said ‘hey, we’ve got a lot of projects that we haven’t been able to do because the revenue is not there.
“I’d like to hear more of a justification if somebody said we need to increase the polls for exactly what projects out there are not being completed,” he said.
By Bryan P. Sears
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Those who drive with Google Maps turned on will be familiar with this scenario; caught up in a hopeless traffic jam, your map app pops up with the enticing message that you might save 20 minutes of this mess if you exit and follow the side road to avoid congestion.
That happens almost every weekend along Route 50 in Queen Anne’s County. As the traffic from the beach to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge slows to a halt as cars wait their turn to cross the western span, hundreds of smartphones go off, telling drivers to detour to the parallel Route 18 to save time.
Many of those drivers do save a few minutes, but the consequences of having those cars in this secondary road are becoming a nightmare for the almost 30,000 residents in the area who need that state highway for their everyday needs.
From grocery shopping to children’s soccer games, the Kent Island community is finding itself increasingly isolated for sometimes hours at a time as Route 18 fills up with beach traffic.
To combat this significant impact on quality of life and safety, Queen Anne’s County is now working with the Maryland State Highway Administration and Maryland Transportation Authority to experiment with temporary closings of the most popular exit points along Route 50 to measure its impact.
The Spy asked Queen Anne’s County Commissioner Jim Moran and County Administrator Todd Mohn to provide more details about the September weekend tests.
This video is approximately 6 minutes in length.
This is the offficel QAC press release:
Temporary Ramp Closures Planned in Queen Anne’s County along US 50/301
In a joint effort with the Maryland State Highway Administration and Maryland Transportation Authority, we are excited to announce a new initiative to help keep summer beach traffic on US 50/301. This new pilot program is aimed at enhancing traffic flow and ensuring the safety and mobility for local services by reducing congestion on MD Route 18 and other adjacent local roadways. Following the success of a similar program in Anne Arundel County earlier this summer, Queen Anne’s County in partnership with the Maryland State Highway Administration and Maryland Transportation Authority, will be launching this program on the eastern shore which will close or restrict access onto US 50/301 from several on-off ramps along the heavily traveled corridor.
The temporary entrance ramp closures are scheduled to begin in mid-September.
County Commissioner Jim Moran expressed his enthusiasm for the program, saying, “we understand the impact these unprecedented traffic backups are causing the citizens of Queen Anne’s County and we remain committed to finding solutions to alleviate some of the impacts to our residents. The County has been working on our own “Beach to Bridge Plan” and are pleased to be partners with the state to be in a proactive position to launch our own pilot. This has been a complicated exercise as we have 15 ramps along a 9 mile stretch of US 50/301. We also have the Kent Narrows, multiple shopping centers, gas/convenience stores, and schools to take into consideration. Comparing our situation to Anne Arundel County’s 2.5 mile corridor with 3 ramps has made our proposal more challenging and we understand that refinements will be likely be needed going forward. After this year’s pilot program is concluded, we are planning to hold some Town Hall meetings to receive comments and suggestions that can help us all prepare for next year’s beach traffic season”.
To ensure smooth travel during the closure period, drivers are encouraged to plan their routes ahead of time. Visitors heading to or from the beach are advised to stay on Route 50, which will remain unaffected by the ramp closures.
Queen Anne’s County and the State Highway Administration are working diligently on the final details of the program. Prior to its official launch, comprehensive information about the closures and alternative routes will be released. This will enable residents to plan their travels during the affected period and minimize any potential inconveniences.
To stay updated on the latest developments and receive timely announcements regarding the temporary entrance ramp closures, residents are encouraged to follow Queen Anne’s County Government on social media @QACGOV and visit the official website at www.qac.org.
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Cheryl Bost, president of the Maryland State Education Association.
A number of county leaders around the state say requirements to increase spending on education need to be coupled with greater authority for them to oversee that spending.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D), a former math teacher, said his relationship with his school system is sometimes frustrating and often relegates his role to being an ATM.
He and other county leaders are renewing a call for a larger role in overseeing how education dollars are spent.
“We do not have a truly cooperative, interactive relationship, at this point, but nobody does,” Elrich said. “Montgomery County is not unique. You’ll find these kinds of arguments all around the state between county governments and the local school boards. We’re like a money machine but we have no power in how the money gets tapped at some point.”
Education spending represents a large portion of county budgets. Montgomery County sends a total of $3 billion to its school system. In many counties, spending on education, including state aid, represents nearly half of the annual budget.
Implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a 10-year, multi-billion-dollar education reform plan, will require even more money from local governments.
“The county has no authority,” he said. “We can’t even, for example, look at a budget line item and say we don’t think you should do that program. We’re not going to fund that program and we want you to fund a different program. County has no ability to do that. We’re restricted to giving the school system the same amount of money that it had last year, adjusted for population growth and inflation. That’s our whopping authority over there.”
The question of whether county governments should have greater control over their school districts has been an ongoing conversation for the so-called Big 8 jurisdictions and the Maryland Association of Counties over several months, according to Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman (D).
“I think it’s mostly focused on transparency in budgeting,” he said. “Most of us feel like we don’t have a good sense of what their finances really look like and maybe there’s a more collaborative approach.”
Pittman said each county is different, based on the willingness of county government leaders, school board members and education leaders to work together. Pittman praised Anne Arundel’s relatively new school superintendent, Mark Bedell, who took over in July of 2022, for being especially “collaborative.”
In Prince George’s, County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) said residents want to know that the tax dollars are spent effectively. When the schools account for 62% of county government spending, officials can’t help but strive for transparency, she said.
Alsobrooks conceded she didn’t have a sense of what Elrich was seeking, specifically.
“But I agree with him that we ought to be accountable for how those dollars are used,” she said.
Like Pittman, she said collaboration is the key. Alsobrooks had a good working relationship with the former public schools CEO, Monica Goldson, who left the school system at the end of June.
“I was pleased to have someone like Dr. Goldson, who was really the subject matter expert, who made those decisions,” Alsobrooks said. “The government is responsible for funding those operations. I think we should hire the very best CEO, someone who’s trained in education, who can work together with the school board to make policy decisions.”
But collaboration frequently relies on the personalities involved and is not always possible.
Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. (D) praised the current relationship between his administration and Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Miriam Yarbrough.
“It’s a very collaborative and open approach,” said Olszewski. “What I can say is that I know that’s not the case across the state. It certainly hasn’t always been the case in Baltimore County. And so, to the extent we can institutionalize some of these practices, I think you avoid relying on personalities.”
Local government gripes about a lack of authority is not new. And even though some local officials have the ability to appoint some members of their school board or even appoint a school superintendent, school systems remain independent and nearly immune to political pressure from other officials.
Cutting into that independence would require help from the General Assembly.
Senate Majority Leader Nancy J. King (D-Montgomery), who chairs two Budget and Taxation subcommittees that deal with education issues, said there is no need to change the current system.
“I would be absolutely, 1000% against that,” King said, adding that Elrich and others lack the experience to make decisions for the school system.
“He needs to do his job and let the school board do their job,” she said.
King, a former school board member, said complaints about lack of oversight amount to “a nice political thing to say.”
“All these people, they want to re-do the budget. They want to re-do how school systems run, it’s like they don’t have enough of their own jobs to do,” she said.
Tensions, however, remain. A program at last month’s Maryland Association of Counties conference in Ocean City that was to focus on potentially tight budgets ahead was almost entirely focused on increased funding requirements for Blueprint education reforms.
“Since I’ve been county executive, we’ve had two years with the largest single-year increases in county history,” said Howard County Executive Calvin Ball (D). “That’s just driven by the Blueprint. We’re just making those investments. I think in making those investments, we need some transparency and accountability.”
In Howard County, the roughly $1 billion in school funding accounts for nearly 51% of the county’s annual spending.
“I think that there is an important conversation to be had about a county executive and a council or commissioner-based system who have so much funding responsibility and zero ability to actually ensure where those dollars go and that they’re used effectively,” said Ball.
Cheryl Bost, president of the Maryland State Education Association, which represents about 75,000 teachers across the state, said a “broader conversation” that includes checks and balances is needed.
“If I’m a county executive and I’m doing a project, but yet I have an independent board of education that’s supposed to be the experts on education, I don’t want to usurp that power,” she said. “There should be more communication and collaboration to where that money goes to support the Blueprint.”
But Bost said there are limits.
“I think there’s a fine line between too much power at the county executive commission level and not enough autonomy of an educational board,” she said. “But also with the Blueprint coming up [and] demanding so much more local funding, that there has to be some more collaboration.”
Maryland Matters reporters William Ford and Josh Kurtz contributed to this report.
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A new Stateline analysis shows that U.S. residents under 40 were relatively unscathed by COVID-19 in the pandemic but fell victim to another killer: accidental drug overdose deaths.
Death rates in the age group were up by nearly a third in 2021 over 2018, and last year were still 21% higher.
COVID-19 was a small part of the increase, causing about 23,000 deaths total between 2018 and 2022 in the age group, which includes the millennial generation (born starting in the early 1980s), Generation Z (born starting in the late ’90s) and children. Vehicle accidents and suicide (about 96,000 each) and gun homicide (about 65,000) all took a cumulative toll from 2018 to 2022, according to a Stateline analysis of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Overdose deaths, however, took almost 177,000 lives in that time.
Accidental overdose became the No. 1 cause of death in 13 states for people under 40, overtaking suicide in nine states and vehicle accidents in five others; it’s now the top cause in 37 states. The only other change was in Mississippi, where homicide became the main cause of death, overtaking car accidents. In 40 states and the District of Columbia, overdose was the biggest increase in deaths for young people.
In Maryland, homicide remains the leading cause of death for people under 40, but accidental overdose is the fastest-growing cause of death for the age group, increasing by 73% since 2018.
States are responding to the skyrocketing death rates with “harm reduction” strategies that can include warning of the new danger of recreational drugs laced with deadly fentanyl, training and equipping people to counteract overdoses when they see them, and even considering controversial supervised drug use sites to keep addicts safer.
A “fourth great wave” of accidental overdose deaths driven by drugs spiked with powerful fentanyl is now washing over young America, said Daliah Heller, vice president of drug use initiatives at Vital Strategies, an international advocacy group that works on strengthening public health.
Prescription opioids led to one surge in drug dependency from 2000 to 2016, then when supply waned in response to crackdowns, users turned to heroin, synthetic opioids and finally fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin and easier to get in the pandemic, Heller said.
‘Very common’ experience
Jonathan Diehl of Silver Spring, Maryland, died in 2019 at age 28 after using heroin he likely did not know was spiked with fentanyl, said his mother, Cristina Rabadán-Diehl. Jonathan Diehl earned a degree in construction management and was starting a promising new job in home heating and air conditioning four days before he died, his mother said.
“I think Jonathan’s trajectory was very common,” said Rabadán-Diehl, who now works as an adviser on substance use disorders. “He started with opioid pills, and when the government started putting restrictions on prescriptions, he as well as millions and millions of Americans transitioned into the illegal market. And then fentanyl made its appearance.”
Now, a fresh wave of overdose deaths — different from the first three — is fed by fentanyl making its way into all kind of recreational drugs, and by pandemic isolation that led to more solitary drug use, Heller said.
“Somebody might think they’re getting a Xanax [for anxiety], or methamphetamine or cocaine,” Heller said. “They have no experience with opioids, it’s not what they’re expecting and now they have a much higher risk of overdose and death.”
Authorities generally classify overdose deaths as an accident or suicide based on individual investigations of the circumstances surrounding each death.
States struggling the most with deaths of young people, driven mostly by accidental overdoses, include New Mexico, which eclipsed West Virginia and Mississippi since 2018 to have the highest death rate in the nation for people under 40 — about 188 deaths per 100,000, up 43% since 2018.
Other states with high death rates for the age group include West Virginia (170 deaths per 100,000), Louisiana and Mississippi (164), and Alaska (163).
In New Mexico, where accidental overdoses became the main cause of death for people under 40 in 2022, overtaking suicide and rising 90% to 394 deaths since 2018, the overdose problem has generally been concentrated in poverty-plagued rural areas such as Rio Arriba County on the Colorado border.
Democratic state Rep. Tara Lujan, who has relatives in that county, sponsored harm reduction legislation signed into law last year. It is similar to laws in many other states that include wide distribution of naloxone to reverse overdoses, legalized testing equipment for deadly additives like fentanyl, and good Samaritan laws that allow friends to report overdoses without legal consequences for their own drug use.
Lujan hopes to reintroduce a bill that would create so-called overdose prevention centers or harm reduction centers where drugs can be used in a supervised and safe environment. The legislation died in committee this year after Republicans called the idea “state-sponsored drug dens.”
“It’s all issues that were in place before the pandemic, but the pandemic made everything completely off the rails,” Lujan said. “My committee meetings have been packed with family members saying, ‘We know they won’t quit on their own, but we don’t want them to die.’”
Only New York City has two such facilities in operation, run by advocates; the sites claim some success in reversing overdoses. But federal law enforcement authorities are threatening to shut them down without a specific state mandate, since otherwise they fall under a federal law banning operations that allow illegal drug use on-site.
In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last year vetoed legislation that would have allowed jurisdictions to open safe injection sites, saying they “could induce a world of unintended consequences” in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland.
“Worsening drug consumption challenges in these areas is not a risk we can take,” Newsom wrote in a veto message.
Rhode Island is the only state so far to pass legislation allowing supervised drug-use sites as a pilot project, in 2021, but has yet to open any centers. New legislation introduced this year would push the expiration of the pilot project from 2024 to 2026.
Bills on the same topic of supervised drug-use sites were under consideration this year in Colorado, Illinois and New York but did not pass.
In a sign of the impact on young people, a Massachusetts bill would have required all state university dorm assistants to have naloxone training to reverse overdoses, but it stalled.
New Hampshire is one of several states experimenting with vans that go to known drug-use locations and offer overdose prevention supplies and advice.
Death rate disparities
The lowest death rates for young people in 2022 were in Hawaii (78), Massachusetts and Rhode Island (79), and Utah and New Jersey (80). Massachusetts and New Jersey were the only states to see decreases in overall deaths for people under 40 since 2018, and also had drops in overdose deaths, although overdose remained the No. 1 cause of death for young people in both states.
Nationally, accidental overdoses dominated the increase in deaths in residents under 40 across racial and urban-rural divides, but many disparities exist. The increase in young overdose death rates was 154% for Black Americans, 122% for Hispanic residents and 37% for white people, yet even for white residents they represented the largest increase.
The largest urban areas saw increases in overdose death rates of 70%, and rural areas 64% — the largest increases in both areas for any cause of death.
Across races and age groups overdose death rates are higher for men and slowed in 2017, but picked up again after 2018 and skyrocketed in the pandemic until 2021, according to a federal National Center for Health Statistics data brief published last year.
By Tim Henderson. Danielle E. Gaines contributed to this report.
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