On Monday, April 20, I was in the chamber to support Bill 23-26.
The bill, introduced by Councilmember Lisa Rodvien, would have prohibited developers with pending projects in front of the County from donating to the campaigns of the elected officials voting on those projects. It would have required council members who had taken developer money in the prior two years to either return the donation or recuse themselves from related votes. And it would have required developers themselves to disclose those contributions when seeking County approvals.
In other words: it would have required council members to do, in writing, what every resident of District 6 already assumes their elected officials are doing in spirit.
The bill was defeated 2 to 5.
Only Councilmember Rodvien and Councilmember Amanda Fiedler voted yes. Five council members voted no: Smith, Pickard, Volke, Hummer, and Leadbetter. Per the Baltimore Sun’s reporting, none of them commented on the bill during the meeting.
Lisa Rodvien deserves real credit for introducing this bill, sponsoring it, and standing with Councilmember Fiedler in voting yes. Bills like this take real conviction to bring to a vote. She did it anyway.
That silence, from the five who voted no, is the part I keep coming back to. A bill about whether voters deserve to know who is paying their elected officials. And five members of the council voted no without explaining why.
Asking career politicians to ban developer money from their own campaigns is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.
A Millersville resident stood at the podium that night and said it better than I could:
“I have borne witness to the perceived influence right here in this chamber. Not only was it disappointing, it was disheartening.”
Another Millersville resident at the meeting put it more bluntly:
“It is hard for the public to see balance when the developers so firmly have their thumb on the scale.”
They were not alone. Nearly a dozen members of the public spoke at the meeting, and another fourteen submitted comments online, all in favor of the bill. Yet, the majority voted No.
What the Sun Reported Six Days Later
On April 26, the Baltimore Sun published an analysis by the Capital Gazette of publicly available campaign-finance records. Reviewing the past two election cycles, 2019 to 2022 and 2023 to 2026, the analysis found that current Anne Arundel County Council members took at least $500,655 in contributions from developers, construction firms, real-estate companies, and related industries since 2019.
The Sun named specific entities: Koch Homes, Shipley Homestead Partners, Whitehall Development, Sawmill Partners LLC, and executives of Elm Street Development. The article reported per-member contribution totals since 2019. The numbers are below.
Every council member on this list has accepted developer money. The bill’s sponsor, Lisa Rodvien, accepted the least — $3,800 since 2019, compared to $145,000 at the top of the list.
Two of the council members who voted no on Bill 23-26 are now running for County Executive. Two others are running for re-election. (The fifth, Councilmember Leadbetter, is not seeking re-election.) If you are a voter in any of those races, I’d ask one thing: when they come asking for your trust again, ask them to look you in the eye and explain that vote.
The Sun also reported what those contributions came alongside. Pickard, who received the largest combined contributions from Shipley and Koch, sponsored Bill 20-24, which opened more commercially zoned land in the BWI/Fort Meade Growth Area for residential development. Shipley Homestead’s Hanover community sits inside that growth area and last year secured approval to build 147 additional homes in a commercial zone. The Sun notes the legislation did not directly apply to that specific project, but cleared the way for similar residential expansion going forward.
In a separate vote, in July 2025, the council voted unanimously to sell 13 acres of underused County land to Sawmill Partners (a developer partnership that includes Koch Development Group and Whitehall Development) for $1 million, despite a County appraisal valuing the property at $6.8 million.
I am not going to tell you what to conclude from those facts. The Sun is doing that work, and the public record is doing that work. Here is what those facts told me.
What I Already Knew
I wrote about why I am running here. The short version: a year ago, my neighbors and I went through this same dynamic at the local scale. The County made a decision about our homes without asking us. We were told there was nothing we could do. We refused to accept that, and we paid more than $25,000 of our own money to be heard. It is the same money I would otherwise put back into the businesses I have built in this County, businesses that today make payroll for over 500 people every two weeks. Money is never abstract to me, which is why $500,655 in developer contributions to seven council members is not abstract either.
What I saw on Crownsville Road was the same pattern the Sun is now describing at the County-wide scale. Decisions made about residents, by people who depend on contributions from the very industries that profit from those decisions. And when those officials are asked to vote for transparency about it, five out of seven say no without comment.
That is not a coincidence. It is a pattern. And the people who put up with it the longest are the people who can least afford to fight back.
If you’ve ever read a Sun story about a council vote and thought “wait, who was actually paying these people?”, that question is honest. You are not being cynical. You are paying attention to what the public record actually shows.
District 6 has never been a place that lets things slide quietly. We are the neighbors who show up to public meetings when nobody asked us to. The communities that read the agendas. The people who notice when a project gets quietly added to a hearing schedule. That instinct, that habit of paying attention, is the only reason any of this is even visible. It is also the reason this election matters more than most.
My Pledge, and What I Will Do About It
As I told the room at our Heritage Harbour Democratic Club Meet & Greet on April 23: “I will never allow interest groups, corporations, or developers to influence me.”
That commitment was not made in response to the Sun’s article. It was made before it was published. But the Sun’s reporting only sharpens why it matters. Our District 6 seat is opening for the first time in years. The previous council member held it for two terms. Some of the candidates running to fill it have spent years building exactly the kind of relationships the Sun is describing, regardless of whether they use public campaign financing or not. They will tell you those relationships do not influence them. The bill that would have required council members to prove that, in writing, with disclosure, with recusal where appropriate, was defeated 2 to 5 last week.
I would rather show you what that actually looks like in practice than ask you to take it on faith.
When I am elected, I will hold myself to the strongest disclosure standard available, before any council rule requires it. I will not vote on any matter involving a contributor whose donation I have not publicly returned. And I will introduce a council rule requiring the same standard for every member: real-time public disclosure of any contribution from a person or entity with active business in front of the County, before any related vote.
I want to be straight about what this can and can’t do. A council rule only matters if six other members vote for it. The five who voted no on Bill 23-26 are unlikely to vote yes on disclosure either. That’s why my own conduct doesn’t depend on the rule passing. If the council won’t hold itself accountable, I will hold myself accountable. The rule is for the council. The standard is for me.
Bill 23-26 attacked the problem from the applicant side: ban certain contributions, require applicants to disclose them when filing. My rule attacks it from the council member’s side: real-time public disclosure of any contribution from a person or entity with active business in front of the County, before any related vote. Different angles. Same goal. Both necessary. Lisa Rodvien fought for hers, against five colleagues who would not even explain their no votes. I commit to fight for the disclosure rule with the same persistence, whether it passes or not.
This isn’t theoretical. I already built RealVote, a free app that lets every District 6 resident weigh in on the issues coming before the council before I cast a vote. No taxpayer money. No waiting for permission. You can try it today at realvote.app. I’ll write more about how it works in a separate post. For now I’ll just say this: I started doing the work before anyone asked me to. That’s the standard.
Why June 23rd Is Important
The vote on Bill 23-26 was 2 to 5. The vote on the Democratic primary is June 23.
If you are a District 6 voter, please pay close attention to who is running and who they are taking money from. The information is publicly available. Every candidate’s campaign-finance reports are posted on the Maryland State Board of Elections website. The Sun has done much of the work of putting it together. And on June 23, you have the only vote that actually counts in this race – the one that decides who sits in that chamber, and who they answer to, for the next four years.
I’m asking for your vote on June 23.
Not because of who is paying for my campaign. Because of who is not.
That’s the difference. That’s the choice.
Make it.