Jess Feldmark and Her Legislative Spark ⋆ RoCo in HoCo

I texted back and forth with Delegate Jessica Feldmark’s (D-12) legislative aide, Katie Mettle, for a couple of days to arrive at the right time and place to interview Jessica. We committed to the lakefront in downtown Columbia. Jessica, it turns out, like any good community member/leader, keeps COVID-19 prevention methods at the fore of her mind. So we met up not only outside, but in our masks and six feet apart. We both brought blankets to sit on and food to eat (we never got to the food, as we were so engrossed in a relaxed but heartfelt conversation about why and how Jessica conducts her duties as a representative of Maryland’s twelfth legislative district.

At a political forum hosted by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in a cold, gargantuan auditorium in HoCo government’s George Howard Building, during the 2018 campaign during which Jessica ran for her seat in the Maryland General Assembly representing District 12, my jaw dropped as she answered a question. Her voice quivered sweetly as she responded, and I thought, “This woman is a sorceress of some sort! She’s reading my mind!” She answered exactly as I would have. No, she’s not into the occult, but it’s just so uncanny how alike we think.

We sat on the sloping land by the fountain at Lake Kitamaqundi. We each had our own blankets beneath us, but we could still feel pebbles and twigs poking through. Who cared, though! We were outside, we were face-to-face, there were people and the din of socialization around us. Life! This was the first time I had been out of the Morgenthau home in months, except to go grocery shopping, deposit a check at the bank, or pick up a prescription.

“Do you want to sit in your chair, Robert?” Jessica asked of the lawn chair I’d brought with me. I declined, preferring to be on her level to discuss. She’s a big believer in equality and equity, as I’d soon find out, so it was a prudent decision on my part.

Expecting Expenses

When a bill comes up in the Maryland General Assembly (MGA), Jessica (D-12) asks herself at whose expense will this be, if anyone? That was an approach to bill drafting I’d never heard from any of the many local politicians I’d interviewed.

“If this is helping someone, is there someone it’s inadvertently hurting? Do you know what I mean, Robert?” she said to me through a face mask bobbing up and down as she spoke, as they tend to do, we’re all coming to find.

Back to Jessica’s persistent question: whose expense will a bill be at? She wants to make sure each bill is lifting up the community as a whole and not inadvertently hurting a group of people and promoting equality and equity–not exacerbating existing disparities.

Perhaps this is why one of Jessica’s subcommittees at the MGA is on revenues. With the balanced budget the MGA is required to pass before adjourning every April, funds given to one cause are funds taken from another cause. Legislators can’t just envision a bill and expect the funds to be available without affecting the budget as a whole.

While being a delegate certainly gives Jessica the power to be efficacious in addressing problems in not just District 12 but the whole state, the role has its limitations, she said.

“We can advocate for our constituents, and we can try to get the Department of Labor to focus on things that need to be fixed, but we don’t control the departments,” she said. I sensed this was an ongoing frustration, as she put it, for Jessica, as a legislator with the 2019 session behind her. She’s been in politics for many years, but the past year has been her second time in a role to help make decisions about introducing bills and trying to get them passed. She said this has always been part of her perspective thought.

The PA System

Like so many we encounter at rocoinhoco.com, Jessica’s a Pennsylvania native, having grown up in the South Central region of that state. She came to Maryland for college. After getting her Bachelor’s in International Relations and Sociology at Goucher College, Jessica got her Master’s in Organization Development from American University. In between those degrees, Jessica joined Americorps and their Maryland arm, Volunteer Maryland. She recruited lawyers to work with low-income clients that first year, then during her second year she was a Regional Coordinator assisting volunteer coordinators at different sites across the state.

And: See why Josh Friedman wanted to be on the Howard County Democratic Central Committee.

Working Her Way Up–or Across

Jessica had helped Ken Ulman win his seats on the county council and as county executive, she’s been the council administrator, she helped the county council elected in 2018 get up and running. She knew a lot about politics, and to me, it seemed a natural progression after her previous job experiences to run for office.

Seeing Spots

Sen. Ed Kasemeyer announced his retirement from Team 12 in 2018, and it took many in the HoCo politico community by surprise. Clarence [Lam] has occupied a delegate seat on the Team, but he would now run for Senator in place of Ed Kasemeyer. So a delegate seat opened up.

A friend of hers was going to run but then decided not to because of different commitments in her life, so Jess decided it was her time to run.

“Jessica’s been a great addition to the D12 team. She’s rapidly become a respected legislator in Annapolis with her knowledge and credibility in local policy,” RoCo’s good friend Del. Eric Ebersole (D-12) told me when I texted him for some thoughts on Jessica’s first term in the legislature.

“I had a lot of experience working on campaigns but to me, policy is much more exciting than campaigning,” she told me, her right hand brushing some debris off her blanket.

She said the government has a clear role in “strengthening our communities and supporting our communities, the formal legislative role. But constituent services too, she said, which has lately been dominated by the pandemic, the ensuing unemployment, and the failures of the unemployment insurance system that Jessica felt needs an overhaul.

Many readers will remember that the federal government shut down last year. As a seasoned politico, Jessica knew enough to make sure her constituents weren’t facing hardship as a result.

She found out something surprising–even shocking. Unemployment benefits would be available to those who were not going to work as a result of the shutdown. Those who were going to work because they were essential employees but not earning their salaries couldn’t access benefits.

“No, no, that can’t be right. Somebody’s confused,” she told me she thought at the time, “But they weren’t eligible for unemployment because they were still going to work,” and I could tell that behind her fabric mask she had a grave look on her face. She approached Speaker Mike Busch”s office and asked if this could be so, implausible as it seemed. He confirmed it was. She found no one was working on ameliorating this glaring injustice. She introduced the Federal Shutdown Payment Protection Act, which would allow federal employees going to work during a shutdown to receive unemployment benefits. The Speaker’s office agreed that this was a cushion federal employees needed should there ever be another shutdown. And let’s be honest, that’s a very real possibility. Her bill allowed for a fund to work alongside federal unemployment benefits. This first bill Jessica introduced and helped passed made her proud.

“Her brain is like a spiderweb and a steel trap at once,” said Mettle when I asked her what some of her favorite things about working for Jessica were. “She sees every possibility, every subtle way a piece of writing could be tweaked, every possible way a bill might need to be fixed.” Mettle’s confident she’s learning so much working for her.

Federal Fairness

The above bill is the one Jessica is most proud of–so far. Let’s see what new, equality-and-equity promoting things she addresses in bills to come. I have a hunch she’ll introduce a bill to heal the many-faceted wounds of COVID-19 that almost every one of us a victim of. This is just my prediction; she didn’t say it to me. But it seems like a natural progression for this legislator who cares so much about her constituents and place called Howard County. And the whole state, in fact!

Maybe she’ll introduce a bill that addresses what she calls our “regressive tax structure.” That’s my own opining again, not based on anything she promised or predicted during our talk.

“So we undervalue and de-prioritize folks with lower income, and they end up spending more of their income on taxes,” she said, blocking the strong sunlight from her eyes and squinting at me. I looked past her for a monent to will some of the negative ions of the falling H20 of the waterfall in front of Lake Kittamaqundi to shower over those in need in Howard County, as those ions boost wellness.

If Jessica got $10 million dollars that she had to spend on District 12, she said something that elicited a light-bulb moment for me.

“I think that’s missing the point in terms of structural changes we need to make in terms of our budget,” she told me.

Jessica, being the organized thinker she is, said we need to identify our values and live them here in HoCo.

Whatcha Up To?

“During session and during the interim are very different,” she said. Session is go-go-go: meetings, hearings, workgroups. Interim, meanwhile is Jessica’s chance to investigate and examine issues that arose during session.

“I have a file that’s ‘After Session,’ things that are interesting and I want to follow up on. This gives her ideas about what might turn into bills in the next session. She said this past interim is a little different given the new pandemic reality we’re living in.

Also: A woman who’s fighting human trafficking in HoCo–Andrea Nunez.

Jessica said that Team 12’s constituent services have seen a dramatic uptick during this interim.

“So many people are struggling through the pandemic and unemployment needs to be fixed,” she said. catching her bag of food from tumbling down the hill we were perched on. As you can see, readers, Jessica genuinely cares about her community and the people that make it up. It came through again and again during our chat. And her professional history shows it, what with her work with Americorps and now as a politician. After all, good politicians like her are in the business of public affairs (at least one would hope) to make life better for those they represent.

Which Is the Way That’s Clear?

That’s a line from musical artist and erstwhile star of “The Young and the Restless” Michael Damian’s 1980s classic, “Rock On.” I wondered where Jessica will go from here, the place she’s at in her life right now. I almost asked, but I held back. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to recite some detailed plan for her future, despite the fact that she might have one given how organized she is. I wanted simply to believe that she’ll stay in politics, lifting up HoCo and maybe the world beyond it. I could picture her spider web/steel trap, as Mettle put it, mind addressing problems no one has as of yet in political positions in the MGA and beyond.

“I do. I do think I’ll run again,” Jessica said when I asked her if she would continue on in MGA-ing. “I really enjoy what I’m doing.” She also noted–again, reading my mind, as this is something I’ve always thought about politics and only more so since getting involved in local HoCo politics–one term, a three-month session, is simply and usually not enough time to get “meaningful changes,” as she put it, passed.

I remembered being at the Howard County Fair once in the Democratic Party booth when a man approached me representing some right-wing-ish group and saying he was there to convince me that there are two words that should never be next to each other: “career” and “politician.” The veins in his tattooed arm practically bugged out of his skin and I took a step back from him when he said this: “I don’t agree. I like the idea of career politicians.” I want people representing me who know how to work in the systems they’re a part of. And it takes time to learn the skills that amount to that knowledge. So yes, even though I see the risks in having the same people running the show over and over, I think there are protections in place in our government to prevent that, or there could be, and I support them–I support Jessica!

Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.