[The following is the full transcript and contains expanded responses edited from the audio for time constraints]
Radio Chesapeake:
Election day is barreling down and candidates are making their final pitch. One of the races voters in the mid-shore are following closely is a contest for their Maryland senator. Katie Clendaniel, a Democrat, is challenging the incumbent, Republican Senator Johnny Mountz, who is here with us today. Johnny, what are you emphasizing in the home stretch now?
Johnny Mautz:
Well, right now we're emphasizing get out and vote. It's been a very tough election season. There's a lot of controversy and there's a number of undercurrents that are affecting voters and their decisions. And right now, we want to make sure our voters go out and vote. We want to reassure voters what we stand for, what our message is. I've always talked about a transparent government and efficient government affect the government and an accountable government, but that boils down to some real issues and how they play out for our constituents. Number one thing that everyone is dealing with is the cost of living. There are a number of contributors to that and explaining to voters how you can represent them and how you can help them. And for me, because I'm an incumbent, I have to explain or address issues that have come up in the past and to make sure people really understand what's happening.
Radio Chesapeake:
What do you see as your top critical issues for Annapolis?
Johnny Mautz:
Well, so I've been blessed. I've joined the General Assembly in 2014. It was a wild year. At that time, Larry Hogan was the underdog. He was elected governor and we were campaigning against things like the rain tax and a dying economy. There was all sorts of problems. Well, after Larry Hogan was elected, everyone had to look at one another and figure out, well, we had a campaign message. He just got elected. He stole our campaign message. And it was very interesting and it was an educational experience for me. And you have to understand, there's got to be purpose. What is your purpose? Now we vote on bills, we deal with constituent issues and try to help them. We try to work on government problems, but you have to have an overriding purpose. And for me in 2014, it was very easy. We had no internet.
There was no rural broadband, no high speed broadband. And I quickly made that my thing. I said, "We need rural broadband." And folks in Annapolis kind of laughed at me and said, "Johnny, we've heard that before and it's not going to happen." In fact, there was a situation where it should have happened where the federal government had given Maryland millions of dollars. It was supposed to be for rural broadband. It went to Montgomery County because Montgomery County has rural areas and we lost out on that. We put a task force together, spent some time. This wasn't planned. Of course, we had the national emergency with COVID and when internet became a priority. But because we had done the work prior, all of a sudden we led the country in broadband deployment. We were the leading state in the entire United States because of this work we had done.
That was an example of some things. And the next thing that came up was healthcare.
We're in a healthcare crisis, no doubt about it. And for a number of different reasons, which could extend my response, but we put in place some very important changes. They're not coming fast enough. I get it. I live it. I've been through it, but we are headed in the right direction if these play out properly. And that requires a lot of attention, meaning the hospital and the new regional hospital in Easton, what's going on in Salisbury at Tidal Health with the residency program and the changes we've made with the school of medicine in expanding that to bring doctors, providers, real doctors, trained doctors to the shore and some other things to get people into the healthcare profession. We're working those through. But moving forward right now, and we are in a crisis and not many people want to talk about it because it's been politicized heavily.
You have renewable energy folks and then you have other minded people about energy policy, but energy right now is a crisis for the shore. There's no simple solution, but the fact of the matter is we're looking at brownouts. The PGM declared a national emergency just recently.
Radio Chesapeake:
PGM?
Johnny Mautz:
Yeah, the PGM that they operate the electric grid for multiple states, which we are one of. It's a consortium. And they issued a warning that we are going to have brownouts. We have got a serious energy problem. There are a lot of anecdotal political things that have been thrown out about energy. The fact of the matter is the Delmarva Peninsula is uniquely situated. We have to import our energy. Maryland has shut down seven of our energy generation plants and they all now are in Pennsylvania. So we just get the same energy. We pay more for it. And that's a political rhetorical fact, but it is a fact. People need to understand that. But we're moving forward, right? People are going to keep consuming energy and there's no plan for us right now. There's no good reliable plan. And so moving forward in the next four years, to me, one of the most important things for us who are living here and looking at the future is how are we going to have a secure, reliable, affordable base of energy?
And there are already some things that are taking place that people are working on different nuanced efforts, but what needs to happen is we need to focus, or my thought is to get this focus on the Eastern Shore. It's interesting. I brought up the broadband explanation early because when I started that, it was all about the Eastern Shore. And that's when you're in Annapolis, that's what you're doing. It's all about the Eastern Shore. You're fighting other interests and you're actually trying to overcome a voting obstacle because we don't have as many representatives because we're rural, correct? And so with the broadband, I learned very early that you can't do an Eastern Shore bill. It's always going to become statewide. But the way we made that a statewide bill is we started with the Eastern Shore and the people that put that work group together, they were all on the Eastern Shore and it expanded and we included the state of Maryland.
The entire state benefited from that. And I think with energy and we've got the resources, we've got the innovation. And I really think there's a different mentality on the shore about managing things that if we get the right people together, we can duplicate. It won't be the same as broadband, what we do with broadband, but we can duplicate that effort, not only benefiting the shore, but the entire state of Maryland.
Radio Chesapeake:
Now you've criticized Governor Westmore for taxes and spending and the state is expecting a three to $4 billion shortfall. So I've got a kind of list here for you. So since Donald Trump took office, he's cut 1.9 billion in healthcare and food assistance to Maryland, 14 billion from Maryland's long-term healthcare budget, including rural hospitals, clawed back 360 million in grants, not to mention 400 million in school reimbursements, froze 330 million in transportation grants. And on top of that, eliminated 25,000 federal jobs of Maryland residents. So the question is, aren't you letting President Trump off the hook when you're talking about Governor Moore being the problem?
Johnny Mautz:
Well, that's a very good question. And you just brought up, I think it was like 10 or 12 or maybe even 15 different issues in each one of those cuts that were mentioned. Each one of those is embodied some different policy things, right? Each one of them, there's policy involved with those cuts and you have to go through each one of them to break them down. Yes, absolutely. The question to your answer is yes. Are we looking the other way or are we giving him a break? Well, I wouldn't say yes, but yeah, I would definitely say those cuts hurt us. But the question though to start out was, I'm criticizing Wes Moore for taxing and spending, but I'm not criticizing Donald Trump for cutting, right? And cutting and spending and taxes are two different issues. So I'd be happy to talk about the taxing and spending, but we're going to talk about the cutting.
Those are two separate issues. So I don't think you can compare the two of them, but if you want to talk about -
Radio Chesapeake:
It's income that the state had been getting and the programs were deeply cut among a lot of blue states.
Johnny Mautz:
Okay. So you're connecting those, how those cuts affect the state of Maryland.
Radio Chesapeake:
Right.
Johnny Mautz:
Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, there are specific situations where those cuts definitely hurt the state of Maryland and they're going to be problematic for us. There's things that go on in the state of Maryland with the way some of these programs are managed that have attracted the attention of those cuts. But across the board, those cuts do affect us in a difficult way. And the challenge is how are we going to find a solution and how are we going to work around those cuts?
And as far as President Trump and me directly communicating with President Trump, that's a federal... I don't really go out and criticize the federal representatives on much of anything. I think there's a federal issue I've gotten involved in. It's mostly dealing with fisheries because it's directly related to people in our district. But as far as the cuts, yes, those cuts hurt us. And yes, I don't want those cuts to happen. I don't want that to affect us the way that it's affecting us. Yes, it is a problem without a doubt, but I'd like to go through all of them individually. They're pretty complicated, the list that you just went through, because I can't remember all of them offhand, but I've gotten into a number of them and to break each one down, I think is probably going to be a separate interview.
Radio Chesapeake:
It would be. Yeah. We're running a little long already. So you're working in a legislature that is overwhelmingly Democratic. Tell us about bipartisan wins for the people of Maryland. What have you successfully joined forces on legislatively to get things done?
Johnny Mautz:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because we just had a very interesting session. In this last session alone, I could go through a number of them, but we had to budget and the budget's a really complicated thing and you've got taxing and spending. The budget, however, is the amount of money that's going to be spent. Typically, I vote against a budget and I voted for the budget in the previous year. It was a previous year, but what we did is by voting for that budget, we were able to get funding for commercial fishing. We were able to get funding to bring legal services to the Eastern shore. We were able to get funding to secure this healthcare initiative that we've been working on, and we were able to secure funding for a number of other projects here locally on the shore. That's one perfect example. I typically vote against a budget, but if I can guarantee that we're going to get some benefit to the shore, then it will get my vote.
And then to flip back, I remember when Governor Moore was first elected, there was a bill that I voted that across the... We had juvenile crime, juvenile violence is a big problem. And the Job Corps program that Governor Moore initiated, that was a bill that was going to bring some effort, some relief, some investment into juvenile services. Now, it hasn't brought the results that I'd hoped would bring, but that's another example of vote reaching across the aisle and voting for something to bring results to the Eastern Shore.
Radio Chesapeake:
So I was reading in a recent voter guide response from you that you advocate for what is called base load energy. So that's suppliers like nuclear, coal, hydro, natural gas, utilities. They're on 24 hours a day. They're the big plants. But the biggest growth in America seems to be the renewables like solar. Costs have gone down and homeowners can plug in and reduce their bills. So the question is why not renewables?
Johnny Mautz:
Well, renewables are part of the plan, but they're not base load energy. Solar, I mean, solar is, if you have sunlight, then you have energy and solar plays in, but you have to factor in the cost. Base load energy is a reliable, affordable energy source that can be generated constantly, correct?
Yeah. Yeah. And solar, and that's where we were running into a little bit of a... That's where we're facing a major problem is the idea is we're going to move forward and invest or gamble on our energy security based off of the weather. And meanwhile, why are we doing that? To save the climate, to protect the climate. And meanwhile, there are options. There's clean natural gas, and that is a very solid, reliable source of energy generation. Nuclear is something that everybody likes because you can generate so much, it's so affordable. But the reality is that in order to get a nuclear generator permitted, it's a decade at least to go through the federal government. Another thing that's very interesting in the technologies developing is our battery storage facilities. They work well with renewable. The problem is we don't have them right now. So if you go all in on solar and wind, but you don't have the battery storage, you got a problem.
So base load is what we need. And part of our problem here in Maryland, if you look at your bill, you have those line items. We're importing now all of our energy from out of state. See, Maryland went ahead and went forward on this, we're going to get rid of all these coal-fired energy plants, which makes perfect sense, but you can't get rid of them if you don't have something to replace them. And the idea you're just going to replace them with solar panels and wind without having some way to harness a reliable base load energy, that doesn't work. And that's why we're having the problem we're having right now. It's not rocket science. This isn't fancy stuff, and I think we can find a solution.
Radio Chesapeake:
So one of the tenets of your campaign is that Maryland is spending too much, yet the Eastern Shore depends on grants and state bonds, which you've helped organization like Hansel and Richardson Maritime Museum and all that. I mean, is it a question of does everybody represent just their district or is spending a thing that other people worry about, but not in my district?
Johnny Mautz:
The state budget's an interesting thing and it takes a long time to understand it and kind of grasp when we talk about a deficit. Our state, for some reason, has taken on a trend of enacting mandates that it can't afford. They're aspirational. We'd like to hit the highest peak, so we're going to mandate that the state come up with this crazy amount of investment for whatever that goal is, knowing full and well that revenues and the way the state operates won't cover that.
Radio Chesapeake :
Like the blueprint.
Johnny Mautz:
Correct. Yeah, like the blueprint. We've created an environment that we're going to spend the money we don't have, which has really hurt us with our bond rating, right? That's one aspect of our challenges with regards to responding to bringing money home. We are not a cash poor state. Our revenues are very healthy in the state of Maryland, despite our sagging economy, which is a strong statement for the state of Maryland. But when we have a budget, that money's going to be spent. And so the challenge of bringing money home for the district is, okay, that money's been set aside. Now how are we going to make the case to the general assembly and the governor that investing in these projects are going to have a statewide or a regional impact worthy of the government? We've been very successful in doing that. I don't take credit for that.
That really comes from the grassroots, but getting into spending, and this is what Governor Hogan did, this was his special sauce. This is how he had a surplus. There's discretionary spending. He didn't spend that money. Governor Moore has spent that money, and that's where we run into a problem. Once you spent that money and you have to balance the budget, then you're running into a situation where, oh my gosh, we're going to have to raise taxes. A couple years ago, the state implemented the largest tax increase in the state's history when we probably could have avoided that if there was a better management strategy. We definitely could have avoided that. Now we're stuck with people selling vehicles that they owned before because they can't afford to register them anymore. It doesn't make sense. In addition to that, there were several other taxes that were implemented and they were done pretty hastily.
Some of them have actually been repealed. Others that were supposed to bring enormous revenue, maybe the one tax was supposed to bring like 250 million, only brought in 30 million a year. That's not good fiscal management. We can do better than that. I think a lot of that builds into kind of the way the political world has sort of devolved into just jam things through without getting them done correctly and without thinking them through. I've actually been a part of a bipartisan group in Annapolis to try to fix that. One of the ideas is rather than just introduce a bill in January and hope it to be voted into law by April is how about if you have a bill, it's important, have a venue or something in Annapolis where you can submit the bill to the Department of Legislative Services where the analysts can review and work on your legislation in the summer before session rather than wait till January.
Once they say go and they gavel in the beginning of session, it's akin to a major street festival with people running from one end of the street to the other and then they run from the other end of the street back. It is a wild, chaotic experience. The idea is that when you have that mishmash of people going different directions that you exchange ideas and make ideas better, but that's not what's happening and that's really one of our challenges and it's not isolated in Maryland. This is a national problem. It's at the federal level, it's at state levels and it's driven in different directions, but it's something we've got to fix because our government is better than implementing programs that don't work. I'll give you another example, that family medical leave program that's going into place. It rolls out January one. It doesn't work right now and people are required to pay into a escrow account or pay into the Department of Labor, but the program really doesn't work because there's so many variations of employment status and payment and how you're reimbursed and things like that.
But at the end of the day, the concept of having a true paid leave program for when you have a medical emergency, I think everybody agrees with that, but we're not going to do it using common sense. We're just going to force it through. I kind of went off the topic there a little bit. I
Radio Chesapeake:
Apologize. No, that's okay. You covered a lot of good stuff. What would you like voters to keep in mind about you as they go to the polls?
Johnny Mautz:
This is a very difficult time in our country's history and a difficult time in our state's history. Certainly the national is overshadowing the local, but the local is real. I mean, we've got some across the board, we've gone from a moderate state in many ways to an extreme state in many ways. There are a lot of changes taking place. When you're voting, you're casting your vote, you're giving someone your trust, you're giving them your support. During a time when there's so much change and you know there's no way we're going to be able to avoid this, is decide who it is that you want to have there, not only to be able to cast that vote, but to be there to help you when you're in need. That has been one of my top things. It's a great honor to serve in the general assembly, but it's a greater experience to be able to help people.
I've spent a lot of time working locally. I always focus on the grassroots and I'm always available.
Radio Chesapeake:
Constituent Services.
Johnny Mautz :
Constituent services, exactly, exactly. I've made promises and I've kept them and I think that says a lot. My word is my value and I've always kept my word and I intend to stay true to that and this is my home and I want to live here. I want my children to live here. I grew up here. I understand it. I know that people are moving here that may think just kind of getting accustomed. Maybe there's an integration thing going on where they're getting used to pickup trucks and all the fun stuff that goes along with living in a rural community. But I just want to make sure people understand that protecting this way of life, this joy that we have here, this beautiful place, one of the most beautiful places in the world, that's why I'm involved. That's why I got into the political world and that's why I do what I do and that's why I have the energy to get into issues.
And also, if you notice, I don't get involved in many of what I call the nonsense or the noise out there. I don't have time for it. There's more important things in life. Let's get some... We fix things. We don't break them. That's always been my way about going about the job.
Radio Chesapeake:
That's Maryland Senator Johnny Mountz running for reelection in the 37th District. Early voting is underway and November 3rd is the day of reckoning. Stay tuned until then to hear more from other candidates for office serving the mid-shore. You can hear all our mid-shore candidate interviews on whcp.org. Thanks for coming in, Johnny.
Johnny Mautz:
Jim, thanks a million. It's great to be here. Remember to vote Johnny Mautz for State Senate and God bless the Eastern Shore.
Radio Chesapeake:
For Radio Chesapeake, I'm Jim Brady.