I am grateful for the opportunity to serve District 5 as your delegate since 2015, representing both Carroll County and parts of southeastern Frederick County. I look forward to continuing to fight for you in the next General Assembly session and ask you to consider casting your vote for me in the upcoming 2026 election.
As the session looms in January, we face many challenges — one of the biggest is energy. The Democrats who control Annapolis and their allies in the state bureaucracy are interested in advancing their “green agenda” and increasing their power over your lives, even if it means that the energy you use to power your homes and businesses becomes extremely expensive and unreliable. This green power grab will not only cost families and business owners dearly but will carve up family farms and threaten agriculture, which is the cornerstone of Carroll County, accounting for $138 million in agricultural products sold in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
To further their green agenda, the Democrats and the bureaucrats beholden to them have seized power from duly elected officials in Carroll County. After your county commissioners voted in July 2023 to ban solar farms on farmland, allowing them only on commercial/industrial zoned land, Gov. Wes Moore, in May 2025, signed a bill that prevents local governments from enacting zoning laws that restrict the construction or operation of solar energy projects, overriding local restrictions like the one enacted in Carroll. If the Democrat power grab is left unchecked, solar arrays will sprout up all over our county instead of corn, hay and soybeans.
Their green agenda aims to force you to buy an expensive electric vehicle and junk your gas furnace and appliances in favor of going all-electric. Because current electricity generation cannot meet both our needs and those of AI-supporting data centers, unelected bureaucrats greenlit the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP), a 70-mile high-voltage electricity transmission line cutting through the agricultural heart of Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties. Make no mistake, the MPRP will not provide one kilowatt to folks living in Carroll or Frederick counties but will supply power to data centers in Virginia. Virginia gets AI data centers and increased tax revenue and jobs, while you and your family get stuck with the bill as your BGE rates increase.
Wes Moore’s recent comments on the MPRP are nothing more than an attempt to ride the fence. Do not be fooled, he favors the green agenda as does the far-Left base of the Democratic Party he needs to court in his inevitable run for president. You can expect his rhetoric to change direction like an offshore windmill the closer we get to 2028. As your delegate, I am committed to keeping the power to decide in your hands and in the hands of your local officials, while also keeping your homes and businesses powered at a price you can afford without sacrificing our agricultural heritage in the name of the green agenda.
Del. April Rose is a Republican representing District 5 in Carroll and Frederick counties.
