2022 Voter Guide: April Rose, candidate for Maryland House District 5

Why are you running for office?

I am running to continue to serve the citizens of Carroll County. It has been my high honor and a privilege to help solve problems for individuals and business owners in our community.

What is the most pressing issue in your district?

Carroll County is very focused on education issues. In addition, our citizens are concerned about cost of living increases, taxes and support for our law enforcement professionals. We would like to have more local control without interference from the state.

How will you help your constituents deal with inflation?

I have supported legislation to reduce the tax burden on our citizens. I supported legislation and amendments to extend the gas tax relief. I also supported legislation to eliminate the automatic increases in the gas tax as is current law. We must look at meaningful tax cuts to help our citizens cope with the failures on the national level to effectively reduce inflation.

What do you see as the top transportation priority in your district, and how would you address it?

Carroll County remains opposed to expansion of mass transit. We have a small local bus service that runs within the county that is able to assist citizens who need those services. We continue to advocate for road expansions on Route 97 in the northern part of the county and on Route 32 for commuters who are heading south towards Route 70 and the Fort Meade corridor.

What should schools do differently during the next pandemic to help students, families and teachers?

Barring some catastrophic situation we should never again have a widespread shut down of our schools. I believe we learned that by and large children did very well as far as this pandemic was concerned. We should be laser focused on keeping our children in school and in person. The loss of learning is a huge concern and will take some time to fix. Sports and other activities are also extremely important to our children. We must learn from the difficult years we have all endured and be sure to keep our kids safe, in school and with their friends.

How equitably do police officers treat people of color?

I believe that the majority of our law enforcement men and women treat everyone equally regardless of their color. Our law enforcement in Carroll County is very well respected. Carroll County is a great and safe place to raise a family. If there are any complaints or concerns we have a robust process to deal with that in a fair and equitable way.

What would you do to make sure Maryland’s voting system is secure and accurate?

I think we need to have paper ballots to back up and confirm that our votes are accurately counted. I think that measures to make voting easy should always be balanced with a robust system to ensure that only those who are eligible to vote are actually voting. I support providing identification in order to vote. In addition, if there are concerns with the integrity of the vote we should be certain to recount and audit the final results.

What are the right goals and deadlines for Maryland to reduce carbon emissions and develop renewable energy sources?

I think that the “science” of climate change is a moving target. I am very concerned that legislation we have already passed and that is under consideration in the future will be detrimental to the success of our businesses. If our business community is not thriving it will be harmful to workers and families in the state. In this era of “let’s follow the science” we need to recognize that there is not definitive science to back up a lot of the proposed disasters that we read about in the main stream media.

What’s Maryland’s best use of federal COVID relief money?

I feel that we should focus money already appropriated to the state to one time infrastructure needs equitably across the state.