The lawmakers, all Democrats, sent a letter to Housing and Community Development Secretary Kenneth C. Holt calling his remarks “incredibly offensive and insensitive to the plight of mothers of children with lead poisoning”. “I think he was a little off the reservation on that”.
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Thirty members of the House of Delegates called on Gov. Larry Hogan’s top housing official to resign Monday over remarks he made last week suggesting that mothers might poison their children with lead to obtain housing benefits.
Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Hogan, said that Holt’s comments do not reflect administration policy and that “he has never spoken to the governor or any member of senior staff about this”. “And if that child and mother live in a Maryland residence, that landlord is on the hook to provide housing for that child until the age of 18 with unlimited liability. So we’re going to support the Maryland Department of the Environment with trying to pursue some commonsense reorganization of that.”.
“The secretary deeply regrets his comments and apologizes to anyone he offended”, Audra Harrison, a spokeswoman for the housing department, said on Saturday.
Rutherford gave the closing speech at the annual summer conference for the Maryland Association of Counties on Saturday in place of Hogan, who recently completed his third round of chemotherapy for B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Holt told The Baltimore Sun Friday he used “an anecdotal story” to illustrate that landlord liability in lead paint cases should be limited. Rutherford said the administration would not propose any lessening of the liability of landlords.
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“No, no, no. That’s ridiculous”, Rutherford said. Rutherford said while the Republican governor wanted to attend, his doctors are advising him to avoid crowds, because his immune system is down from treatment.
