Sen. Angela Alsobrooks tells Eastern Shore delegation federal housing, crypto and infrastructure work aims to help local communities

U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) told the Eastern Shore delegation on March 13 that her priorities in the Senate center on economic opportunity and housing affordability, and she outlined legislation and funding she said would help communities on the Eastern Shore.

Alsobrooks said the bipartisan Road to Housing Act includes provisions to allow federal dollars for small home repairs, address appraisal bias and reauthorize the HOME program for the first time since 1994. “This program hasn’t been reauthorized since 1994,” she said, noting the bill would raise the program’s authorization from $3 billion to $5 billion to support first-time homebuyers and other affordable-housing programs.

Why it matters: Local officials at the meeting pressed for federal support on wastewater, dredging and workforce housing; Alsobrooks framed the housing package and HOME reauthorization as a tool to increase both supply and home retention for lower-income and older homeowners.

Alsobrooks also described her work on technology and financial regulation in Congress, including the Genius Act and provisions aimed at blockchain and stablecoins. She said she led consumer-protection language and pushed amendments to protect community banks, arguing that allowing yield on passive stablecoin balances could trigger deposit flight from small banks. “We don’t want to pretend to the consumer that those protections apply when they don’t,” she said, describing protections such as FDIC coverage and the Community Reinvestment Act as examples of bank safeguards that don’t exist automatically in crypto products.

She discussed artificial intelligence as a near-term economic force that will require workforce training and planning while pointing to constructive uses — for example, using AI to help analyze medical records to improve diagnoses.

Alsobrooks listed federal grants and projects she said benefited the Eastern Shore, including $45,000 for a Kent County EMS headquarters enhancement; $1,000,000 for the Barclay Community Center and town hall; $411,000 for a trail expansion in Easton; $1,400,000 for the Thompson Creek connector road and trail work in Queen Anne’s County; $2,800,000 toward a windmill pump enhancement for the Easton Utilities Commission; and $1,100,000 for wastewater-treatment upgrades in Trappe. She described these as examples of bipartisan and regional wins.

On criminal-justice facilities, Alsobrooks described a visit to the Fallon Building detention center in Baltimore, where she said a judge had found conditions illegal and overcrowded, and said she would not support a new modern facility in Western Maryland until reforms were evident. “I have lost trust and confidence in this administration where this issue is concerned,” she said, adding that the current practice appeared to detain people who were not the administration’s stated enforcement targets.

During a short question-and-answer period, delegates thanked her for the local grants and raised concerns about disaster-relief applications for commercial fishermen and ongoing infrastructure needs. Alsobrooks offered follow-up and said her office would coordinate with local officials and the governor’s office to ensure disaster-relief requests matched federal requirements.

What’s next: Alsobrooks said she expects movement on the housing and tech-related bills in coming weeks and encouraged local leaders to stay in contact with her regional staff about specific grant and disaster-relief needs.