May 17 (UPI) — Maryland Governor Wes Moore vetoed a measure that would have created a commission to study reparations in the former slave state.
Moore vetoed the bill on Friday but said he will propose other methods to address the effects of slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination against blacks in Maryland.
“Together, we must take urgent action to address the barriers that have walled off black families in Maryland from work, wages and wealth for generations,” Moore said Friday in a letter to state lawmakers.
Moore said he will make an announcement regarding the wealth gap in Maryland during the Juneteenth holiday.
The bill was among several that Moore vetoed about 10 days before the deadline to act on them.
The proposed commission would have explored options for addressing the state’s past and subsequent laws deemed discriminatory toward blacks from 1865 to 1965.
The options would have included a formal apology, cash payments or enacting laws that would make amends for past wrongs.
“You can’t have unity without justice, and you can’t have justice without truth-telling, and you can’t have truth-telling without courage,” Delegate Gabriel Acevero, D-Montgomery County, said upon the measure’s introduction in April.
The measure would have created a 23-member commission tasked with studying the effects of slavery and how to make amends with the descendants of former slaves.
Potential state policy changes might have included help with social services and down payments, debt forgiveness, child care coverage and property tax rebates.
A Maryland lawmaker who opposed the proposed reparations commission said it would create a race-based reparations tax.
“It is disgraceful that we are going to set up a reparation tax that will tax one race and give to another race, all in the name of equity,” Delegate Matthew Morgan, R-Calvert and St. Mary’s counties, said upon the bill’s passage in April.
He called “equity” a “Marxist term.”