Prince George's County - Authority to Retain Fee for Single-Use and Reusable Bags PG 403-26
HB0408 establishes the Prince George’s County Coordinated Youth Violence Review and Response Team, a county-level multidisciplinary body intended to identify, review, and respond to cases of youth at high risk of imminent harm. The bill defines covered youth broadly to include minors who live in the county, attend or graduated from county schools, or participate in county youth programs, and it focuses on youth who are victims of gun violence, witnesses to gun violence, or family members of gun-violence victims. The team’s stated purpose is to examine root causes and system gaps, coordinate services, and develop individualized safety plans using wraparound supports for the youth and their families.
To carry out that work, the bill authorizes the team to receive access to a wide range of otherwise protected information, including public data, service-utilization records, student records, death certificates, law enforcement investigative information, medical examiner information, parole and probation records, and certain social services records. It also permits access to police records concerning children for this specific team. The bill requires participating agencies and organizations to enter into memoranda of understanding addressing confidentiality, data security, access controls, incident response, and secure disposal of data, and it requires the county executive to set procedures for meetings, confidentiality, and information sharing.
The bill makes the team’s meetings closed to the public and exempts its records from the Public Information Act, while also imposing strict limits on disclosure and use of personally identifiable information. Shared data may be used only for the team’s purposes and not for law enforcement purposes, and the bill includes protections for mental health and substance use treatment records under state and federal privacy law. It also creates misdemeanor penalties for unauthorized disclosure and requires annual de-identified reporting to the General Assembly beginning in 2027.
The overall sentiment reflected by the bill’s structure is supportive of a coordinated, prevention-oriented public health and public safety approach to youth violence, with strong emphasis on confidentiality and cross-agency collaboration. Although no committee transcript or vote record is provided, the bill’s favorable committee report and House adoption suggest general legislative support. The main points of tension inherent in the bill are privacy and due-process concerns versus the need for information sharing: the bill expands access to sensitive records, closes meetings, and limits public transparency, but it does so with detailed safeguards, parental consent requirements in most cases, and restrictions on disclosure and law-enforcement use.
HB0408 adds a new title to the Local Government Article creating a Prince George’s County-specific youth violence review and response team and amends the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article to allow confidential police records concerning children to be shared with that team. It changes state law by carving out a new, local exception to existing confidentiality rules for juvenile records and by establishing a statutory framework for interagency data sharing, closed meetings, confidentiality obligations, and reporting requirements. The bill primarily affects county agencies, schools, social services, juvenile services, law enforcement, and nonprofit partners that participate in the team, while also imposing privacy and security duties on those entities.
The bill appears to have been received positively in the legislative process, as reflected by the favorable committee report with amendments and House adoption. Its design suggests broad policy support for violence prevention, youth intervention, and coordinated case management, especially for youth affected by gun violence. At the same time, the bill’s detailed privacy protections indicate an awareness of concerns about sensitive data handling and the need to balance intervention with confidentiality.
The main area of contention is the bill’s expansion of access to highly sensitive records and its closure of team meetings from the public. Supporters are likely to emphasize the need for coordinated intervention, wraparound services, and early prevention for youth at risk of imminent harm, while critics may focus on privacy, parental consent, transparency, and the potential for misuse of confidential information. The bill addresses these concerns by limiting disclosure, requiring memoranda of understanding, restricting use of shared data to non-law-enforcement purposes, and imposing penalties for unauthorized disclosure, but those same provisions underscore the sensitivity of the information involved.