Gov. Larry Hogan delivering his State of the State address.
Gov. Larry Hogan delivering his State of the State address.

Democrats say Gov. Larry Hogan is taking away money from college kids.  Hogan says the legislators are acting like college kids.

The latest dustup in Annapolis is once again centered on Baltimore. Democrats in the General Assembly say Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, is taking money away from colleges in his budget to build a jail in Baltimore.

In a Baltimore Sun article published Thursday, Democrats said the governorโ€™s budget proposal to spend $480 million on construction of a new jail in Baltimore takes money away from construction projects on a new student services center at Morgan State and turning a science center into a business center at Coppin State.

Hogan said the jail construction was their idea The governor went on WBALโ€™s C4 Show and said the idea that he would take money away from students to โ€œincarcerate people and build a jail is simply nonsense.โ€ He added that the jail was the legislatureโ€™s idea.

โ€œItโ€™s not my idea to build a jail in Baltimore. Quite frankly, weโ€™re the only state in the nation that has a city jail, and Iโ€™d rather have nothing to do with it,โ€ he quipped.

Before his segment on the show was finished, Hogan had some more words about the General Assembly.

โ€œThey come down to Annapolis like itโ€™s spring break, breaking furniture, throwing beer bottles off balconies,โ€ he said. โ€œThankfully, theyโ€™re going to go home in a few weeks and we can get back to running the state and making progress like we have for the last year.โ€

Seeing as how theyโ€™re not going home until April, state Senator Robert Zirkin took to the Senate floor and demanded an apology.

Stephen Babcock is the editor of Technical.ly Baltimore and an editor-at-large of Baltimore Fishbowl.