Session resources

Budgeting a 2027 Annapolis session presence

Updated September 25, 2026 · Every fee, threshold and date below was read from the issuing agency’s own published document. Where a 2027 figure has not yet been published, this page says so rather than estimating it.

A session presence in Annapolis is a fixed-length project with a hard start and a hard stop. The 2027 regular session of the Maryland General Assembly convenes January 13, 2027 and adjourns sine die on April 12, 2027 — ninety days. Everything below is organised around that window: what the state charges you to be there, when the filings fall due, and which line item actually dominates the budget.

Two notes on method before the numbers. First, the figures here are statutory and administrative — they come from the Maryland Public Ethics Law and the State Ethics Commission’s own guidance, not from a survey. Second, this page deliberately leaves several line items unpriced. Office space, catering, downtown garage rates and contract lobbyist retainers vary enough, and are published poorly enough, that a made-up number would be worse than none. Where that applies it is flagged.

1. Registration and compliance: small, fixed, and easy to miss

Registration is the cheapest line in the budget and the one most likely to generate a problem, because it is priced per relationship rather than per person. The Maryland State Ethics Commission charges $100.00 per registration, and a registration covers one lobbyist acting for one entity. A firm putting three registered lobbyists in front of the Assembly on behalf of four clients is filing twelve registrations, not three. The Commission notes that one check can cover multiple client registrations, which is a clerical convenience rather than a discount.

The clock is short. A registration must be filed with the Commission within five days after first performing an act that requires registration. The lobbying year runs November 1 through the following October 31, so a 2027 session engagement sits inside the lobbying year that opens on November 1, 2026 — which is the practical deadline to have registrations in hand, not January.

Compliance item	Amount / date
Registration fee	$100.00 per registration
Filing deadline	Within 5 days of the triggering act
Lobbying year	Nov 1 – Oct 31
Report period 1	Nov 1 – Apr 30, due May 31
Report period 2	May 1 – Oct 31, due Nov 30

Note what the reporting calendar does to a session engagement. The first period, November 1 to April 30, contains the entire 2027 session, and its activity report is due May 31, 2027 — six weeks after sine die, when the team has scattered. The Commission requires a report from anyone registered during any portion of a period even if there is nothing to report. Budget the compliance hours for late May, not for April.

2. What actually triggers registration

The thresholds sit in § 5-702 of the Maryland Public Ethics Law, and they are lower than most first-time entrants assume. Registration is required, among other circumstances, where an entity:

communicates in the presence of an official or employee to influence legislative action and either incurs at least $500 in expenses for that communication — personal travel and subsistence excluded — or earns at least $2,500 in compensation for it; earns at least $5,000 in compensation for communication that is not in the official’s presence; spends a cumulative $100 or more on gifts, including meals and beverages, for executive officials; spends at least $2,000 to solicit others to communicate with officials, salaries and contractual employees included; or is compensated to influence executive action on a procurement contract exceeding $100,000.

The $500 expense trigger is the one that catches associations. An organisation that sends volunteer members to testify, and pays for the room, the printing and the coffee, can cross it without anyone in the building considering themselves a lobbyist. The $2,000 grassroots figure is the second sleeper: a modest advocacy email campaign with staff time attributed to it clears it easily.

3. Housing: the line that decides the budget

For ninety days of session, plus the setup and pack-out weeks either side, lodging is the dominant cost and the one with the widest spread between good and bad decisions. The comparison worked out in the 2027 session housing cost guide, using rates verified directly with the hotels, is stark: one downtown room over a 104-night term runs about $46,592 all-in once lodging taxes and the hotel’s $39-per-day parking are counted. That parking alone is $4,056 per room across the term.

Three rooms — a principal, an associate and a rotating client seat, which is a common shape — is roughly $140,000 for the term. A whole furnished house in the historic district, at $33,000, is about $107,000 less, and it comes with a kitchen, a place to hold a briefing, and street parking for two vehicles instead of a nightly garage charge.

One tax detail is worth knowing before anyone books ninety nights of hotel. Anne Arundel County’s use or occupancy tax applies to transient lodging, and the county states that beyond 120 consecutive days a short-term rental need not charge it, with guests able to apply to the county for a refund of the tax paid on the first 120 days. A session term is shorter than that, so a hotel stay across the session sits squarely inside the taxed window unless the stay is structured to run past the threshold. Confirm the treatment of any specific booking with the county before relying on it.

4. Travel and per diem

A team housed in the historic district can run the session without a car: the State House, the House and Senate office buildings and Lawyers Mall are all a few minutes’ walk apart, and BWI is about thirty minutes out. The routes, fares and schedules are set out in getting to Annapolis without a car. For budgeting purposes the point is subtractive — a walkable base removes daily parking and, for most staff, a rental car for the term.

If your organisation benchmarks lodging against federal per diem, note that the rates governing January through April 2027 belong to federal fiscal year 2027, and GSA published that schedule in September 2026 — it applies to travel performed on or after October 1, 2026. For Annapolis the fiscal 2027 lodging rate for November through April is $130 a night, up from $125 in fiscal 2026, with meals and incidentals unchanged at $80 a day. See the FY2027 per diem rates and the 2027 session for the full Annapolis schedule.

5. The calendar you are staffing against

The Department of Legislative Services publishes a “session dates of interest” calendar for each regular session, giving the bill introduction guarantee dates, the crossover date and the post-session veto deadlines. The 2027 calendar has not been published as of September 25, 2026 — the 2026 edition was first dated September 3, 2025, so the 2027 sheet is overdue.

Until it does, the 2026 calendar shows the shape to plan against, and the shape is stable year to year because the day-numbers are fixed even though the dates move:

2026 milestone	Date	Session day
General Assembly convenes	January 14	Day 1
Senate bill introduction date	February 9	27th day
House bill introduction date	February 13	31st day
Opposite chamber crossover	March 23	69th day
Adjournment sine die	April 13	90th day

Two consequences for a budget. The introduction guarantee dates in the fourth and fifth weeks are when drafting and coalition work peak, which is early — a team that arrives in late January has already missed the window in which bills get shaped. And crossover in the tenth week is the point after which a bill’s remaining life is measured in floor time, which is when presence in the building stops being optional. Both fall inside a term that begins before the session convenes, which is why session housing is normally taken for the full window rather than the ninety days.

Post-session obligations run past adjournment too: in 2026 the final date for presentment of bills to the Governor was May 3 and the Governor’s signature or veto deadline was June 2. Those are staff weeks, not housing weeks, but they belong in the same project plan.

6. What this page does not price

Four line items are real and deliberately left blank here, because no primary source publishes a number we would stand behind: contract lobbyist retainers, which are privately negotiated; downtown office or meeting space, likewise; downtown parking garage rates, which the city’s parking operator does not publish in a machine-readable form we could verify; and event and reception costs, which vary by venue and carry their own gift-reporting consequences under the $100 executive-official threshold above. Get quotes for these; do not let anyone hand you a benchmark.