Who Does Maryland's Governor Really Work For? Larry Hogan has more in common with Donald Trump than his reputation suggests.

• Author: Cortellessa, Eric

For years, Never Trump Republicans have courted Larry Hogan to run for president. It's easy to see why. He's won two gubernatorial elections in Maryland, where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one; he's currently one of the most popular governors in America; and he's widely viewed as a moderate who's willing to reach across the aisle. The late-night talk-show host Seth Meyers recently described him as "a Republican who believes in climate change." In June, he's publishing a memoir--a move that suggests he's laying the groundwork for a 2024 presidential bid. Last spring, he launched a national advocacy group, An America United, designed to break partisan gridlock and "bring people together to advance bold, common-sense solutions for all Americans." Simply put, everything about Larry Hogan's public image would lead you to believe he's the opposite of Donald Trump.

But Hogan, it turns out, has more in common with Trump than his reputation suggests.

Both are real-estate executives who have refused to relinquish their private businesses while in office. Just as Trump maintained his ownership of the Trump Organization when he became president, Hogan maintained ownership of HOGAN, a multipurpose real-estate brokerage firm, when he became governor. Both have left dose family members in charge of their businesses--Trump with his children; Hogan with his brother, Timothy--and created arrangements that allow them to be apprised of the company's dealings. In other words, they have set up situations in which they can use their powerful government positions to increase their private profits.

As governor, one of Hogan's signature policies has been to expand state spending on roads, highways, and bridges at the expense of mass transit. His most controversial policy to date was to cancel the Red Line--a planned $2.9 billion metro rail line through Baltimore, for which the state had already acquired land. In the process, Hogan gave up $900 million in federal aid from the Obama administration. As The Baltimore Sun put it, "Hogan freed up hundred [sic] of millions of dollars he plans to use to undertake a significant shift in the state's transportation priorities from public transit to road projects."

Hogan has advanced a number of major state transportation projects that are near properties his company owns, a development that can boost the value of those properties. Before canceling the Red Line, he approved construction of an interchange down the road from a parcel of land his company controlled. Later, he approved millions of dollars in road and sidewalk improvements near property he had bought approximately two years earlier and was turning into a housing development.

Maryland law says that an official may not partake in a decision if the official or a qualifying relative--defined as a parent, spouse, child, or sibling--has an economic interest in the matter and the official or employee knows of the interest. These decisions "certainly seem to implicate the statute," said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former ethics adviser for the International Monetary Fund. "It looks like there's credible evidence of a violation."

Hogan's real-estate business has only grown while he has been in office. In 2014, the year before he became governor, his company had ownership in 30 real-estate limited-liability companies, or LLCs, according to his financial-disclosure forms. Now, he has 43. HOGAN is currently selling or leasing more than 20 properties throughout the state, according to its website, and has completed other real-estate deals over the past five years.

But Hogan has not revealed payments he has received from specific real-estate transactions while in office. "He's getting paid by developers all across the state--who he's in charge of regulating in one way or another--and the public has no idea who they are," said Democrat John Willis, a former Maryland secretary of state and now a University of Baltimore politics professor and a historian of Maryland politics and government.

Hogan's income has far exceeded his official yearly government salary of roughly $180,000. From 2015 to 2018, his first three years as governor, he made a total of roughly $2.4 million, according to his tax returns for those years, which he released during his 2018 reelection campaign. But he has re fused to release his returns for the years before he became governor, much like Donald Trump, giving the public no way to compare his earnings before and after he ascended to Annapolis. In addition, the tax returns Hogan has released do not include attached statements detailing the sources of his private income, effectively hiding what entities were paying him.

The amount he's made while in office is unprecedented. According to Willis, Hogan has made more money as governor than any other governor in the history of the state-and is the only one to have made millions of dollars while in office.

In February 2018, Maryland Matters, a state-based politics and policy website, reported that Hogan held ownership in a company called Brandywine Crossing Realty Partners LLC. The company was chartered on March 9, 2015, and it became a controlling partner for a parcel of land behind the Brandywine Crossing Shopping Center in Prince George's County. The land was just down the road from a major state transportation project; a new highway interchange.

As Maryland Matters reported, development funding for this project was first allocated by Hogan's predecessor, Democrat Martin O'Malley, and it had been studied by state transportation planners since 1984. "There is no indication that the governor deliberately took an official action to benefit himself...