CUMBERLAND – September 23, 2026

Senator Mike McKay earned the endorsement of AFSCME Council 3, the union representing Maryland public employees, including the correctional officers who staff Western Maryland’s state prisons.

Allegany County is a corrections county. Two state facilities sit outside Cumberland, and for a generation they have been among the most reliable employers in the region. The officers who work them have spent years describing the same problem: too many vacancies, too much mandatory overtime, and not enough people on a tier.

McKay has said so publicly and bluntly, stating in July that the state is not funding the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to the level it needs to be. He attended Council 3’s regional meeting in Frostburg that same month.

“You cannot run a prison on mandatory overtime forever,” McKay said. “These officers are doing a hard job short-staffed, and everybody in Annapolis knows it. Knowing it is not the same as fixing it.”

McKay has also opposed budget maneuvers that would tie public safety dollars to political conditions, arguing this spring that funding for law enforcement should not come with strings attached based on decisions made in Annapolis rather than locally.

“The people who work these facilities are not a line item, they are our neighbors,” McKay said. “They live in Allegany County, they raise their kids here, and they deserve a legislature that staffs the job properly instead of asking them to absorb it.”

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