Resolution To Expel Bouchat Gets Support, Then Gets Sent To Dead-End Committee

By Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters

April 6, 2026

The House voted Friday overwhelmingly to allow the introduction of a resolution calling for the expulsion of an absentee Republican delegate, only to see it assigned to the House Rules Committee, where it is likely to die without a hearing.

Del. Lauren Arikan (R-Harford) introduced the resolution late Friday to remove Del. Christopher Bouchat (R-Carroll and Frederick), who has been skipping floor votes and committee sessions since late February.

Because it was introduced Friday — weeks after a deadline for legislation to be introduced — Arikan needed support from at least 95 delegates to allow the resolution to be introduced. The vote to accept was 102-14. But then it was assigned to the House Rules Committee, where the chances are slim with a little more than a week left in the session.

The committee meets on Monday afternoon to discuss two bills. Rules Committee Chair Del. Anne Healey (D-Prince George’s) cast doubt on the Bouchat resolution getting a hearing before the session ends on April 13.

“I don’t know that we will,” Healey said Friday. “It’s very late filed. We don’t normally have hearings on late-file bills.”

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Arikan said the resolution was filed late because it was just this week when it became clear that Bouchat’s absence was hurting the work of the Judiciary Committee, which she and Bouchat sit on. Healey was not impressed,

“Everybody has a justification for their late-filed bills, but it is very late, and we have a lot of work to do, so I’m not sure that we’ll get to it,” Healey said after the vote. “I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to get to it. We have a lot of bills that are piling up.”

When asked if failing to take up the resolution told other delegates that consequences can be avoided if they wait until late in the session to stop coming to work, or otherwise flout the rules, Healey said: “I don’t have anything to say about that.”

Arikan drafted the resolution after Bouchat, in late February, began skipping his legislative duties. He comes to the State House daily — he was not present Friday — to register his attendance on the House floor in the morning. After checking in, he leaves Annapolis and returns to his welding business in Arbutus.

Arikan held out hope the committee would still take up the matter.

“I think he should be removed and I think the people of Carroll and Frederick should have the opportunity to have somebody appointed by the governor to replace him,” Arikan said after the vote. “Anybody who doesn’t want to be here, who feels that his presence is irrelevant, I would say, ‘Ssure, and we’ll replace you with somebody who wants to be here.’”

Both the House and Senate set their own rules governing their respective chambers. The Maryland Constitution lays out provisions for removal of lawmakers, including “failure to act” — the provision to which Arikan said she drew her resolution. But no lawmaker has ever been removed under the provision, though one — Sen. Frank J. McCourt — came close in 1969.

House Minority Leader Del. Jason C. Buckel (R-Allegany) said there is no clear standard for “how you can expel a duly elected member for failure to perform their duties.” But he said he would tell Bouchat “to come here and participate.”

“Whether he enjoys it, whether he thinks it’s fruitless or not,” Buckel said. “I think for the remaining days that he’s been here, he would have done himself a better service, and his constituents a better service, to participate.”

In addition to the Arikan resolution, Bouchat’s District 5 colleagues and the Frederick News-Post have both called on the first-term delegate to resign.

Buckel, who voted to allow Arikan’s resolution to be introduced, wondered if an effort to expel Bouchat would make much difference.

“So, after the next few days, does Delegate Bouchat’s absence really make much of a difference? No, but we’ll see,” Buckel said. “He shouldn’t have done things the way that he’s done them. We wish that he wouldn’t have, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure what the standard is to expel someone under those circumstances.”

Bouchat, in a text exchange Friday, called the expulsion effort “truly a distraction and seems disingenuous.”

Del. Christopher Eric Bouchat (R-Frederick and Carroll) sports a Maryland flag-themed top hat on opening day of the 2024 session. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

He said others including Del. Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County), have not been subjected to similar efforts. Jones, the former speaker, has missed all but a handful of days of the 2026 session.

Few details about Jones’ absence are known, except that she is said to be under a doctor’s care and her absences are considered excused. Bouchat, on the other hand, has intentionally skipped floor and committee meetings starting in late February after expressing frustration over one of his bills being held in committee, and questioning the effectiveness of Republicans who make up just 39 of the 141 House seats.

“I think, quite frankly, there are several members of the House of Delegates this session who indicated they weren’t running for another term,” Buckel said. “They’re in their last few days here, who aren’t here very often. I’m sure they all have particular factors that go into that. But Del. Bouchat has been much more almost confrontational in ways about his decisions not to be here and why he’s doing it, how he’s doing it.”

Bouchat has also complained that his job as a delegate cost his business at least $250,000 as he misses time at work to attend the 90-day sessions.

Bouchat — who is not seeking reelection this fall — did not respond to direct questions about whether he should be expelled. He questioned the need to remove him with the session entering it’s last full week.

“In two weeks there will be no more voting and we will all be doing the same thing,” he said in the text. “I have employees off, so I am busy in shop being productive as a welder.”

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: scrane@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and Twitter.