Personnel Report: State Gets Deputy Housing Secretary; Rep. Brown Loses Chief of Staff
The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) has a new deputy secretary, Owen P. McEvoy.
McEvoy had been the agency’s director of Public Information.
“Owen has been a dedicated member of our team who understands the good work we do each day to change Maryland for the better,” DHCD Secretary Kenneth C. Holt said in a statement. “His experience at various levels of government will ensure tangible progress on many of the transformational projects our department has helped support.”
As DHCD’s director of public information, McEvoy managed a team of marketing, communications, outreach, business development and customer service professionals. During his tenure, he directed a series of business development and marketing campaigns that have enabled the Maryland Mortgage Program to achieve more than $1 billion in mortgage reservations, the agency said.
Before his time in Maryland state government, McEvoy served as director of media relations and public information officer for former Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh (R), where he worked extensively on land use and development issues. He has also worked for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) and for former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).
In other personnel news, Maia Hunt Estes, the chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D), is leaving for a government relations job. Estes is heading to Invariant, a bipartisan government relations and communications firm. In a statement, the firm said Estes will work with clients in the health care, defense, transportation and appropriations sectors.
“She is smart on policy, politics, and people,” said Heather Podesta, founder and CEO of Invariant. “Maia is an exciting addition to our growing government relations team. Maia’s experience, knowledge, and gravitas will add value to our clients immediately.”
Estes has been Brown’s chief of staff since he entered Congress in 2017 ― a role she also held for much of his tenure as Maryland’s lieutenant governor. She was also the director of the Office of Policy of Legislative Affairs under Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D).
“Maia has been an indispensable advisor and confidante to me for more than a decade ― including since my first day in Congress ― and it is fair to say that I would not be where I am today without her extraordinary counsel,” Brown said.
His office is expected to name a new chief of staff in the next few days.
Josh Kurtz
Founding editor
Founding Editor Josh Kurtz is a veteran chronicler of Maryland politics and government. He began covering the State House in 1995 for The Gazette newspapers, and has been writing about state and local politics ever since. He was an editor at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, for eight years, and for eight years was the editor of E&E Daily, which covers energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill. For 6 1/2 years Kurtz wrote a weekly column on state politics for Center Maryland and has written for several other Maryland publications as well. Kurtz regularly gives speeches and appears on TV and radio shows to discuss Maryland politics.
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