Voters to pick Anne Arundel probate officials after scandals

Anne Arundel County voters will have their say Tuesday on probate office leadership after the conviction of the county’s last register of wills and disciplinary proceedings against two orphans’ court judges stemming from additional misconduct.

County Democratic leaders have split their endorsements between the longtime register of wills employee who was appointed in 2024 to replace Erica Griswold after her removal from office and a primary challenger who promises to rebuild the culture in the wake of the scandals.

For both Democrats, the primary will be their first election as candidates for a probate office.

Incumbent Register of Wills Jasmine Jackson, who worked as the office’s chief auditor in 2023 when she flagged the missing estate tax check that her then-boss had cashed personally, said her new role leading the office hasn’t been a hard adjustment — she’s already “pretty much done everything in the office” before — but unexpectedly becoming an official running for reelection has been a change for the Glen Burnie resident.

“I never had any aspiration to run for office, but I know the importance of this role,” said Jackson, who was appointed to the post in 2024 after Griswold was convicted of misconduct in office and removed from her position.

Jackson, 37, said she’s worked to be a stabilizing force in the office following a volatile period that included a feud between two orphans’ court judges that spilled out into the public view.

Courtney Buiniskis, an educator, labor leader and chief of staff to Anne Arundel County Councilwoman Lisa Rodvien, said she’s challenging Jackson in the primary because although her opponent is “qualified as well,” county residents deserve better than normalcy.

“It’s not about the status quo anymore; it’s about going be above and beyond that,” Buiniskis, 49, said. She hopes to transform the office with outreach about estate planning and has been running informational sessions on probate matters throughout the campaign.

A longtime southern county resident, Buiniskis entered the political arena while she and other adjunct professors at Anne Arundel Community College were fighting to unionize. That experience introduced Buiniskis to local Democratic leaders including County Executive Steuart Pittman.

Buiniskis later served as a community engagement officer for Pittman, who has endorsed her in the Democratic primary. She’s also won the backing of Sheriff Everett Sesker, outgoing Clerk of the Circuit Court Scott Poyer, Annapolis Mayor Jared Littmann and a host of local legislators.

Jackson believes experience is key. Starting at the county’s register of wills office as summer intern nearly two decades ago and working her way up to the top, she said her experience has taught her “it’s important to keep someone in that role that has the experience of the office, that has the actual care and compassion for the office, and not someone that’s just looking for a political stepping stone.”

Most of Jackson’s campaign fundraising has come from attorneys. Her endorsements include U.S. Congresswoman Sarah Elfreth and state legislators such as Sen. Pamela Beidle and Dels. Dana Jones, Heather Bagnall and Mark Chang, as well as Howard County‘s and Baltimore County‘s incumbent registers of wills. She also has the backing of county councilmember and county executive candidate Allison Pickard, sharing a slate with her, Chang and incumbent State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess.

With plenty of technical knowledge of how the office operates, Jackson said she spends her time conducting research on case law to handle more complicated estates, keeping the office compliant with tax code, ensuring wills are properly probated and serving as a middleman between the office and the orphans’ court.

She said that after being appointed to lead the office, her priority for the first year was rebuilding morale among the staff. More recently, she said she’s been in the community giving seminars on the importance of preparing a will. If elected to a full term, she hopes to work on boosting uniformity between the various county registers of wills, seeing how the offices can use artificial intelligence to streamline processes and partnering with more community organizations to provide information on the probate process.

Buiniskis said she has experience with the office itself — but from the other side. Having lost half of her family before she turned 40, she’s had to deal with estate matters while grieving her relatives.

“I went through the process, understand the process, and here’s the thing that I learned in the community: There is no community engagement about the register of wills office,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even know what it is.”

She said she would change the culture of the office to be “not so paperwork-focused and more people-focused” by educating residents about estate preparation and the probate process. She said her skills as an educator and community engagement officer, plus her experience handling budgets and working with lawyers, legislators and government agencies “to get things done” make her uniquely qualified to change the office.

She said dealing with her brother’s estate, which involved a contested will that had to be litigated in orphans’ court, highlighted the need for better outreach.

“No one tells us about these things,” she said, noting that surveys have shown that more than 70% of Black Americans don’t have wills. Buiniskis and Jackson are both Black.

“I wish that someone would have gotten in front of our family, even for 15 minutes, to put something in our ear,” she said. “Just going through orphans’ court for years, it takes a toll on you; it takes money that working=class families do not have.”

After ousting a four-term Republican in the 2022 race, Griswold was sworn in as the county’s first Black register of wills and became the first Democrat to head the office in over 40 years. Although Anne Arundel County was an establishment Republican stronghold for decades, its voters have shifted left since the rise of Donald Trump as a conservative leader in 2016.

The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican hopeful Jason D. Lambert, who was designated as a candidate by the county’s central committee and has only raised $150 this cycle.

Meanwhile, the county’s other probate race is also one to watch — even though the Maryland Supreme Court removed Marc Knapp from his orphans’ court judgeship earlier this month, his name will appear on the Democratic primary ballot, and he could ultimately be reelected in November.

Knapp had been accused of discriminatory behavior toward fellow orphans’ court judge Vickie Gipson in a bitter dispute that also resulted in the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities recommending her suspension. Gipson, who was also recommended for removal by a disciplinary commission, is not running for reelection. Four candidates, including Knapp, are on the Democratic primary ballot; there are only three seats on the court.

This story has been updated to clarify that this is the first election the candidates have run for this office.