Maryland’s Secretary of Health Robert R. Neall is set to retire effective December 1. Secretary Neall has been a part of the Governor’s administration since he took office, serving on the Governor’s transition team and as director and senior adviser for the Governor’s Office of Transformation and Renewal before assuming his role at the Department of Health in 2018.
An article in Maryland Matters provides comments from some of his colleagues.
“He’s highly respected in the General Assembly [by] both Democrats [and] Republicans,” said Sen. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery), vice chairman of the Finance Committee, which sets health care policy.
“I love him as a person who is totally devoted to the State of Maryland,” Senate President Emeritus Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) told Maryland Matters Wednesday. “He understands its history, its economics. He knows where the state needs to be in terms of the environment.”
“Phenomenal,” said lobbyist and Maryland Board of Elections Vice Chairman Patrick “P.J.” Hogan, a former Senate colleague. “He’s done it all.”
The article also highlights his career in public service.
Neall began his decades-long tenure in Maryland politics as the legislative assistant to state Senate Minority Leader Edward J. Mason (R-Allegany) from 1972 to 1974 — before he was elected to the state House of Delegates from Anne Arundel County, where he served from 1975 to 1987.
In 1986, Neall ran unsuccessfully for Congress, losing to then-Rep. Tom McMillen (D) by just 428 votes. Then he served as a member of the Maryland Transportation Authority and chair of the Maryland Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse immediately after that.
In 1990, Neall was elected Anne Arundel County Executive and served for one term. In 1996, he was appointed to the state Senate following the death of Sen. Jack Cade (R-Anne Arundel).
Neall, the former House minority leader, went from red to blue at the turn of the century, switching parties and becoming a Democrat in 2000.
…Neall left the Senate in 2003, after losing reelection to a conservative Republican. He flipped his party affiliation back to the GOP in 2006.
Between 2005 and 2014, Neall served as a member of the Spending Affordability Committee and the Video Lottery Facility Location Commission. He also chaired the State Higher Education Labor Relations Board, the Task Force to Study Implementing a Civil Rights to Counsel in Maryland and the Governor’s Salary Commission.
Neall has been a member of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents since 2015 and served on the Maryland Historical Trust’s Board of Trustees since 2016. Along the way, he has worked in the private sector, as an executive at the Johns Hopkins Health System.
