[6] After graduating, Ball worked as a supervisor in the Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Attorney General's office and as a part-time professor at the University of Phoenix.

[5] In October 2001, he announced his candidacy for the Howard County Council in the second district, seeking to succeed term-limited councilmember C. Vernon Grey.

[7] He also worked as assistant education and urban studies professor at Morgan State University, as a revitalization coordinator and community organizer for the Oakland Mills Village Board, and as a firefighter and emergency medical technician for the county.

[9] In March 2006, after Rakes announced he would resign from the Howard County Council, Ball applied to serve out the remainder of his term.

[17] During his campaign, he spoke on national and statewide political trends and ran on platform that included increasing school funding, protecting the environment, and diversifying the county tax base.

[18] During the election campaign, Ball was outraised by Kittleman, with total spending on the race reaching $1 million by the end of October 2018,[19] but was aided by the national environment favoring Democrats.

[27] During the election campaign, he outraised Republican challenger and former county executive Allan H. Kittleman, with total spending on the race reaching $1.3 million by the end of October 2022.

[28] In June 2021, state delegate Robert Flanagan filed a public records request for emails exchanged by Ball, other county employees, and a lobbyist.

The county identified 748 emails, but declined to release 497 of them, saying that doing so would reveal internal deliberations or information protected by attorney-client privilege.

Flanagan filed a lawsuit in August 2021 against Ball, seeking the full release of the emails, arguing that they were withheld without being reviewed by the county's Office of Law.

Kittleman subsequently ran ads highlighting the lawsuit, which Ball called a "Donald Trump, Dan Cox-style political stunt".

[36] In early March 2020, in preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic, Ball suspended all out-of-state travel for county employees[37] and participated in a tabletop exercises on how to handle COVID-19.

[46] On May 20, he signed onto a letter expressing concern about the consequences of Hogan's partial reopening and asking for guidance from the administration as they decided how to proceed.

[54][55] In November 2020, Ball formed a 50-member HoCo RISE Collaborative, which included five workgroups tasked with producing a report on steps the county should take in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

[62] In September 2021, Ball began distributing $63.2 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 toward various county programs and services.

[67] In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests, Ball said the county would be "revisiting" its police body camera pilot program.

[70] In his 2022 budget proposal, he included $1.6 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 toward implementing the program by October.

[79] In April 2019, Ball issued his first veto as county executive on a bill that would have expanded the size of buffer zones on scenic roads.

[87] In September 2017, Ball said he supported a state lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration over noise from new flight patterns at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport.

[90] During the 2020 legislative session, he testified in support of the Built to Learn Act, a bill that would allow the Maryland Stadium Authority to issue up to $2.2 billion in bonds to pay for school construction projects.

[94] In 2018, he proposed diverting $5.1 million in funding away from various departments and toward the Howard County Public School System's budget to maintain class sizes.

[103] The audit was conducted by the New York-based accounting firm CohnReznick, who in October 2019 released a comprehensive report recommending that the school system make efforts to reduce its $39 million health care deficit.

[104] Following the audit, Ball released a 10-step plan to eliminate the deficit by the end of 2024, which was unanimously approved by the school board in February 2020.

[114] In September 2022, Ball authored a letter opposing the county school system's proposed redistricting plan, expressing concerns about the impact student reassignments would have on Elkridge, Maryland.

[128] In March 2017, Ball criticized Executive Order 13769, which decreased the number of refugees admitted into the United States and suspended entry to individuals whose countries do not meet adjudication standards under U.S. immigration law, calling it "intolerable".

[146] In June 2022, he proposed creating a LGBTQIA+ commission to expand on recommendations made by the work group,[145] which was unanimously approved by the Howard County Council in July 2022.

[148] In November 2012, Ball introduced a bill to incentivize the hiring of people with disabilities, especially veterans, in county government positions.

[152] In August 2017, following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Ball participated in a Black Lives Matter vigil in Columbia and called for the immediate removal of a Confederate monument at the county's Circuit Court building.

[154] In September 2022, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Ball announced $1 million in funding toward expanding reproductive services at Howard Community College.

[156] In April 2007, during debate on the tax cut, he introduced amendments that would lower the annual income floor to $70,000 and another to raise the bill's asset test to $500,000 from $200,000.