Early mail-in ballot canvassing became an official mainstay in Maryland in 2024, helping elections officials to produce quick results in tight races on the night of the primary in contests for Baltimore mayor and U.S. Senate. By Tuesday — the day of the primary — 146,840 mail-in ballots had already been counted across the state, data from the Maryland State Board of Elections showed.

Several federal housing officials were in Hagerstown on Wednesday for the “unveiling” of Kilpatrick Woods, a development in the city’s West End being created with manufactured housing and touted as a new concept for affordable workforce housing. What’s new about the concept for Kilpatrick Woods is creating a community with manufactured housing in which the homebuyer also will own the land underneath the home and have access to affordable mortgage programs, developer and EquityPlus LLC Partner Tom Heinemann said in an interview after the ceremony.

Quantum Loophole has begun construction on a 600-acre nature reserve at its planned data center campus near Adamstown to capture carbon emissions generated by data center facilities. The company announced on April 22 that it broke ground on the reserve. A tree planting demonstration took place in March to kick off the beginning of the project.

With Angela Alsobrooks’ surprisingly easy victory in Maryland’s Democratic primary for the United States Senate, all eyes of the nation are now on the Free State. Once Senator Mitch McConnell convinced former Governor Larry Hogan to put down his cable news microphone and get back in the game, our state became ground zero for control of the Senate.

An effort to end the publication of estate notices in newspapers around Maryland appears headed for a veto. House Bill 1258 proposes to end public notice advertising for estates. It’s a bill that has financial ramifications for newspapers across the state, which profit from the current requirement that public notices be published in newspapers of general circulation.

Five local artists have been selected to create portraits of five Baltimore mayors for permanent display in City Hall. More than 180 artists sought the commissions after Mayor Brandon Scott announced the Faces of Leadership Mayor’s Portraits Competition earlier this year. The goal was to identify artists to create portraits of five mayors not currently represented in the Hyman Aaron Pressman Room on the second floor of City Hall.

Lifeguards in Ocean City, Maryland, will begin an intensive eight-day training academy this week to prepare for big crowds on Memorial Day weekend. Before swimmers hit the shore, the beach patrol is reminding them of a rule that’s posted on all of the lifeguard stands: don’t dig deep holes. “You could be digging and suddenly without warning, it can all just give way and pile in,” said Ocean City Beach Patrol Captain Butch Arbin.

Republican Senate nominee Larry Hogan’s pivot on abortion landed with a thunderclap in Maryland this week, with Democrats incredulous, Republican leaders largely indifferent and some voters warily embracing him anew. In Hogan’s telling Friday, a day after publicly describing himself as “pro-choice” for the first time, “it really wasn’t a major transformation.”

 

Sheila Dixon on Friday conceded the Baltimore mayoral Democratic primary race to incumbent Brandon Scott. The former mayor waited over a day after the Associated Press called the race for Scott to concede, saying she would wait on mail-in ballot results. Dixon said she called Scott to congratulate him. “His success leading our city is success for us all, so I sincerely wish him all the best in his second term,” she said in a statement.

 

 

Historic Annapolis considers itself a guardian of the city. The nonprofit preserves the physical remnants of history, but also something less tangible: the way one of the oldest towns in America looks. So when the mayor proposed a $10 million, glass-walled maritime welcome center at City Dock — placing it right atop an $88 million public works project to protect downtown from climate-driven flooding — it got their attention.