Earlier this year, Gov. Wes Moore proudly announced that Maryland has raked in record tax receipts from legalized medical and recreational use marijuana sales. “Our new adult-use cannabis market isn’t only generating extraordinary economic activity — it’s also helping us build new pathways to work, wages, and wealth for all,” Moore said, according to the upbeat press release issued in July by his office.

In the next few weeks, Maryland officials are expected to deliver comprehensive plans for how state agencies will tackle the growing climate crisis and deliver on Gov. Wes Moore’s promise to achieve zero emissions across all of the state’s key sectors in the next two decades. In June, Moore issued an executive order that set a Nov. 1 deadline for these detailed implementation plans as the next phase of a 2023 report called the Climate Pollution and Reduction Plan (CPRP).

Baltimore County’s population has quadrupled since the 1950s, with residents drawn to the suburbs ringing the city for the well-paying technology jobs in Hunt Valley, the waterfront views in Essex, the music shops in Catonsville and the restaurants in Towson. The problem is, getting from one of those places to the other requires sitting in horrible traffic, which has worsened since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on March 26. Some of the roads, particularly in the Dundalk area, have large potholes.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools is switching learning management systems in an effort to streamline the way educators, students, and parents access curriculum content, grading, and school communication. The Board of Education will vote on the final contract with Canvas — the system recommended by Superintendent Mark Bedell’s team after an evaluation process — at their next meeting Nov. 6.

The Baltimore County Council voted Monday to condemn a proposed 70-mile transmission line that has attracted condemnations from County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., council members and residents worried about having their homes seized to make way for the $424 million project. PSEG won a contract last December to construct the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP), a 500,000-watt power line that would cross northern Baltimore County and Carroll County and terminate in Frederick County.

You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy. All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear. She’s a New York University historian with a book on what happens to the military when authoritarians take power. She shows up as a commentator on MSNBC, connecting former President Donald Trump to some of the dictators she’s studied.

 

When was the last time you checked the batteries in your smoke alarm? If you can’t easily answer that question, it might be time to review best practices for preventing a fire in your home. After all, temperatures are dropping and soon it will be the season when most people crack out fire-prone items such as the space heaters, turkey fryers, candles and string lights. Here are some fire prevention tips to keep your household and property safe as we head into the coldest months of the year.

With just 1% of the country’s 112,000 real estate businesses led by diverse entrepreneurs and leaders, the Diversity in Commerce Real Estate (DCRE) conference, now in its sixth year, remains one of the few spaces where companies, investors, and electeds come together to highlight development opportunities and on ramps for new entrepreneurs in the field. This summer, Gov. Wes Moore served as the keynote speaker for the annual convening in New York City, amplifying the important message that Maryland and Baltimore are open for investment.

A longtime Howard County produce distributor will close in December as its parent company looks to consolidate operations. Lancaster Foods LLC in Jessup will close on Dec. 14, a move that could affect up to 424 employees, according to a filing with the Maryland Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification log this week. The distributor is a subsidiary of Houston-based Sysco Corp. (NYSE: SYY), which said it plans to consolidate the facility with another FreshPoint Coastal Co. facility it owns.

Democrat Kamala Harris will undoubtedly win Maryland in the presidential contest this fall. But the outcome of the election nationally is unknown, and Maryland leaders are preparing for the possibility of another presidency of Republican Donald Trump — one that could come with cuts to federal jobs in the state, questions over funding for key transportation projects, less cooperation on preventing gun violence, and uncertain effects on the state’s budget.