It may have been a bit slow out of the starting gate, but legislation to upgrade Pimlico Race Course at a cost of $400 million is picking up speed in Annapolis. At a hearing Tuesday, lawmakers debated the price tag and the practicality of a last-minute bill introduced last week in the General Assembly meant to help secure the future of the Preakness Stakes and thoroughbred horse racing in Maryland, and to revive an economically challenged section of Northwest Baltimore.

It shouldn’t be controversial to think that absolutely no one deserves to lose their home or be evicted due to an unpaid water bill. Yet, Maryland lawmakers are trying to return to a practice that disproportionately impacts and displaces Black people, who are already underrepresented as homeowners and disproportionately impacted as renters.

Students’ federal financial aid data has begun slowly trickling out to U.S. colleges and universities. That means our University System of Maryland (USM) schools — 12 public universities across the state — should finally get their hands on the amount of federal aid their prospective and returning students will qualify for. Normally, this information would have come in January, but the problematic rollout of a “new” federal financial aid form, the simplified FAFSA, caused significant delays.

Alsobrooks, who has endorsements from heavy-hitters in Maryland’s political establishment, is seen positively by a 3-to-1 margin by registered voters in her county, including Prince George’s resident Ariel Barnes, 30.
Barnes said she likes the accountability Alsobrooks took for the condition of schools, even though the issues predated the county executive’s tenure. And Barnes, who works in finance, said Alsobrooks appears to be more approachable and relatable as a mother and everyday citizen than the high-profile men in the race.

About 20 Baltimore County residents crowded into a conference room at a library branch in Woodlawn to plead for representation that looked more like them. The County Council has had seven members since its founding in 1956. Since then, the county’s population has more than tripled, from 270,273 to 854,535, according to a work group looking at the question of expanding the council.

The Maryland Stadium Authority on Wednesday signed off on the sale of the Baltimore Orioles from the Angelos family to Baltimore native David Rubenstein. The board, which oversees Camden Yards, approved the transfer of ownership to “Inner Harbor Sports LLC,” Rubenstein’s group. The next hurdle is getting the sale approved by 75 percent of Major League Baseball owners.

Fifth-grade teacher Melissa Carpenter works a 10-hour day on average during the week, and her job sometimes requires her to put in hours on weekends, too. “I feel like teaching is one of those jobs where we go to work to do more work — to do work after work,” said Carpenter, who teaches at William B. Wade Elementary School in Waldorf, in Charles County.

A program that will sell city-owned vacant homes for $1 was approved Wednesday by the Baltimore Board of Estimates over objections from City Council President Nick Mosby who said the policy “deeply concerned” him. The new pricing structure, which was approved by a vote of 4-1, would sell a small group of city-owned homes listed on the Buy Into Bmore website for rates starting at $1.

House Democrats on Wednesday advanced their plan to raise roughly $1.3 billion through tax and fee increases, batting back opposition from Republicans and moving ahead on policies that Senate Democrats and Gov. Wes Moore have said they won’t support. The House of Delegates is expected to pass its spending and revenue plan on Thursday, paving the way for meetings next week with Senate budget negotiators to iron out differences in approach between the two chambers.

The Kahlert Foundation is granting $2.5 million to the Carroll Hospital Foundation for the purchase of a linear accelerator for the William E. Kahlert Regional Cancer Center at Carroll Hospital, a device that aims radiation at cancer tumors and spares nearby healthy tissue. David Perry, M.D., chair of radiation oncology for LifeBridge Health, said he is encouraged by the benefits the technology will bring to the hospital’s patients, adding there have been huge advancements in radiation technology since the installation of the hospital’s original linear accelerator 10 years ago.