By about 5 p.m., on a fall evening in late November, Lt. Kevin Wittmer and his crew have already responded to 10 emergency calls. A few more will come in before 8 p.m. None of them involve fire. During the lull in the rush, Wittmer, a professional firefighter and medic at the Prince George’s County District Heights fire station, takes a swig out of a water bottle. He still has a majority of the shift to finish before he can drive home to the Eastern Shore, where he will spend the next three days off the clock. The county’s firefighters typically work about twice a week, 24 hours a shift.

 

Under a new proposal from Baltimore’s Department of Housing and Community Development, city-owned vacant homes could be sold for $1 — but only in certain neighborhoods, and if specific conditions are met. The proposal, scheduled to go before Baltimore’s spending board next week, is intended to simplify sale negotiations for city-owned vacant properties by setting fixed prices. It applies to vacant homes and lots in the city neighborhoods with the most “stressed” housing markets, featuring lower sales prices, and higher rates of foreclosure and vacancy.

Maryland lawmakers aren’t yet ready to allow terminally ill patients in the state to choose when to die. Efforts to legalize medical aid-in-dying have fallen short once again in Annapolis. “If the votes aren’t there, the votes aren’t there,” Senate President Bill Ferguson said Friday as he announced that the bill will not come up for a vote this year. “We are not going to be taking a vote on the bill this session, as it does not appear we have the votes to pass it in the Senate,” Ferguson said, acknowledging that the bill could be considered in the future “when we think there’s a better chance of passage.”

 

 

Maryland House members from Prince George’s County gave their support Friday to two bills that would give County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) more discretion over how to pay for schools, a move officials said could offer some relief as local leaders confront a looming budget deficit this spring. The decision comes after weeks of conversations among county leaders over whether to expand how Prince George’s uses money from local telecommunications and energy taxes to pay for schools.

Debate over the constitutionality of Maryland’s Child Victims Act, long argued in the legislature and, more recently, in legal filings, is set to take place in a courtroom for the first time this week. The landmark law allows people sexually abused as children to sue those responsible, no matter how much time has passed. It was enacted last spring, with abuse survivors championing the measure as a long-overdue avenue to hold perpetrators accountable on the victims’ timelines.

The Maryland House of Delegates passed two extensive pieces of juvenile justice legislation Friday — mere days after the 90-day legislative session reached its halfway point. Sponsored by Del. Sheila Ruth, a Democrat representing Baltimore County, House Bill 615 would prohibit school administrators from having students charged with a crime under Maryland’s education code that criminalizes behaviors that disrupt school time.

It was just after sunset, and the evening traffic was buzzing on Highway 50 as 24-year-old Elijah Kinlaw popped into his local Walgreens to pick up some smokes. He had just finished a long day working at a local roofing company, and he was still wearing his neon green work T-shirt and a red beanie. After his shifts, Kinlaw typically smokes to wind down. His cigarette of choice: a cooling, minty Newport.

Once a hub for travel to and from Charm City, Baltimore’s former Greyhound bus station sits in the shadow of a slow-moving light rail and collects dust. But potential is bouncing off the walls. Where our lobby is going to be used to be a restaurant,” Abby Markoe said as she offered a tour of her youth group’s future headquarters to a Baltimore Banner reporter. In another year or so, downtown will trade in blighted bus bays for squeaky new squash courts.

 

Angela Alsobrooks stood with her back to the bar on a bright January morning in Annapolis. No cocktails were being served, and even the electric coffee urn produced only an unsatisfying dribble for anyone arriving less than 15 minutes early at the Almost 7:30 Democratic breakfast club meeting. Yet the room was packed with exactly the kind of voters Alsobrooks needs if she wants to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate over U.S. Rep. David Trone.

Medical aid-in-dying legislation is on its last stand of the 2024 legislative session, with a handful of senators still struggling to support a bill that would allow a terminally-ill patient to ask for a prescription that would hasten their death with the help of a physician. “I am sympathetic to how other people feel and the concerns they bring. But just for me personally, it’s something that I can’t necessarily support,” said Sen. Nick Charles (D-Prince George’s).