The Baltimore City Council voted Monday evening to advance a trio of bills to redevelop Harborplace under a plan by P. David Bramble, whose development firm MCB Real Estate’s project calls for hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing. The legislation has now cleared the second of three legislative votes, putting it one step closer to final passage. The council will hold another meeting next week, at which it could decide to send the legislation to Mayor Brandon Scott’s desk.

The Chase-Lloyd House is the pinnacle of Colonial architecture in Annapolis, the three-story Georgian home perfecting the design ideals visible across the city’s better-known masterpieces. And despite its origin as a symbol of political power in Maryland’s state capital, the house has always been something unique — a woman’s home. An enslaved housekeeper used it to gain freedom for her family. Maryland’s richest woman bought it to raise her three orphaned nieces, and the last survivor of those sisters dedicated it as a refuge for women with no place else to go.

How do Marylanders describe the effect industrial sludge has on their lives? “Smells like rotting meat and death.” “You can feel the smell in your teeth.” “People sometimes have to pull over to puke.” These are quotes from farmers and people who have lived in farming communities all their lives. But what they’re smelling is not the typical aroma of manure and fertilizer that rural Maryland is used to. It’s the stench of industrial sludge, particularly dissolved air flotation or “DAF” — a substance derived from the protein rendering process.

A popular restaurant tour returns to Baltimore next week as part of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament. The Black-Owned Restaurant Tour is one of many exciting events happening during tournament week. It’s the third year that the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and the Baltimore Local Host Committee will come together to host visits to Black-owned restaurants across the city.

For ninth grade Benjamin Franklin High School student and basketball player Colin Tucker, 16, participating in the CIAA Tournament as a ball kid brings him a step closer to something he’s excited about — moving on to college basketball. “I always wanted to play at the next level,” he said. As hoopsters compete in the six-day Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association men’s and women’s basketball tournaments at CFG Bank Arena, young Baltimoreans will also get in on the action — sitting on court to watch games and retrieving basketballs — thanks to “Operation Future,” which took charge of the tournament’s ball kid program 25 years ago.

 

Maryland’s Wes Moore, the nation’s lone Black governor and only the sixth in U.S. history, declared 2024 his state’s “Year of Civil Rights.” At an event commemorating the state initiative, the 45-year-old rising Democratic star urged Marylanders to “get out into our communities” and “practice our history … [and] protect our history.” While delivering the 2023 commencement address at Morehouse College, Moore chastised Republican lawmakers for leading statewide bans and questioned their motivations.

 

 

Maryland’s casinos, as well as international gambling organizations, are pushing for state lawmakers to establish an internet gaming market. The proposal has a powerful sponsor in the House of Delegates that should ensure it advances from its committee to the full chamber, though it’s unclear whether a similar proposal in the Senate will have the support it needs to advance. Voters would have to approve an internet casino gaming referendum on their November ballots before a legalized market takes shape.

A controversial bill for medical aid-in-dying, which would allow qualifying terminally-ill patients to prompt their own death with the help of a physician, will likely be stalled for a least another year, as some senators “continue to wrestle” with the issue, Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith (D-Montgomery) said Monday night. The issue has come to Maryland lawmakers before, and some find it hard to decide whether to allow a physician to aid in the intentional death of a terminally-ill patient at the patient’s request.

With lawmakers now having officially passed the halfway point in the annual 90-day Maryland General Assembly session, it’s time to get serious about balancing the state budget and taking action to reduce a structural deficit that could exceed $3 billion by 2028. Whatever Gov. Wes Moore and his Democratic majority embrace — be it substantially higher taxes (unlikely), massive reductions in spending (ditto) or some combination of taxes and budget cuts (the typical compromise) — the circumstances raise a question: Are all Marylanders now paying their fair share of the cost of government, and will they continue to pay after whatever deal is struck?

House Speaker Mike Johnson has the fate of a democracy and a people in his hands. It’s not the United States, which will survive – even if the coming general election results in another existential test for the constitutional system. The country Johnson has the power to save is Ukraine, two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded, decreeing that it didn’t have the right to exist.