After about a year of negotiations, Baltimore’s teachers will get significant pay increases — worth about $50 million — under a tentative contract approved by city schools and teachers union negotiators on Tuesday. If ratified by a vote of the entire teachers union and approved by the city school board in February, the new three-year contract would give the greatest increases to both ends of the scale — veterans and the least-experienced teachers.

Maryland lawmakers this session are again targeting the process by which vacancies in the General Assembly are filled. Changing the system has been a goal of good government groups including the Maryland Public Interest Group and Common Cause Maryland for several years. Those changes have failed even as the public grows irritated with how appointments are made to fill open seats.

As the filing deadline approaches for Anne Arundel County school board races, four incumbents are seeking reelection while three others haven’t filed to run, meaning there might be a few fresh faces on the board after the November election. As of Wednesday, 10 candidates had filed or announced their attention to run for seven seats in the purple county, where Democrats control the top offices. Interested persons have until 9 p.m. on Feb. 9 to file.

First Watch, a breakfast and brunch chain, is expanding its presence in Maryland and plans to open four new locations throughout the state this year and one in 2025. The Florida-based chain has 500 locations nationwide and operates eight in Maryland. It opened its first Maryland location in 2006. The inaugural First Watch location was opened in 1983, according to its media fact sheet.

 

Frederick County elected officials advocated before the state’s Budget and Taxation Committee on Wednesday for a bill they argue is a first step toward a more equitable formula for school funding. Senate Bill 385, sponsored by state Sen. Karen Lewis Young (D-3), initially included alterations to the formula that would have aimed to eliminate what officials call a “funding lag” that hurts growing districts.

Maryland has realized limited success with creating vibrant communities and robust services near transportation hubs. However, highway congestion, limited transit services, the housing shortage, climate change legislation, the push for smart growth and the need for new drivers of economic development have convinced some public officials and private developers that Maryland needs to embark on a new, vigorous TOD effort. “Maryland has probably the greatest TOD potential of any state that I have seen. That’s due to a variety of reasons, including the relative compactness of its transit systems and the under-developed nature of many sites,” said Jon Laria, a lawyer with Ballard Spahr who chaired the Smart Growth working group for the Moore-Miller transition team. “The opportunities for TOD in Maryland are so plentiful but it has been so undervalued and under-pursued.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday warned that Chinese hackers are preparing to “wreak havoc and cause real-world harm” to the US. “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike,” Wray told the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Stephanie Wilkinson told Maryland lawmakers in Annapolis Wednesday that personal protection for judges would prevent families from enduring future heartache. As she dabbed a tissue underneath her nose, Wilkinson said a man began to search online for her family’s address in July. Three months later in October after a divorce proceeding, the man shot and killed her husband, Washington County Circuit Court Judge Andrew F. Wilkinson, in front of their home.

 

U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-6th) continues to pump millions of dollars into his U.S. Senate campaign. His latest campaign finance report, delivered to the Federal Election Commission Wednesday night, shows Trone spent $13.7 million between Sept. 1 and the end of 2023, $13.5 million from his own pocket. All told, Trone has spent $23.2 million so far this election cycle, as he battles Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks for the right to replace U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D), who is retiring at the end of this Congress.

 

So the Orioles are heading to new ownership, with John Angelos agreeing to sell the team to Baltimore native David Rubenstein and a group of investors that includes Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr. Rubenstein will be the “control person” overseeing the the operation of the franchise and communications with Major League Baseball. John Angelos took over the role in 2020 for his father Peter, the team’s majority owner, due to the patriarch’s declining health.