Gov. Wes Moore will advocate next session for state and private employers to practice preferential hiring for military spouses and for the state to offer more military leave to its employees serving in the National Guard or reserves. At a news conference Wednesday at the State House, Moore also proclaimed 2024 as “the year for military families.” The policies are the first that Moore, a Democrat heading into his second year in office, has unveiled as part of his legislative agenda for the 90-day session that begins Jan. 10. He’s expected to sponsor around a dozen bills.

There’s a surprising paradox in the 2023 Maryland School Report Card ratings released Wednesday. Across the state, fewer schools received three, four and five stars in the education department’s annual evaluation, even as test scores rose this year. So what happened? Are the state’s schools really getting worse? Probably not. A post-pandemic student slouch may be dragging down the ratings. Even though school attendance is gradually improving, too many students still aren’t showing up regularly.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Wednesday that he believes a new lease agreement with the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards is “imminent,” as an end-of-the year deadline approaches. Moore spoke to reporters after a meeting of the state’s Board of Public Works, which would need to approve a final deal. The governor spoke about the negotiations after his administration announced Friday that it would address concerns expressed by the state Senate president about a proposed agreement.

Medifast Inc. has invested $20 million in a virtual health care provider as the Harbor East company makes a push into the booming weight loss drug market amid a slowdown in revenue. The partnership will blend Medifast’s coaching and diet-based approach with LifeMD doctors who can prescribe weight loss drugs like Ozempic to Medifast customers. Medifast (NYSE: MED) is purchasing $10 million of LifeMD (Nasdaq: LMFD) stock and contributing $10 million to LifeMD to launch the collaboration and improve the telehealth platform. Medifast CEO Dan Chard will join the board of directors at New York-based LifeMD as part of the deal.

The town will pursue a partnership with a local company to co-produce a monster truck event scheduled for next fall. On Tuesday, Ocean City Special Events Director Frank Miller presented the Mayor and Council with a request to partner with The Metal Shop, a Delmar-based business, to co-produce the first annual Monsters of Metal Beach Brawl. Scheduled for Oct. 18-20, Miller said the event would fill a vacant weekend on the special events calendar and offer a family friendly activity that would benefit both the organizer and the town.

 

Earlier this month, the Johns Hopkins 21st Cities Initiative released a survey of 1,352 Baltimore and Baltimore County residents to gauge their thoughts about a broad range of issues from policing to transportation to the condition of their neighborhoods (seven out of eight expressing satisfaction with theirs, by the way). There was, however, one topic about which a sizeable majority was clearly unhappy, and we would urge Baltimore County Council President Julian E. Jones Jr. to pay close attention to this.

The memory from the grocery store still stings more than six months later. Vanessa Fleeton kept her eyes trained straight ahead as the line behind her kept growing and her card kept being declined — soon realizing almost $2,500 in food assistance had been stolen from her. When the Department of Human Services approved her claim for reimbursement the next week, she was initially relieved. But that quickly gave way to fear and panic when the agency refunded only $46, less than 2% of the theft.

A state delegate from Baltimore is proposing an increase in the state sales tax that could be dedicated to paying for transit. Del. Robbyn Lewis (D-Baltimore) floated the increase during a meeting Tuesday with Baltimore-based Transit Choices. Lewis, the only “car-free” lawmaker in the General Assembly, said she has had discussions with at least one other lawmaker about “whether we could raise revenue for transit through a statewide ballot initiative.

The Baltimore City Public School System saw improvement in the number of schools that scored a three-star grade or above on Maryland’s school performance rating system, according to 2022-23 data released Wednesday. The Maryland Report Card grades individual schools on a one-to-five-star scale. Over a third of city schools, about 35% of its 148 schools, scored a three or above. The district is the only one in the region that saw more schools gain stars than lose them over last year, and BCPSS has more improved schools, by number and percentage, than any of the other school system in the state.

As the 2024 legislative session of the Maryland General Assembly begins, I would like to provide a cautionary tale for those legislators and advocates working on health care bills. Even if a health care bill successfully passes the legislature, implementation may be virtually non-existent. Why? Health care laws, like any laws, require active oversight by governmental agencies. The situation in our state is complicated. Many bills point to the state agency called the Office of Health Care Quality (OHCQ) as the lead in oversight.