Three terms in the Maryland General Assembly are enough for Baltimore County Republican Sen. Chris West. “I was thinking about whether or not I want to stay around Annapolis until I passed my 80th birthday, should I live that long,” West said in an interview this week. “I concluded that I really don’t want to do that. There’s a time to hold them and a time to fold them. I’d rather not be that guy about whom people whisper ‘Oh, he used to be really good, but he needs to retire.’”

Prince George’s Community College has become an Amazon Career Choice program partner and the corporation’s employees are eligible to enroll at the college this fall. Career Choice is an educational enrichment benefit that covers tuition and mandatory fees for credit-bearing undergraduate degrees and certificates.

 

 

The former manufacturing plant surrounding the Guinness Open Gate Brewery has hit the market as Diageo North America Inc.’s presence in Baltimore County continues to shrink. Diageo listed the 45-acre property — which does not include the Open Gate Brewery — at 5001 Washington Blvd. last week in another move toward downsizing at the site in Relay near Interstates 95 and 895. A leasing brochure from JLL, hired to handle the sale, says the deal aims to close by early October.

A judge has ordered the release of most of the names redacted in an attorney general’s report on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s history of child sexual abuse, according to court records unsealed Tuesday. The order allows for the release Sept. 26 of 43 of the 46 blacked-out names, including those of five high-ranking church officials who contributed to the cover-up, and nine of 10 alleged abusers.

The parking lot at the Roland E. Powell Convention Center in Ocean City was two-thirds empty at 11:15 on Saturday morning, just as Gov. Wes Moore (D) was beginning his closing address to the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention. The lightly attended speech highlighted one of the major flaws of the four-day MACo conference — an annual event that has become the Woodstock of Maryland politics, in the best and worst ways.

A long-simmering legal dispute over vacant waterfront land in Westport could be resolved without a trial, as the developer planning a community there and the operator of proposed high speed rail said Tuesday they hope to reach a settlement. A trial was scheduled to start Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court in an eminent domain case that Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail LLC filed in June 2021 against property owners Stonewall Capital and Westport Capital Development.

Frederick should continue to have about the same number of Neighborhood Advisory Councils to coordinate response to local issues, according to a committee the mayor appointed to study the issue. The city’s alderman should decide the final number, and each of the 10 to 12 NACs should have an alderman as its voice in the city government, the committee decided as a recommendation on Tuesday.

Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia high school students will return to classrooms ready to take over the world. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they work and how many tests they pass, some may feel blocked from the job of their dreams by the news that the University of Chicago paid $13.5 million to settle allegations that it conspired with other universities to limit the amount of financial aid it offered.

With less than a week until the first day of school, Baltimore City Public School System has hired a record number of new teachers, a win in light of a persisting, nationwide teacher shortage. The district reported that it had hired 821 new teachers from March through Tuesday, the most the system has ever brought on during spring hiring. At the Board of Education’s Tuesday night meeting, staff said the number will continue to grow until the first day of school Monday.

Acting County Administrator Michelle Gordon was named Washington County administrator Tuesday morning by the Board of County Commissioners. Gordon was hired as the county’s chief financial officer last fall, and has been serving as acting administrator since the abrupt retirement of John Martirano in May. The commissioners voted unanimously during Tuesday’s meeting to appoint Gordon to the position, although Commissioners President John Barr said she was not his first choice.