A retroactive 6% earnings rate will be applied for Maryland account holders participating in the 529 Prepaid College Savings Trust plan, the state treasurer announced Monday. Earlier this year, Maryland 529 plan participants said they had trouble accessing their accounts and paying tuition. Parents said the value of their prepaid accounts decreased by as much as 50% because of a new method of calculating interest in the fund.

With interest on her credit cards as high as 30%, Andrea Lyttle rarely charges anything. If she does, she pays the monthly balance in full. Like most consumers, Lyttle feels the pinch of high interest rates at a time of high inflation. But she’s also painfully aware of the pitfalls of credit card debt. Just last year, Lyttle, 57, managed to pay off a whopping $40,000 in debt on various cards.

For years, one member of Baltimore County’s school board has been excluded from decisions on the budget — a $2.6 billion sum that encompasses textbooks to school buses. It’s the youngest person on the board, who represents thousands of students, who’s directly affected by budget decisions and who some say isn’t old enough to have that type of power: the student board member.

The region’s U.S. Senate delegation is standing united in opposition to a Congressional proposal to add dozens of daily flights to Reagan National Airport. Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, along with Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, made a joint appearance at the airport’s Terminal 2, where they criticized the proposal.

Just days after recreational marijuana became legal for adult use, local lawmakers moved to restrict where shops that sell it can operate in Prince George’s County — a first in the state that elicited criticism from county business owners. The bill, proposed by four county council members, would restrict cannabis businesses to industrial zones, mandate that they be 2,500 feet away from land for day care or school uses and require building-mounted signs.

Meal kit and food delivery company Home Chef has opened a new manufacturing and distribution center in Baltimore, its first location on the East Coast. The facility in Wagner’s Point in South Baltimore will add about 600 jobs to Baltimore, said Home Chef chief operating officer Scott Fratzke at a ribbon cutting ceremony Monday.

 

In the last week of May, State’s Attorney Charlie Smith was asked to run for Congress in Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District, he said in an interview Thursday. Smith declined, he said — but he may have another way to have influence beyond his role as Frederick County’s top prosecutor.

 

Ask a Black person about reparations, and you might hear a story about the generational impact of slavery and racism. Ask a white person and you may hear some variation of, “Why should I pay for this? I didn’t own slaves.” There’s never been a consensus on reparations in Maryland — should we make them, what they might look like, who should qualify or how we pay for them.

Days after a high-profile potential candidate bowed out of the Maryland race for U.S. Senate, Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) unleashed several dozen endorsements Tuesday, bolstering his own candidacy in what his campaign called a “wide open” contest. Trone’s campaign announcement of 40 local and state government leaders, primarily from his Western Maryland congressional district, follows his colleague Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D-Md.) much-watched decision late Friday to stay out of the highly contested race.

Community leaders scheduled Monday night’s town hall meeting in Brooklyn weeks before the mass shooting, but that became a primary topic. “It’s on the minds of folks because the incident is really reflective of a number of concerns the city has been facing for a while,” said Pastor Todd Yeary. The mass shooting in Brooklyn Homes that left two dead and 28 injured was on the minds of those at the ACT Baltimore meeting.