Lori Morrow says for the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan to work effectively, schools must ensure students receive the mental health services they need. Morrow, the mother of two children and education advocate from Prince George’s County, said school-based health centers should be created and staffed with mental health professionals accessible for students and their families, especially in rural and underserved communities.
The county’s minimum wage workers will start the new workweek with a three-tiered increase in the hourly rates that went into effect July 1. The rate increase is the result of a law that went into effect in 2017 under legislation sponsored by then-County Council member, and current County Executive, Marc Elrich.
Gov. Wes Moore urged festivalgoers at an unusually somber 4th of July celebration to avoid “giving in to the naysaying” and to “keep on fighting together” against gun violence that struck during a mass shooting in Brooklyn early Sunday that left two people dead and injured more than two dozen others. “We know that these past few days and these past few weeks have been tough,” Moore said from a stage at the Cherry Hill Arts and Music Waterfront Festival, an annual event featuring music, art and evening fireworks in Middle Branch Park.
In his first six months in office, Gov. Wes Moore has demonstrated some solid political skills, particularly in effective communication. So it’s easy to forget the 44-year-old author, investment banker and nonprofit executive had never held political office before his January inauguration — at least it was until Wednesday, when he essentially tossed the General Assembly under the bus without much, if any, benefit to himself.
Vice Adm. Sean Buck looked over the sea of white uniforms Thursday — 1,200 young men and women freshly shorn and remade over the course of a single day into the style of an incoming class of Naval Academy plebes. Then he gave them a look that only admirals can give and told them about how tough the weeks ahead would be.
Judge Robert A. Greenberg of the Frederick County Circuit Court earlier this month ordered the county government to release records that officials were trying to keep confidential about the evolution of the Sugarloaf Treasured Landscape Management Plan. The result? Another example of how trying to develop government policy in secret almost never works out.
In recent years, the city’s firefighters and medics have grown accustomed to responding to Baltimore’s many 911 calls with skeleton crews. But this summer, weekends have been even more fraught than usual. That tension culminated on Saturday, when nearly a third of the Baltimore City Fire Department’s engine and truck companies were out of service due to shortages of personnel, according to Josh Fannon, president of IAFF Local 964, the fire officers’ union.
Leaders from civil rights groups gathered outside Baltimore Police headquarters Thursday morning, decrying what they called Mayor Brandon Scott’s lack of transparency in appointing a new police commissioner and demanding he restart the search process. Scott announced this month that Commissioner Michael Harrison would step down and be succeeded by Richard Worley, who was most recently the deputy commissioner for operations.
State and city leaders — in what they described as the start of a renaissance of redevelopment in West Baltimore neighborhoods — converged on the campus of Coppin State University on Thursday to celebrate new funding for economic development in the area. Under the new $63.1 billion state budget that goes into effect Saturday, $11.4 million will go to the West North Avenue Development Authority — a panel legislators created in 2021 to focus on revitalization efforts in a targeted zone around West North Avenue that stretches from the Fairmont to Bolton Hill neighborhoods.
Starting Saturday, most business owners around the state will have six months to prepare for a coming jump in the state’s minimum wage. The Fair Wage Act of 2023, passed earlier this year, was a priority for Gov. Wes Moore (D) in his first year in office. The change accelerates the move to $15 per hour as phased in under a 2019 law.