Good morning, Gov. Wes Moore. I hope you enjoy your Saturday at the Preakness Stakes. I don’t know much about a day at the races except that it is a good opportunity to dress up a bit, drink and eat with friends in an unusual setting and lose a little money trying to figure out exactly what an exacta is. Oh, and there are horses.

Minutes ago, the Montgomery County Council voted 7-4 to increase property taxes by 4.7 percent. The increase is much less than the 10 percent proposed by County Executive Marc Elrich but is necessary to fund increased spending in the FY24 budget, particularly for MCPS. It was apparent that there was no love in the room for the tax increase. Even its defenders seemed to hold their noses as they voted for it.

The pending $6.05 billion sale of the Washington Commanders from longtime owner Dan Snyder and his family to a group led by investor Josh Harris remains under standard review and will not be voted on next week by NFL owners at their spring meeting, the league said Thursday. Jeff Miller, the NFL executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy, confirmed on a conference call with reporters that the approval vote will come later.

The fight between the two Baltimore fourth graders — a boy and a girl — started with a crude text message the boy sent about the girl’s parents. Before long, the spat escalated into homeroom, with the girl saying the boy lived with bedbugs and cockroaches. Pulled from class, the two kids attempted to resolve their dispute with a conflict resolution technique called a “restorative circle,” where they try to talk through the disagreement.

It is such a simple ceremony: Scoop up a bit of earth with a small shovel and place it in a glass jar. But the symbolism is deep. The soil was collected to remember three shameful crimes in Frederick County’s not-so-distant past — the lynching of three men by mobs in the tumultuous decades after the Civil War.

The Frederick County Council on Tuesday approved a list of amendments that trim next year’s budget proposal by $5.175 million and remove 13 proposed county government positions. County Executive Jessica Fitzwater proposed an $894 million budget for fiscal year 2024 in April, then proposed an additional $14 million supplemental budget last week for Frederick County Public Schools.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed an executive order pushing state agencies to promote sustainability through data collection, audits and internal projects that work reduce the effects of climate change in Maryland. According to a press release Thursday, Moore wants his administration to “lead by example” in energy conservation. The executive order says that “state agencies should play a leading role in achieving the State’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.”

Just about every bank based in the Baltimore region is about the same size as it was five years ago, or a little bigger, save one — CFG Bank more than quadrupled its assets, deposits and profits since the end of 2018. With about $4.25 billion in assets at the end of last year, CFG remains a small player nationally, but the Baltimore County bank has blossomed into the biggest bank headquartered in the metropolitan area and fourth biggest in Maryland, even as rising interest rates, depositor worries and bank failures roil the industry.

The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population grew by an estimated 42% over the last year, a recent dredging survey found, but state officials and advocates continue to have concerns. The 2023 Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey, which was a collaboration between the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, estimates there are 323 million blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay in 2023.

The Montgomery County Council may have violated state law by allowing the swearing in of members of the Planning Board prior to the county executive’s 30-day veto window, according to a letter from the state Attorney General obtained by MoCo360. The letter was sent by Sandra Benson Brantley, the attorney general’s counsel to the General Assembly, to state Sen. Ben Kramer (D-Dist. 19) on May 15.