Combine a rare Maryland congressional vacancy with a free ride for most of the elected officials who might seek the seat, and there could be a surfeit of candidates lining up to try to replace U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-6th), who is running for U.S. Senate in 2024. Trone’s congressional district, which covers part of Montgomery County and most of Western Maryland, is far and away the most competitive in Maryland, and there will be intense interest in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.

Domestic partners registering with the state will now be given the same rights as married spouses in probate matters, allowing one partner to inherit the other’s assets when they die while avoiding costly inheritance taxes, including in instances where no will exists, according to new legislation. Seven percent of adults nationwide live as unmarried partners, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a statistic that has nearly tripled in recent decades.

Dozens of teachers union members disrupted a County Council session on Tuesday afternoon to demand Montgomery County Public Schools’ proposed $3.15 billion operating budget be fully funded. The council was poised to read a proclamation recognizing Teacher Appreciation Day but instead recessed when educators refused to give up the microphone. Members of the council’s Education & Culture Committee invited a few speakers to share remarks before reading the proclamation.

Two top Montgomery County Public Schools officials and presidents of three MCPS employee unions published a letter to the County Council on Tuesday afternoon asking for an eight percent funding increase for next year’s school operating budget. The letter was prompted by a May 5 vote of the council’s Education & Culture Committee recommending a minimum seven percent increase in funding for next year’s MCPS budget and a maximum increase of nine percent.

 

Carroll County residents both praised and criticized the proposed budget for fiscal 2024 Tuesday night during the final public hearing on the spending plan at Carroll Community College’s Scott Center in Westminster. Commissioners have proposed a $546.7 million operating budget for fiscal 2024, adding $25 million in spending to the package that budget staff had recommended in early March.

Getting someone with a substance-use disorder into a recovery program is a difficult process, even if that person wants help — in part because the list of those programs is a short one. The process is made even more difficult for parents with teenagers as this list is even shorter. In the City of Frederick, Maryland, an alternative high school helps students battling addiction.

 

Frederick County officials have released a bold plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from county operations and prepare county infrastructure and employees in the face of climate change. It includes a pathway to cut the county’s emissions by 60% of its 2010 levels by 2030 and recommendations to ready county roads, bridges and buildings for intensifying precipitation and heat events influenced by climate change.

 

I always laugh a little when I see ads for Mother’s Day presents inviting grateful children to take their maternal parental figure to lunch, buy her flowers or jewelry, or send her to a quaint bed and breakfast. I laugh because I am a single mother whose child lacks both the height to reach the cereal and credit enough to shell out for brunch. Just like at Christmas, unless some other relative makes sure he has a gift ready to give me, I’m pouring my own special holiday coffee. And that’s OK.

The Frederick County Council made a puzzling choice recently when it refused to rezone roughly 223 acres in Adamstown from agricultural use to general industrial use. The owners of the land, Windridge Properties LLC and Windridge Farm LLC, did not submit development plans, but indicated that they were seeking approval to move forward on a future data center development.

 

The fentanyl epidemic has created new challenges for school systems across the country. Students are overdosing — sometimes on school grounds — in higher numbers, and school systems are racing to respond by stocking up on overdose-reversing antidotes and coming up with ways to support students’ mental health better. School systems in the D.C. region, including in Montgomery County, Maryland, are also tightening up policies when it comes to responding to overdoses on campuses.