Free internet and computer access in your own home is now available to borrow from your local branch of the Carroll County Public Library. In November, the library system acquired, via a state grant, 225 Acer Chromebook devices, which can be checked out from libraries just like any book. The Chromebooks also provide their own internet, and Lisa Picker, the public library’s director of communications, said that can be especially helpful for families connecting multiple devices to the internet at the same time.

Maryland is becoming un-investable. The Maryland Senate’s recent markup of the adult-use cannabis bill is yet another example (“Cannabis legalization plan passes Maryland Senate committee; amended bill heads toward final steps,” March 27). If enacted per the Senate amendments, the currently successful medical cannabis program will become economically unstable, halt both in and out-of-state investment, and hurt the diverse community of owners and operators in place today.

Last fall, following an unusually violent summer for teenagers, Mayor Brandon Scott announced an initiative aimed at intervening in school conflicts before they erupt into gunfire. Five months later, teenage gun violence in Baltimore has surged, even as nonfatal shootings and homicides in the city have receded. Scott’s school violence intervention pilot has yet to get off the ground — and likely won’t be fully implemented until the fall. Even so, the scope of youth violence — with its sudden surge — is outpacing the city’s capacity to respond.

Development giant Trammell Crow Co. has gained site plan approval for a trio of new life science buildings on Johns Hopkins’ Belward Campus in Rockville, bringing that erstwhile farm a step closer to what could wind up becoming a considerable amount of new development. “Life sciences and biotherapeutics is one of the most explosive industries, and it needs growth,” Eric Fischer, a Trammell Crow managing director, told the Montgomery County Planning Board at a public hearing March 30.

As Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles) has done for several years, he stood on the House of Delegates floor Friday morning to implore his colleagues to support legislation on behalf of child sexual abuse survivors. In past years, efforts to pass similar bills have found success in the House, but stalled in the Senate. But this year, Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, ushered legislation through his chamber that passed March 16.

Our country has a long tradition, dating at least back more than 150 years to the Civil War, of trying to take care of our veterans. Sometimes we do better, and sometimes we fall short, but generally, we try. The goal was first enunciated by the greatest articulator of the American ideal, President Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, with these memorable phrases: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I read with keen interest the MoCo 360 article on Feb. 27 spotlighting the role of the Black dollar and Black-owned businesses in Montgomery County, highlighting the work of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. (MCEDC). Gov. Wes Moore (D) campaigned on initiatives related to increased minority business, then revealed in his first budget funding that will support the pillars to create a more competitive and equitable economy.

Our public schools remain highly segregated along racial and socioeconomic lines, with more than one-third of U.S. students attending schools considered to be segregated, according to a recent analysis. How does school segregation like this continue 69 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education? The answer is one school board decision at a time. One such decision is currently before the Baltimore County School Board.

Friday marks International Transgender Day of Visibility, and while anti-transgender legislation is being introduced across the country, Montgomery County experienced a week of vocal support for LGBTQ+ residents from the County Council, school board and a local grassroots organization. The Montgomery County Council adopted a resolution on Tuesday reiterating the county’s intolerance for anti-transgender acts and voicing support for LGBTQ+-friendly events such as drag story hours as “important and joyful ways to celebrate the diversity of our community.”

Maryland lawmakers got past their differences and reached a deal Friday on the state’s $62.5 billion budget that includes making major investments in prekindergarten through 12th grade education. In one major highlight, they agreed to allocate $900 million for future costs to the state’s huge pre-K-12 education funding reform law known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a priority by the legislature that phases in larger amounts of funding in future years.