Maryland residents will have an opportunity on Tuesday to give their opinions on a transportation project that aims to fix a tangle of highway where the Baltimore Beltway west of the city hits I-70, a major interstate, and that causes severe delays. The “Triple Bridges” project is part of Gov. Larry Hogan’s Traffic Relief Plan, which focuses on improving traffic congestion in the Baltimore region. Designed 50 years ago, the I-695/I-70 Interchange can’t handle the amount of traffic that currently flows through the interchange, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration.

Marylanders across the state are motivated to make our communities as safe as possible. While crime mitigation strategies sometimes dominate the headlines, there are less obvious ways to improve public safety: modernize our network infrastructure to help foster safer communities and enable quicker response times for first responders. Mobile data usage is 100 times higher today than it was 10 years ago. There are more ways than ever for people to stay connected. From students relying on the internet at home for learning, to millions of people working remotely, to ride sharing, the need for reliable, consistent, high-speed internet is at an all-time high in rural, urban, and suburban communities alike. Among those who most need fast, reliable high-speed internet are first responders and public safety professionals who keep our communities safe and secure. The facts bear this out: 80% of 911 calls originate from smartphones.

The election for Anne Arundel County executive is one of the most competitive and consequential in the state this fall, and the stakes were reflected in the urgency and ferocity of some attacks the candidates hurled at each other during a debate Tuesday evening. County Executive Steuart Pittman (D) and his Republican challenger, County Councilmember Jessica Haire, circled each other like heavyweight pugilists at the start of their 90-minute encounter at the Maryland Hall for Creative Arts in Annapolis. Both had rehearsed zingers and substantive attacks in easy supply, to the delight of hundreds of people in attendance. But as the night wore on, the two candidates often — and sometimes to their own surprise — found themselves in agreement, and the crowd lost some of its energy and enthusiasm.

It’s that feeling of déjà vu all over again, as Democrat Calvin Ball and Republican Allan Kittleman battle it out for the top job in Howard County, just as they did four years ago. The only difference — Ball is fighting to keep his seat as county executive, which he took away from Kittleman in 2018, while Kittleman is hoping to regain his seat in the Nov. 8 general election. “Public service is very important to me,” Kittleman said. “I’m running because I think people in Howard County deserve better.” Kittleman, 64, a Republican who served as county executive from 2014 to 2018, said his commitment to public service was shaped at an early age by his father, the late Sen. Robert Kittleman, who was a member of the Maryland General Assembly from 2002 to 2004. He died Sept. 11, 2004.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox posted on Facebook about a significant occasion on Monday, but it wasn’t the one political observers might have anticipated hearing about. “Happy birthday to the love of my life Valerie Cox,” he wrote. “Lookin’ so fine.” There was a picture of the smiling couple, but no photos or mention of another big event also occurring the same day: Cox’s fundraising visit to Florida hosted by former President Donald Trump at his opulent Mar-a-Lago residence. For $1,776 attendees could attend a private cocktail reception. For $25,000, they could stand alongside Cox and the former president for a photo. It’s not clear how much of that money Cox gets; the Maryland limit for a campaign contribution to a candidate is $6,000. New campaign finance reports are due Oct. 28.

After a year of high raises and companies extending big offers to poach talent, wage growth is nearly flat in the Baltimore metro area. Wages in Greater Baltimore were down 0.3%, or $3.62, year-over-year in August to $1,120.91. That’s better than where the region stood in April when wages were down 1.5% year-over-year to $1,110.88. But those figures are even bleaker when factoring in inflation. Prices were up 10.2% in August in the Baltimore metro area compared to a year ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Baltimore’s lack of wage growth continues to lag behind the nation as well. Across the country, average weekly earnings for employees in metro areas rose 3.1% in August compared to a year ago. That’s down from a 5.7% year-over-year increase in February.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency caved to Chesapeake Bay-state governors and agricultural interests by failing to enforce the Clean Water Act or impose sanctions on recalcitrant states for violating mandates to reduce bay pollutants. Instead, the annual meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council with the EPA administrator and bay-state governors turned into a self-congratulatory session where for the third time it was acknowledged that bay states will miss a vital cleanup deadline. The required pollution reductions were set in 2010 when the EPA gave states 15 years to comply. All speakers acknowledged that these reductions would not be met by 2025. Critical bay-choking nutrient reduction would be missed by wide margins — only 42 percent of nitrogen and 64 percent of phosphorus.

Historians may well mark the decade that just passed as one of the most tumultuous Baltimore has ever experienced — with a housing market crisis, civil and racial unrest after the death of Freddie Gray, a mayoral resignation amid political scandal, and a pandemic. On top of all of that, the past 10 years ended with the city’s seventh-straight decade of population loss, based on the 2020 Census. Baltimore actually stands alone among all cities in the East Coast for population declines. Among all cities greater than 400,000 in the U.S. in 2010, only four out of the 40+ in that category lost any population at all. What do we need to do right now so we don’t have the eighth decade in a row of population loss by 2030?