Last year, during Mike Rosenbaum’s brief campaign for governor, the tech entrepreneur identified four career paths offering wages that could significantly improve the life trajectories of thousands of struggling Marylanders — technology, health care, skilled trades and manufacturing. Drawing on the big data he uses in his businesses, Rosenbaum found that those fields have the most openings and offer the kind of salaries (at least $60,000 a year) needed to keep pace with the cost of living in one of the wealthiest states in the nation. With training in those fields offered on a large scale, thousands of people could have better-paying jobs relatively quickly.
Rodricks: Baltimore Urban League offers a train to the middle class
Wes Moore promises at Baltimore gubernatorial community forum to prioritize housing, jobs; Dan Cox decides not to attend
More than a thousand Baltimore and Prince George’s County faith and community leaders filled the James Weldon Johnson Auditorium at Coppin State University on Sunday to hear Maryland’s gubernatorial candidates respond to their calls for state investments in housing, jobs and health care. But despite an agenda listing time slots for both Democratic nominee for governor Wes Moore and Republican Del. Dan Cox, Moore was the only candidate onstage at the action organized by Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development and its sister organization, Prince George’s Leadership Action Network. Event organizers said Cox withdrew from the event Friday, after saying in July and in early October that he would participate.
Eastern Shore crab processors welcome new foreign worker visas but say they need ‘long-term fix to survive’
Eastern Shore crab processors welcomed the federal government’s planned release of new visas to hire foreign guest workers, but they called it a one-year remedy that fails to address recurring labor shortages. “We need a long-term fix to survive,” said Jack Brooks, one of the owners of J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge in Dorchester County and president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said last week that it plans to release 64,716 additional H-2B visas, allowing Maryland crab processing companies and other businesses across the country — such as landscapers and resorts — more access to the temporary workers from Mexico and other countries that they say they desperately need.
Baltimore County school officials tout progress in reducing delays in transporting students
School bus delays in Baltimore County, a long-simmering issue in the suburb, appear to have improved since the start of school. Myriam Yarbrough, the system’s deputy superintendent, told the school board Tuesday night that on average, less than 2% of the bus rides between Sept. 13 and Oct. 10 were delayed. Of the 416 morning delays and the 700 afternoon delays, 64% of each were 30 minutes or less. Before the start of classes on Aug. 29, there were 50 fewer drivers than usual. Yarbrough said Tuesday that the system has hired 30 bus drivers since Aug. 17 and contracted with another 36 drivers. There are 44 drivers in the pre-employment process.
Opinion: Don’t be fooled: Teen vaping is still a public health crisis
Teen vaping continues to be a public health crisis. For evidence, look no further than new data released by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on youth e-cigarette use. The study, drawn from the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey, found that an alarming number of adolescents regularly use these harmful, addictive products. The FDA will need to respond forcefully. According to the paper, 9.4 percent of middle and high schoolers — more than 2.5 million young people — reported using e-cigarettes in the month before taking the survey. That includes approximately 14 percent of high school students. This finding might be lower than the whopping 28 percent of high schoolers reported in 2019, but it is still far too many.
New documentaries on Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman premiere on Maryland Public Television
Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are among history’s most famous Marylanders. Both were born in bondage, and both have statues in the state to commemorate their influence. This month, two new documentaries about their lives are airing on Maryland Public Television: “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom” and “Becoming Frederick Douglass.” Each documentary serves as a great starting point for those wanting to dig deeper into these formidable Black icons. And they’re also a call to look more honestly at the history of Maryland. “People think about slavery in the Deep South but not usually in the upper south,” said Stanley Nelson, the Oscar-nominated documentarian and MacArthur Fellow who directed the two new films for PBS.
National Premium, Natty Boh’s classy older brother, to be brewed in Maryland again
Maureen O’Prey was excited to taste the first batch of Natty Preme brewed in Maryland in decades. A historian and self-described beer nerd, she sniffed her pint before sipping. “Hmm,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “I’m liking this. It’s not over the top.” She paused: “It’s better than when it was in Delaware.” At Heavy Seas Beer’s Halethorpe brewery Friday, O’Prey and others gathered to mark the triumphant return of National Premium, or “Natty Preme” as it was nicknamed, to Maryland for the first time in decades. The beer, long one of Charm City’s favorites, was rescued from obsolescence by an Eastern Shore Realtor and beer lover named Tim Miller. For the past 10 years it’s been brewed in Delaware, and fans are glad to see it back.
Rampell: Care work is in crisis. That’s a disaster for the rest of the economy.
How about getting some of that sweet, sweet industrial policy for an industry that really needs it? Not manufacturing plants. Not the tech sector. I’m talking about the “care” industry — the sector that’s needed to grease the wheels when it comes to the rest of the economy but one that Congress has largely ignored. The U.S. economy has more than recovered all the jobs lost in the pandemic. But there are a few sectors that are not close to recovering all the workers they lost or laid off early in 2020. Among them: child-care providers (whose ranks have begun shrinking again in recent months) as well as nursing and residential care facilities. Both of these industries employ about 10 percent fewer workers today than was the case pre-pandemic. Collectively they’ve lost almost half a million jobs on net since February 2020.
Baltimore Medical System to be clinical teaching arm for proposed Morgan St. medical school
Baltimore Medical System (BMS), the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) system in Maryland, reached an agreement with the proposed school of Maryland College of Osteopathic Medicine at Morgan State University to serve as the school’s community health clinical teaching arm. Under the affiliation, both instructors and students from the new medical school will complete rotations at BMS facilities, including eight community health centers and eight school-based health sites across Baltimore, as part of their clinical training. Instructors of the new medical school, who are also clinicians, are expected to begin practicing at BMS centers as early as 2023 in order to incorporate the most current and advanced population health practices into the school’s curriculum.
Banner political notes: Mayor’s spokesman shifted to DPW, Hogan doesn’t like Cox’s chances
A top city aide who was pulled from the Department of Public Works to turn around Mayor Brandon Scott’s communications office has rejoined the DPW, several weeks after the administration was fiercely criticized for public outreach around an E. coli contamination in city water. Scott’s former communications director James Bentley is once again the DPW’s director of communications. A Labor Day weekend E. coli scare left much of West Baltimore and Baltimore County under a boil-water advisory for days last month. But frustration over the incident from both residents and elected officials has focused on the DPW’s delayed and confusing public outreach as much as at the contamination itself.