Around Maryland

The city of Baltimore now has its first-ever independent advisory board. The Office of the Inspector General said the 9-member panel, which will act as a watchdog over the IG position itself, is now made up of citizens who are not elected leaders. The head of the Board of Ethics selected all but two of the panelists, those last two were selected by professional CPA and fraud examiner groups.

On a recent Tuesday morning, Animal Enforcement Officer Miles Hughes darted through a narrow brick rowhome facing M&T Bank Stadium in South Baltimore in search of an orange tabby cat left behind after an eviction. The speedy feline, now named Libra, briefly avoided capture. But Hughes and two of his fellow animal enforcement officers eventually scooped up the cat and loaded it into an air-conditioned van.

NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly to the moon by the end of next year, including one woman and three men. The three Americans and one Canadian were introduced during a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well as Mission Control. “This is humanity’s crew,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than late 2024.

I had made a grave error. “Do you have memories of eating pickled onions?” I asked in a post on the Facebook group “Baltimore Past & Present Photos.” I had shared a photo of a jar of whole sour onions I had purchased at Baltimore’s oldest Italian deli. I was quickly — and repeatedly — corrected by members of the more than 89,000-person-strong Facebook group: In Charm City, they’re called onion pickles, not pickled onions.

Diesel-belching trucks are rumbling down Maryland 550 in Woodsboro at high rates of speed. It’s a pretty remote stretch of highway in Frederick County, surrounded mainly by cornfields. Many of the trucks are stopping at Laurel Sand and Gravel, a massive quarry and mining operation off the main road, where 600,000 tons of small stones are ground into powder every year. The powder, known as aggregate, is sold to the concrete industry as a thickening agent.

The Howard County Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve legislation that puts in place additional procedures the county auditor is required to follow during certain special investigations, after a description of race in a February report published by the office sparked public protest and calls for the county auditor to be fired.

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.

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.”