Around Maryland

The federal COVID emergency ends on May 11 after over three years, though it may end sooner if President Joe Biden signs a bill passed by the House and Senate. So what will that look like for you and how will local health departments respond moving forward? “For a lot of people, they may not notice a significant change,” said deputy chief for public health services, Sean O’Donnell with the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services.

A code amendment defining non-accessory employee housing will advance to the Mayor and Council for discussion. On Tuesday, Planning and Community Development Director Bill Neville presented the Ocean City Planning and Zoning Commission with a draft code amendment allowing non-accessory employee housing. Neville said the changes would be presented to the Mayor and Council next week before it advancing to a public hearing in May.

The familiar rumble of Baltimore City’s diesel school buses will soon give way to quieter electric vehicles transporting about 350 students beginning next year. The city school system has entered into a public-private partnership with Massachusetts-based Highland Electric Fleets, which plans to install 25 chargers to fuel 20 electric school buses during the 2023-24 academic year, the company announced Tuesday. Funded through a combination of federal and state grants and tax credits, the 12-year contract is similar to Highland’s partnership with Montgomery County school system, which is operating more than 300 electric school buses.

Future educators gathered at Hood College on Tuesday to learn about introducing computing concepts as early as pre-K. In a series of sessions funded through a grant from the Maryland Center for Computing Education, participants worked to understand the concepts themselves and practiced applying them in simple lessons for young students. The conference was the first of its kind at Hood. Called “Destination Innovation,” it was tailored to current or future teachers with little to no knowledge of computing, said Jennifer Cuddapah, an education professor at Hood.

The gunfire erupted about 6:30 p.m. Monday in a suburban area west of Knoxville surrounded by businesses. Describing the fatal encounter as an “agent-involved shooting” on Monday, the FBI gave no further explanation Tuesday about what happened and would not say whether the fatal gunfire came from federal agents, Roy McGrath or both.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office will release Wednesday a redacted version of its long-awaited report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, culminating four years of investigation and stirring hope among survivors that the public reckoning will help hold the church accountable. The report is nearly 500 pages long and will tell how 158 clergy sexually abused and tortured more than 600 children and young adults over an 80-year period beginning in the 1940s.

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.