Around Maryland

Civil rights attorneys say they haven’t ruled out appealing a Maryland court’s ruling this month in a decades-old lawsuit over the state’s funding for Baltimore City schools. The original 1994 case known as Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education has ricocheted through the legal system for years, resulting in a consent decree, a local governance overhaul and several attempted funding fixes by lawmakers.

Wholesale price increases in the United States slowed sharply last month as food and energy costs declined, a sign that inflationary pressures may be easing as the Federal Reserve considers whether to keep raising interest rates to fight higher prices. From January to February, the government’s producer price index fell 0.1%, after a 0.3% rise from December to January. Compared with a year ago, wholesale prices rose 4.6%, a big drop from the 5.7% annual increase in January.

The Board of Carroll County Commissioners will get its first look Thursday at a list of the transportation priorities in the county, and like last year, the widening of Route 97 in Westminster tops the list. The county must send its priorities in a letter to the Maryland Department of Transportation by April 1. If approved by the state, funding will be included in the Maryland Consolidated Transportation Program, the state’s six-year capital budget for transportation projects.

Jason Perkins-Cohen will leave his longtime position as director of the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development next week, according to the mayor’s office. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott accepted the Perkins-Cohen’s resignation on Tuesday, which takes effect March 21, according to a news release. MacKenzie Garvin, the office’s current chief of staff, will become the acting director of the mayoral office.

The Maryland Supreme Court will consider whether the state’s Public Service Commission’s oversight of utility companies includes the authority to penalize them for deceptive telephone solicitations. The justices this month agreed to hear SmartEnergy Holding LLC’s challenge to a Maryland Appellate Court ruling that PSC’s authority to protect consumers against “anticompetitive and abusive practices” includes those conducted by phone in violation of the Maryland Telephone Solicitations Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government Tuesday for damages on behalf of a woman who says she was injured by low-flying military helicopters used to disperse protesters in Washington in 2020 during the widespread racial justice demonstrations after the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. The ACLU of D.C. filed an administrative complaint in 2020 against the National Guard for the maneuvers, but that case has remained unresolved, said ACLU staff lawyer Michael Perloff.

A Baltimore judge approved the needed redactions Tuesday for the attorney general’s report on sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, clearing the way for its public release. Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor ordered the Maryland Attorney General’s Office to redact 37 names from the report and to anonymize the identities of 60 other people, removing them from the 456-page document entirely.

City Dock in Annapolis, Maryland, is one of the D.C. area’s most popular destinations to eat, drink, shop and relax, right on the waterfront — but the charm of being on the water also carries the growing risk of flooding. Monday, the city got an infusion of $3.46 million from Congress, to help pay for its estimated $50 million City Dock revitalization project. U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin as well as Rep. John Sarbanes presented a ceremonial check to Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley.