Around Maryland

One of Baltimore’s top transit advocates hopes the city isn’t missing another opportunity to improve its public transportation system with a major economic development project. Brian O’Malley, CEO of the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance couldn’t believe what he saw when he looked at renderings of the upcoming renovations for the Baltimore Arena. The drawings presented to the Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel (UDAAP) appeared to indicate plans to remove a transit hub on the Baltimore Street side of the arena in downtown Baltimore.

A community group in Montgomery County was asked to pay $95,000 for copies of police discipline and complaint records, which, under a 2021 change in Maryland law, are no longer automatically private. Public defenders in Baltimore seeking those records have been told to pay as little as $10 to the Harford County Sheriff’s Office but as much as $224,000 to the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office and nearly $500,000 to the Montgomery County Police Department.

In response to growing complaints from people who live near — and not so near — Thurgood Marshall BWI Airport, top local officials urged the General Assembly to address the noise and and potential health impacts associated with low-flying aircraft. Members of two legislative panels were told that the implementation of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Next Generation Air Transportation System, or “NextGen,” in 2015 has triggered a significant increase in the number of flights over portions of Howard and Anne Arundel counties and other Central Maryland communities.

Evidence in the murder case against Adnan Syed could get a new look with the support of Baltimore prosecutors, marking the latest development in a two-decade legal saga that gripped the nation after it was highlighted in the hit podcast “Serial.” Baltimore prosecutors signed onto a motion with Syed’s attorney Thursday, asking a judge to order the Baltimore City Police Lab to retest certain items collected as evidence in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, using the latest DNA technology. Lee was strangled to death and discovered in a clandestine grave in Leakin Park.

Carroll County government staff and the sheriff’s office have formulated a countywide noise ordinance to update language in a 2005 law that largely addresses only noise from all-terrain vehicles. The next step is a public hearing to allow residents to comment and make suggestions. In 2005, the Maryland Department of the Environment’s noise control program was defunded by action of the state legislature. As a result, noise complaints started to be referred to local governments. Carroll County officials formed a committee to formulate a noise control document, and, at the time, the noisiest offenders in Carroll County were all-terrain vehicles in residential areas.

Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business recently opened a new data analytics visualization lab, a classroom outfitted with technology to help students interpret, manipulate and present large amounts of data. Students from a range of academic majors, including accounting and information systems, will learn skills crucial to the future of business. The data analytics visualization lab will offer more powerful computing, projectors with touch capability on a 12-foot smartboard, seven large display monitors for huddle areas, integrated Zoom video conferencing with a high-resolution camera that can track subjects and movable, modular classroom furniture.

Environmental groups like the Center for Progressive Reform have been watching the story unfold for years, said policy analyst Katlyn Schmitt. Over the past two decades, the number of water pollution inspections in Maryland have trended downward, as have the number of corrective actions taken against facilities that broke the rules — by dumping excess contaminants into state waterways, for instance. But during the last several years, under Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration, the groups were noticing some “dramatic” declines.