Around Maryland

In its first in-person meeting since January, the Annapolis City Council on Monday night extended outdoor dining permissions for restaurants until mid-June. The council unanimously approved an amended resolution, R-22-22, extending outdoor dining within the areas formerly known as recovery zones for an additional two months.

Hall of Fame horse trainer Bob Baffert won’t have a horse in the race at this year’s Preakness Stakes. The Maryland Racing Commission on Monday suspended Baffert — a move that makes him ineligible from running horses at the 147th Preakness Stakes in Baltimore on May 21. Maryland’s commission joins those from New York, California and Kentucky to suspend the trainer for his drug violations with Medina Spirit at last year’s Kentucky Derby.

Over the last two weeks, Barb Ripani has seen a change in the clientele who walk into Potato Valley on State Circle in Annapolis. From January to April, Ripani corrals hordes of politicians, lobbyists and legislative aides who crowd into the popular lunch spot she’s co-owned for 27 years. She knows about half of their orders by heart, she said. But after Monday, nearly all of those regular customers will disappear when the 2022 Maryland General Assembly session adjourns.

With the Masters wrapping up at Augusta National on Sunday, the golf world will turn its eyes toward the next tournaments on the Professional Golfers’ Association’s slate. One of them will be in Montgomery County, Maryland, and it will be the first PGA event in the D.C. area since 2018. This May, the best golfers in the world will be teeing off at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm in Potomac, Maryland, for the Wells Fargo Championship. The last tour event the club hosted was the 2018 Quicken Loans National.

A virtual schooling option for students throughout the Eastern Shore is at risk of being discontinued less than a year after hosting its first classes online. The option will stand so long as much doesn’t change between now and Monday night, the end of the General Assembly’s session. Available for free to the nine public school systems between Cecil and Worcester counties, the Blended Virtual Program was developed by the Eastern Shore of Maryland Educational Consortium as a moldable alternative for students who were unable to return to in-person learning following shutdowns in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even when the coronavirus pandemic is over, courthouses across Maryland should continue carrying out a significant portion of their work virtually, according to recommendations released this week by a judicial task force. The task force, created by Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Joseph Getty, evaluated changes that have been made within the state’s court system over the course of the pandemic. The report was made with input from judges, attorneys, courthouse employees and members of the public, said Matthew Fader, the task force’s chair and the chief judge of Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals.

Reporters were informed today that the media will have limited access to a key hearing next week on State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s motion to dismiss the federal charges against her. Stringent rules were set forth by a court official in a conference call with reporters that brought immediate protests from media organizations, including The Brew. The chief deputy clerk for the U.S. District Court of Maryland, David E. Ciambruschini, said the press will be allotted three seats in the courtroom and seven seats will be made available for members of the public. The seats would be available to credentialed reporters on a first-come, first-served basis.

The first cohort of students in Georgetown University’s degree program for prisons in Maryland has begun classes, officials announced. In-person classes at the Patuxent Institution, in Jessup, Md., started Feb. 14 for the 25 students accepted into the program. Officials announced the liberal arts degree program last spring as an expansion of the Prison Scholars Program that Georgetown offers at the D.C. jail. Students completing the course will earn bachelor’s degrees from the university.