Around Maryland

Larnell Robinson sat at a desk in his cluttered office last September, between a bookshelf full of Bibles and a table stacked with the overdose antidote Narcan. He slid out a list of residents of the West Baltimore high-rise where he was tenant council president — one of dozens of subsidized complexes that house the city’s poor seniors. One by one, he began scratching through names, conducting a grim accounting of the dead.

A Boonsboro High School student was not allowed to participate at her graduation ceremony Tuesday night because of concerns surrounding her makeup, leaving the 18-year-old and her family “heartbroken” on the big day. Nixx Cabrera-Guy is an aspiring piercer and tattoo artist and is the first person on her father’s side of the family to receive her high school diploma. She said she was told by the Boonsboro High principal, Michael Kuhaneck, that she had to remove her makeup or she could not sit with her fellow students or walk on stage during the ceremony.

Since the collapse of the Key Bridge and the closure of the Port of Baltimore, the Maryland Food Bank said it has seen a rise of families in need. “The general consensus is they’re seeing anywhere from 20% to 30% increase in the amount of demand,” said Maryland Food Bank President and CEO Carmen Del Guercio, speaking about Baltimore-area partners since the bridge collapse.

On Maryland’s path to becoming one of the country’s biggest targets for fraud aimed at benefits for lower-income residents, the problem looked, at first, like maybe it involved just a few thousand claims. But the theft went largely unchecked, and the claims, paid off by taxpayers, kept rising. By the time the state started a new reimbursement process in early 2023, what had been less than $1 million in benefits the state had to restore to victims of fraud quickly turned into $4.3 million over two years.

The Maryland Institute College of Art announced they’re permanently hiring Cecilia McCormick to lead the historic Baltimore school as its next president. McCormick had been serving since January in an interim role and was chosen to head the college after an extensive review process involving trustees, staff, faculty and students, according to a statement.

Corey Smedley, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s nominee for a new county fire chief, says his goal if appointed is to “figure out how to put himself out of business” by preventing disasters. “One of the things that we’re going to do when I first get here is we’re going to dust off [incident] reports and evaluate what have we learned from that?

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates made a bold prediction, suggesting the city’s homicide rate could drop below 200 this year. Bates spoke at a budget hearing Thursday morning before the Baltimore City Council Ways and Means Committee, citing some encouraging numbers showing declines in violent crime and increases in prosecutions. Bates said the current pacing for homicide in 2024 is 181.