Business

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake may be the most overqualified person to take the reins of a sports union’s philanthropic arm, but as the new executive director of the National Basketball Players Association Foundation, she has ambitious plans. Rawlings-Blake served as mayor of Baltimore from 2010 to 2016. She was also the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and built a network of relationships with mayors of cities all over the country, something that she can tap into in her new job.

It sure didn’t look like a winning lineup, but maybe that was the point. If the bettor at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland had picked basketball teams with less dismal prospects, he wouldn’t have gotten such steep odds — about 141-to-1. But that’s what enabled him to collect $714,000 on a $5,000 wager when his three “huge underdogs” pulled upsets — two in overtime — on the same night.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority still has a $184.7 million gap to fill in the upcoming fiscal year’s operating budget, which is in the early stages of being developed. At a finance and capital committee meeting Thursday, officials from Metro’s financial office told board members of a few ideas they have about how to fill that gap in the fiscal 2024 budget, for the period starting in July 2023.

Maryland’s second busiest trauma center is receiving federal funding to help identify and aid victims of sex and labor trafficking. The University of Maryland Capital Region Medical Center hospital (UM Capital) in Prince George’s County will get nearly $800,000 from the Department of Justice to go toward screening, identifying and supporting victims in medical settings. UM Capital’s emergency room, Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Center, OB/GYN, Behavioral Health unit and outpatient clinic will be trained on best practices to begin assisting trafficking victims or high-risk individuals. “Victims of human trafficking are often identified by law enforcement, service providers, faith-based institutions, and medical settings,” Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said in a statement.

Kimberly Tenice Johnson and Denise Roles Matthews are statistical outliers in the wine world. They’re Black. They’re women. Their winery is based not only in Maryland, but in Baltimore. All of the above put them in lanes not exactly overflowing with company in the industry. Yet Philosophy — the winery the women launched in 2018 — has already scored silver and bronze medals in the Maryland Governor’s Cup Competition. They sell via farmers markets, festivals, an online shop and a handful of locations like Baltimore’s Off the Rox. And they have high hopes for this year’s harvest, which is winding down across the state.

A Miami developer is proposing to build a mostly residential, 1.1-million-square-foot mixed-used community in Upper Marlboro in what would be the firm’s first project in the region. Citing the growth potential in Prince George’s County, Global City Development wants to build about 400 multifamily units, 200 for-sale townhouses and 50,000 square feet of retail on 60 wooded acres just east of Joint Base Andrews. The site comprises two adjacent parcels, located at 9702 and 10200 Marlboro Pike, of which Global has a contract to acquire. “We believe that Prince George[’s] County is set to experience significant growth over the next several years,” Brian Pearl, a Global principal, said in an email.

A Montgomery County judge said Thursday that he will wait to decide whether Maryland transportation officials properly awarded the first contract in a state toll lanes project until an appeals court rules on whether a bid protest was filed in time. Montgomery Circuit Court Judge Kevin G. Hessler issued an order saying he would hold off on a decision because an appellate ruling on the bid protest’s timeliness “may render moot” a ruling on its merits.

A watchdog investigation initiated after the tax returns of two former FBI directors were subjected to intensive audits during the Trump administration has concluded that the reviews from those years were conducted at random. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said Thursday that its review had determined that the Internal Revenue Service had selected tax returns at random for its National Research Program audits in 2017 and 2019.