Commentary

Victor is the kind of student it’s easy to lose track of. Maybe it’s his long, wispy frame. Or his chill, no-drama demeanor. Whatever it is, he has a knack for slipping away, unnoticed. Victor became a 12th grader this year, and he got off to a shaky start. Absent. Late. In. Out. Gone. Other days, he was on it — sharp and task-oriented. When a unit assessment asked students to write about a “contemporary issue” that needs a solution, Victor wrote about Baltimore’s lousy roads.

Lt. Kevin Krauss stood on the other side of the police tape, his black Annapolis Police Department uniform blending into the shadows. “Hi, Rick,” he said, recognizing me before I could pick out his face in the dark. “Hi, LT. Sorry to see you here.” “You, too.” In a small city like Annapolis, homicides can be intimate affairs. The cops know most of the reporters, and journalists like me know a lot of the cops.

The recent ruling by the Maryland Supreme Court on the state’s digital advertising tax is not the victory that some politicians in Annapolis would like Marylanders to believe. In reality, our highest court’s refusal to consider the merit of a law that has already been ruled unconstitutional is much more likely a harbinger of the law’s coming defeat.

For more than fifty years, public policy has influenced the behavior of procurement programs in both the public and private sectors. Laws and regulations guide the behavior and ensure proper consideration of diversity, equity and accessibility with various contracting sources. Public policy is the foundation for business creation, growth and economic prosperity.

Nobody asked me, but if the Pepsi sign is going to continue to be a landmark on the Jones Falls Expressway, the Pepsi people should fix it. The sign is a tattered mess. While the billion-dollar business that once bottled Pepsi is long gone from below the curvaceous JFX corridor, Baltimoreans and traffic reporters still use the sign as a reference point.

The Frederick Classical Charter School is an educational conundrum for our community — but one definitely worth solving. Students at public charter school excel academically, consistently outperforming students at the county’s public schools. Families frequently praise the teachers at the school and curriculum. That is great.

It’s somewhat of an understatement to say that the current TV landscape is a bit … anticlimactic. A lot of shows are up in the air because of the Writers Guild of America strike, as filming has shut down while the people whose words are the baseline of all the stuff you like try to get paid properly for those words.