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Commentary

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What’s wrong with the Baltimore City Department of Public Works?

There’s a general rule of thumb at every level of government that when things are well-managed, you don’t hear much about them. It’s only when things are going badly that a particular agency, department or similar public sector entity is suddenly thrust into the limelight. Last week’s announcement out of the Baltimore City Department of Public Works that it intends to comply with the recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency order to complete two major drinking water projects at Druid Lake and Lake Ashburton before year’s end would be reassuring if this had been the first time DPW had come under scrutiny.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Why Montgomery County needs the Office of the People’s Counsel

The County Council’s Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee recently declined to fund the Office of the People’s Counsel, which operated between 1999 and 2008 but has remained unfunded since then. County Executive Elrich’s FY23 and FY24 budgets proposed refunding the agency, which represents the public interest (but not parties) in land use proceedings and provides technical assistance to residents.

Read More: MOCO360
The border comes to Baltimore

The Biden administration is experimenting with new border policies, and asylum-seeking families headed to Baltimore are about to serve as its test subjects. This month, the administration began implementing a range of sweeping new policies at the Southern border. The centerpiece of the new approach is an asylum ban that blocks most migrants from accessing asylum if they traveled through a third country without seeking protection there.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
FCPS made right call in respecting graduate’s heritage

There was doubt leading up to Frederick High School’s graduation on Monday about whether Frederick High School senior T.J. Weaver would be allowed to walk across the stage with a Native American stole. For commencement, Weaver requested to wear the stole — which represents his Native American heritage and his Otoe-Missouria tribe — over his robe.

white and blue van on road during daytime
Dan Rodricks: Attention, bad guys — leave our postal carriers alone

One day soon, I should receive from the U.S. Postal Service the annual count of dog attacks inflicted on the nation’s hardworking, all-weather letter carriers. The number for the previous year comes out every spring, along with the perennial request that Americans be “responsible dog owners” by keeping their pets away from the men and women who deliver 162 million pieces of first-class mail each day.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Meet someone who made it on ‘The Voice,’ and someone who didn’t get close. (Me.)

Every once in a while, I’ll wistfully watch NBC’s “The Voice” and imagine what might have happened if my two auditions for the talent competition had been successful and I’d become one of those people whose life is changed with the spin of a red chair. And then I stand a few feet away from recent contestant Talia Smith, hear the impossibly gorgeous sounds coming out of her mouth, and understand.

Fifth graders in their classroom at school
Baltimore County’s new schools superintendent must be bold

It’s no surprise that the decision to name Myriam Yarbrough the next superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools drew a standing ovation at Tuesday’s school board meeting. This was a vote for stability, experience and sound judgment after so much turnover at the top — Yarbrough will be the fourth person named to the post in six years — as well as disenchantment with some of the outsiders who previously filled that role.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Remembrance helps us face Frederick County’s shameful past

It is such a simple ceremony: Scoop up a bit of earth with a small shovel and place it in a glass jar. But the symbolism is deep. The soil was collected to remember three shameful crimes in Frederick County’s not-so-distant past — the lynching of three men by mobs in the tumultuous decades after the Civil War.

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