Commentary

Forests and natural areas are our communities’ best defense against water pollution and the climate crisis. Trees sequester carbon, cool temperatures, reduce flooding, and protect our rivers, lakes, and drinking water sources from polluted runoff. Locally, forests are the most important landscape to conserve for the health of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. But in the greater Baltimore-Washington, D.C. metro area, and in every other urban center around the world, our greatest environmental asset is also the one most often discarded.

Frederick County Board of Education members have an unenviable task over the next several weeks, as they try to maintain educational gains, keep important promises to staff and parents, and fill a budget gap. At the start of the month, the school board was contemplating more than $40 million in budget adjustments.

It took Angela Rockstar about a year and a lot of nudging the CBS publicity department to get a blue check on Twitter. But she lost it April 1, along with about 400,000 other people who were previously verified. And she doesn’t think she wants it back. “Having that checkmark opened up so many doors for me,” said Rockstar, a Columbia resident who was a houseguest on the 20th season of reality show “Big Brother” back in 2018.

“Cycling advocates pan Maryland-Virginia bridge crossing plan as potentially deadly” is the latest in a series of well-reported stories by Maryland Matters on the new Nice bridge across the Potomac River, connecting Charles County to Virginia. Containing no surprises, it lays bare the cynical trap intentionally left by the outgoing Hogan administration (and Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Jim Ports) for the incoming Moore administration, and the newly appointed MDOT Secretary Paul Wiedefeld.

The Mother’s Day the nation celebrates Sunday is the result of the efforts of many women over the last century, especially these three. The first was Ann Reeves Jarvis (1832-1905) of Virginia, who started local Mothers’ Day Work Clubs before the Civil War devoted to improving the health and sanitary conditions of mothers and their children.

On Tuesday, Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott lifted the masking requirement he had put in place for City Hall during the pandemic. “With this announcement,” he said in a news release, “we take one more step toward returning city business to a state of normalcy after a long and difficult chapter in our history.”

Across Maryland, local governments are putting together their Fiscal 2024 budgets, and a familiar pattern has emerged. Without the safety net of federal American Rescue Plan funding made available during the peak COVID-19 years and, on the other side of the ledger, expanded K-12 public school costs mandated by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, some are finding their resources stretched thin.