Commentary

I am a grief expert. It’s somewhere on my LinkedIn page. I wrote a book about widowhood, have spoken internationally on the subject and even Hoda and Jenna and Katie Couric have been interested in what I had to say. But my grandmother, Emma James, died last week. I am experiencing what I now recognize as the unmistakable, unstoppable markers of grief. The shock. The sneak attacks of panic. The eye that just starts leaking out of nowhere.

You can understand why Jim Clemmens and members of his weekend walking group would like to take a stroll along Loch Raven Reservoir without cars and trucks whizzing by and some of the drivers cursing and making obscene gestures. Things were better before the pandemic: Saturdays and Sundays, for seven hours a day, yellow gates blocked a section of Loch Raven Drive to motor vehicles, and people enjoyed pleasant saunters along the road. You can understand why they’d want to resume that experience.

Lucas Tessarollo, the student member of the Frederick County Board of Education, recently made a strong pitch to the school board that the student member should get to vote on board matters. Impressed board members indicated they would consider at least some voting rights.

The April 13 commentary “With new policy, PSC is ordering a disaster” has it wrong. The Maryland Public Service Commission’s recent decisions cracking down on retail energy suppliers who telephonically enroll customers into high-cost contracts for electricity and gas without first obtaining the customers’ signed consent has nothing to do with pizza. While the PSC’s job is vast, it has never regulated food and never will. And its recent decisions protecting ratepayers from unscrupulous retail suppliers have interpreted the Maryland Telephone Solicitations Act (MTSA) the same way the Maryland Attorney General has for decades — without consequence to your dinnertime pizza plans.

In a gratuitous blow to open and transparent government, the administrator of the Baltimore County Board of Appeals announced that written opinions on appeals by employees of decisions on their entitlement to benefits under the Baltimore County Employees’ Retirement System no longer will be made public. The administrator attributed the change to a tweak made to the board’s rules of procedure by the County Council a year ago.

Baltimore provides water and wastewater services to approximately 1.8 million people, many of whom are Black and low-income. Unfortunately, aging infrastructure, due to systemic underinvestment, has led to continuing problems with management, water quality and affordability. A new Baltimore Water Regionalization Task Force aims to rectify some of these issues. Yet, serious questions have arisen about the structure of this new task force and what it seeks to achieve.

Rear Adm. Yvette M. Davids has an impressive resume. Graduate of the Naval Academy and the Naval War College. First Hispanic woman to command a Navy warship. Commander of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. High-level jobs ashore, including chief of staff of the U.S. Southern Command. And now, the first woman nominated to serve as the academy’s superintendent in its 178-year-history.

Today, hundreds of thousands of Marylanders have extremely limited options for building a career and financial security because they lack a basic credential — a high school diploma, which is generally a required prerequisite for higher education, vocational training and employment. Not having one severely inhibits a person’s ability to support a family and build financial security. For those who manage to get into the workplace without a high school diploma, options for advancement and careers are limited.