Commentary

The Baltimore County Council recently passed the Bring Your Own Bag Act, which will ban the distribution of plastic bags at some stores beginning this November. Unfortunately, the bill was amended and weakened, perpetuating a serious flaw that is too common in well-intended plastic reduction policies. Blue Water Baltimore and Maryland Hunger Solutions strongly supported the original bill, but are disappointed that the final version will present another barrier to accessing food.

Those who were in Bel Air that day for the court hearing say they had never seen anything like it: Bob Cassilly, the new Harford County executive, entered Judge Diane Adkins-Tobin’s courtroom and signaled for a timeout in the proceedings. The judge confirmed Cassilly’s request to speak with the attorney there representing the county in the contested land-use case. Minutes later, plans for a large development in Abingdon were thrown again into limbo.

Maryland voted for adult-use cannabis, and legislation has been introduced to create the applicable regulations. The legislators who drafted House Bill 556 and Senate Bill 516 have done an excellent job; the bills contemplate combining the current medical cannabis program and the adult use one under one regulatory agency. As the amendment process is underway, I ask them to consider two points.

There is much trouble in the world. The war in Ukraine rages on one year after the Russian invasion. Washington politics have become so polarized that loose talk of a “national divorce” is not wholly dismissed, and relations with China are tense. It’s enough to make one yearn for the kind of conflict where opponents not only shake hands before the contest, but can embrace each other after — where the rules are clear, mutually agreed upon and strictly enforced.

Hundreds of thousands of our Maryland friends, family, and neighbors are about to experience a major reduction in their access to food. On March 1, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is ending emergency allotments that have helped 1 in 8 Marylanders — or about 800,000 people — avoid hunger for the last three years. Families receiving these benefits are about to lose, on average, $177 a month — a reduction that is certain to lead to more hunger at a time of rising costs.

It is not a group anyone wants to join. The Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is made up of people who have experienced clergy sexual abuse during their childhoods. The group was first introduced to me as a support for my husband, who is a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest that occurred when he was 5-years-old. My husband participates in a peer group, and we have attended two national SNAP conferences.

I don’t know if the Baltimoreans of 1914 were scandalized by it — hard to tell from a distance of 109 years — but the wealthy family residing in the stone mansion at 1301 N. Charles Street in Mount Vernon contributed mightily to the city’s diet of gossip at the time. There were lavish parties, a secret divorce and an equally secret marriage of a 57-year-old attorney to his 30-year-old stenographer, and a debutante’s romance with an Italian count.