Commentary

It's hard to believe. A program rehabilitating 3,476 apartments, almost all in quite visible high-rise buildings, has had so little public attention. The program is RAD, an acronym for the Rental Assistance Demonstration, conceived in the Obama administration and approved by Congress in 2012. Locally, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City was quick to act — and soon led a partnership with both private and nonprofit companies — and without any public relations fanfare. Developers who have not yet participated should now be aware that there's still opportunity to be involved in Baltimore and nationally. Just as importantly, developers should leverage RAD's momentum here by pursuing rehabilitation and new construction projects in the 16 neighborhoods where the RAD investment — $743 million to date — has already been made.

Last summer, a piece of artwork generated with artificial intelligence took a first prize at the Colorado State Fair. To me, the image looks like a view from the back of the stage at an opera. You see the backs of three singers, then, past them, vague squiggles and forms that may or may not be an audience, and all around, dominating everything, the fantastical Lord of the Rings-style palace where they are performing. The artwork looks cool at first glance, but after a second, it feels kind of lifeless. “As I came back to the image and sat with it for a while, I found that my efforts to engage it at depth were thwarted,” L.M. Sacasas wrote in his newsletter on technology and culture. “This happened when I began to inspect the image more closely. As I did so, my experience of the image began to devolve rather than deepen.”

The Archdiocese of Baltimore was involved in the gravest of betrayals for its historic failure to protect children from sexual predators and for the sinister and cowardly decisions of some individuals to cover their tracks. As long as I am the archbishop of Baltimore, the church will continue to apologize for the pain inflicted and to assist those in the lifelong process of healing. Scrutiny of our past is warranted. When the objective is to protect a child, half-measures are not acceptable.

The Maryland General Assembly, with the support of Gov. Wes Moore, is prioritizing bills this legislative session that would bolster the state’s already strict laws regulating firearms — and for good reason. More than 50 mass shootings (defined for this count as a minimum of four people shot in a single incident, excluding the gunperson), have already occurred in 19 states and the District of Columbia just since the start of this year, including the shooting of five teenagers in Baltimore City on Jan. 4, one of whom died. As of Thursday, 88 people have been killed in 2023 in this country through such broad attacks, and 219 wounded. Hundreds more have been victims of smaller-scale shootings.

It’s good to stand among the creative and the crafty, if only for an hour or two. It’s good to stand there while Gary Flowers steams a sheet of maple to form the curved sides of one of his fine guitars. It does some good to watch, in the same shop a few feet away, Jaime Miller sand the walnut on one of his beautiful handcrafted urns. You could walk down the hall of the old ball-bearing factory and find someone restoring furniture, gilding a frame or bringing new, shocking shine to old brass. You can walk until you land at Brubaker Musical Instruments, maker of electric guitars. It’s all there. It’s all happening on rainy days and sunny days behind the brick walls at Loch Raven Road and Exeter Hall, near the Cloverland Green Spring Dairy plant.

“Of the people, by the people, for the people …” Simple but powerful words rooted in a simple but powerful idea: The work of government is about people, carried out by people, for people. Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller and I are committed to ensuring Maryland’s state government is people-centered — in every way. This means our government represents Marylanders with the best and most diverse talent. We leverage people, our greatest asset, to work for Marylanders. And we are driven every day by Marylanders’ priorities and needs. To do this, we need to rebuild state government, starting with expanding our definition of — and the front door to — public service.

When Maryland State Delegate Terri Hill told fellow lawmakers that she saw an older man with a walker seated outside a polling station waiting to vote, her voice choked with emotion. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee last week, Hill said she later learned that the man left after more than an hour, never given the opportunity to exercise his fundamental right to cast a ballot. “I hope we can find some way so that if another person like that man, who goes to vote, he doesn’t have to wait an hour to go home without being accommodated,” said Hill, a Democrat representing Howard and Baltimore counties. “It’s that simple.”.

The Food and Drug Administration vowed to make big changes to its food safety teams after the 2022 infant formula crisis exposed deep flaws in the agency’s culture, technology and structure. On Tuesday, the FDA finally revealed its fix: creating a new deputy commissioner for human foods. This is a major disappointment. The new deputy commissioner position would not even have authority over all food safety and nutrition. Confusingly, there will still be a separate Office of Regulatory Affairs at the FDA that handles food safety investigations. On a call with reporters, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock spent 45 minutes trying to explain which powers this new deputy would have and which authorities the Office of Regulatory Affairs’ leader would exercise.