Commentary

Wes Moore is inheriting a serious crisis the Hogan administration failed to address. We are neglecting children and youth who have high-intensity behavioral health needs because of insufficient therapeutic residential care options. Many in foster care are relegated to boarding for weeks or months in emergency rooms or to living in short-term psychiatric hospital wards with no end in sight because of the shortage. Others are being “placed” in hotels with gift cards for fast food and 24-hour supervision by contractors. This is an act of pure desperation for the local departments of social services and their case workers, who are charged with providing for the well-being of these children and youth and held accountable by the juvenile court and state and federal agencies.

Chances are that, at some point growing up, you enjoyed reading “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” or “A Christmas Carol.” You’re lucky. Around 60 percent of all Maryland children will probably never have that pleasure because they’ve never been taught to read proficiently. The gift that most of our children desperately need is literacy. In conscience, it should not be thought of as a gift but a sacred civil right. It’s the magic carpet not just to success in school but to meaningful participation in the world of work and civic life. “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free,” Frederick Douglass wrote, adding “To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature.” Why do we as a state and nation commit the crime of illiteracy?

The New Year is a time for reflection. And since Maryland is going to have a limited legal recreational cannabis market this year, I think back 26 years ago, when California passed Prop 215. I was working as an addictions counselor at the time and remember thinking that legalization would happen in 10 years at most. I know — I was naive. It was the first time I saw major magazines, other than High Times, with medical marijuana on the front covers. Major TV networks dedicated air time with the War on Drugs in full swing. Peter Jennings had a special, “Pot of Gold,” that interviewed growers in the Northwest, Midwest and South. I got to rewatch it recently and do the math since local cannabis prices are readily available online.

I know a student who attends Towson University but has never actually visited the city of Baltimore. She is not alone, and that is a shame. Aside from aiding workers and easing downtown traffic congestion, the proposed Lutherville connector would connect students from Goucher, Towson, Notre Dame, Loyola, Hopkins, Morgan, MICA and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, in a linear “College Corridor." It would allow entrepreneurs to create easily accessible hub(s), with coffee shops, bookstores, bars, entertainment venues, bike shops, hip stores, etc. — the types of places where students from different campuses could gather, share ideas, have fun and spend money.

Over the last three years, the value of real estate in Maryland has risen a hefty 20.6%. At some level, that’s good news for existing homeowners and commercial property owners alike, as it means as it means a home or business space they may have purchased several years ago for $100,000 is likely worth about $120,000 today. A rise in equity is what has long made such investments appealing. For many, it’s one of the best they’ll make, often a key steppingstone toward retirement savings.

The people who got on Baltimore City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett after the shooting in Edmondson Village on Wednesday morning might not know this, but he has been pushing for investment in that old shopping center for several years. Before and after the Freddie Gray uprising and unrest of 2015, Burnett was a community organizer who tried to get the owner to clean the place up and make improvements. Burnett has been on the City Council six years now, and Baltimore has recorded 300-plus homicides each of those years.

Many states continue to enjoy enormous budget surpluses, thanks to the open spigot of federal assistance during the pandemic, rising incomes and, in energy-rich states, high oil prices. It’s tempting to keep slashing taxes and jack up spending. But heading into a potential economic downturn, with tighter monetary policy to counter persistently high inflation, the prudent course for state legislatures convening in the coming weeks is to batten down the hatches for storms ahead. Rainy-day funds, also referred to as stabilization accounts, are essential to weather everything from the vagaries of the business cycle to natural disasters and flawed budget forecasting.