Commentary

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.

Law enforcement faces a more urgent challenge than the defund the police movement ever posed: the rise of private policing. And now, Maryland lawmakers are seeking to rein in the lightly regulated but heavily armed sector. While the $50 billion private security services industry can and should serve to complement law enforcement’s role, in many cases that industry is taking the place of police.

Joseph “Joe” Meyerhoff II has a solution to Baltimore’s vacant home crisis that even he knows sounds crazy, but some in the city of Baltimore are examining the idea. There are at least 15,000 vacant homes in Baltimore, a level of blight rarely seen on the East Coast. Yet the city has an affordable housing shortage, so Meyerhoff wanted to know why somebody couldn’t just fix up those homes and sell them. The retired businessman and philanthropist put the question to a nonprofit builder, who told him he spent $200,000 to fix up a vacant Baltimore house that then appraised for only $150,000.

Anton’s Law grew out of public outrage about the use of lethal force by police officers in Maryland, particularly the brutal killing of Anton Black, an unarmed Black teenager, by Officer Thomas Webster IV on Maryland’s Eastern Shore on Sept. 15, 2018. Anton was a father and a star athlete, loved by his family and friends. He had a bright future. Officer Webster should never have held a position in Maryland law enforcement. Webster had 30 use-of-force complaints on his record when he was an officer in Dover, Delaware. He was ultimately fired after being arrested for kicking and breaking the jaw of an unarmed Black man, Lateef Dickerson. Nonetheless, he was certified to work in Maryland and hired by the Greensboro Police Department because the town’s police chief falsified Webster’s records.

During my time pursuing my first graduate degree at New York University, the graduate school of public administration, one of the oldest in the nation, changed its name to the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. It was named in honor of the late New York City mayor, Robert F. Wagner, who was still living at the time of the school’s renaming.

There is an enduring appeal to the notion of traveling the Chesapeake Bay by ferry. Maybe it’s the thought of standing at the rail, watching as the tide and miles roll away. Or perhaps it’s a traffic-jam daydream: getting somewhere without the endless glare of a thousand brake lights ahead of you?