Commentary

While climate-induced natural disasters strike worldwide, Maryland utilities are investing more than a billion dollars in new fossil-fuel infrastructure. These investments — extending gas service areas and replacing pipes — are part of a last-ditch effort to benefit shareholders and make it more expensive to stop burning fossil fuels. To put the scale of current spending in perspective, what is planned now and through 2023 will roughly double the natural gas infrastructure Maryland gas customers are paying for compared to 2018. The Maryland General Assembly has encouraged this spending, and the Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved it.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report, which found that global temperatures are now higher than at any point in the past 125,000 years as a result of human activity, has served as a harsh wake-up call. To address this pressing issue, lawmakers in Washington have allocated billions of dollars for climate-related projects throughout the bipartisan infrastructure package, and Democrats plan to allocate even more in their $3.5 trillion budget-reconciliation bill.

Dear “Personal Choicers,” As long as unvaccinated people provide a significant breeding ground for COVID-19 virus variants, medical care for those seriously ill with coronavirus will be diminished. Rationing hospital patient admissions has become urgently necessary because of depleted staff and limitations of space and equipment.

Once again, Baltimore schools were in the headlines as the heat index forced the district to close schools that lack air conditioning systems. Citing mismanagement, Gov. Larry Hogan criticized Baltimore City Public Schools and said that it was “unbelievable” that two dozen schools lack air-conditioning. But Baltimore City school officials’ air conditioning plan, which the governor approved, is on schedule to be completed by next school year. Meanwhile, there are many more critical school facility deficiencies that Governor Hogan continues to ignore.

Last month, students returned to Howard County school buildings to greet friends and teachers for the first time in nearly 18 months. Throughout this past year, we’ve worked with our school system to prepare school buildings for the return of in-person learning, building infrastructure that would make all our students and educators safe. A $6 million contribution of CARES Act funding supported the installation of MERV13 HVAC air filters in every school building that didn’t have one previously.

We are living through a time of economic contradictions, with the world of business and the lives of workers disrupted by the aftershocks of the pandemic in ways that we are struggling to understand. Recent headlines in the News-Post reflect this topsy-turvy situation: “Help Wanted,” “COVID safety net ending” and “… poverty rates could rise.” According to the federal government, 8.4 million potential workers are unemployed, while businesses say they have 10.9 million job openings.

Now that the General Assembly’s redistricting commission has begun meeting, even as Republican Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr.’s redistricting commission continues to hold sessions, it feels a little like the varsity team has finally taken the field. With all due respect to the other redistricting commissioners. Hogan will attempt to get as much political mileage as he can from the Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission he assembled earlier this year, and whatever maps the commission proposes for Congress and the state legislature will undergird Hogan’s bully pulpit when he argues, yet again, that partisanship needs to be taken out of the redistricting process.

For decades now, Maryland’s seafood processors have relied on temporary seasonal workers to help them with one of the more demanding tasks at hand — picking crab meat for eventual sale to retailers and restaurants. The workers, most often women from Mexico, stay only for the season under visas from the H-2B Nonimmigrant Temporary Worker Program, fulfilling a vital role for the seafood industry and preserving jobs for people further down the supply chain.

The good news: Marylanders have embraced getting outdoors. About 3 million more people visited our state parks in 2020 than in 2019. The bad news: park capacity limits resulted in almost three times the number of capacity closures in 2020 than in 2019. So kudos to Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) and House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) for establishing a legislative commission, the Maryland State Park Investment Commission, to “investigate and make recommendations regarding overcrowding in Maryland State parks.”

One of the grand promises of America is what I’ve always understood to be a national commitment to progress. Inertia is unacceptable. Failure is not an option. The country will always learn from its mistakes, grow wiser and become exceptional in all things, from mail service to cancer treatment. We shall run miles ahead of other countries.