Commentary

I am pleased to announce the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Chesapeake Bay Crossing Study: Tier 1 National Environmental Policy Act is available for public review and comment at baycrossingstudy.com. We understand the significance of the Bay Bridge to the state and the broader mid-Atlantic region, and we recognize that once the bridges were constructed, Queen Anne’s County and most of the Eastern Shore, including Ocean City, went from difficult destinations to reach to thriving, growing communities.

The Biden administration is advancing an aggressive climate change agenda. Historically, national policymakers focused on emissions from energy and transportation. As President Biden signaled in his early executive orders, however, his administration will be prioritizing climate emissions from the building sector, which accounts for roughly 30% of U.S. emissions. As the U.S. Department of Energy has highlighted, new technologies will be required to achieve target emissions reductions from buildings. Maryland is already an emerging leader in the property technology (proptech) and cleantech space. Through public and private collaboration, the state can strengthen its leadership position, fostering an innovation economy and creating jobs.

President Biden hopes his $1.9 trillion stimulus act has Americans repeating a word they’ve longed to speak for more than a year: recovery. It could also have them saying one they haven’t said in a long time: inflation. Inflation is normally a result of too much money chasing too few goods. That’s not to say that price increases cannot result from other causes. Rising energy prices, for example, are often the result of sudden changes in supply, as happened when the Arab oil embargo began in 1973. That’s one reason central banks often look at what they call “core inflation,” which strips out price levels for volatile sectors such as food and energy to assess whether an economy is suffering from sustained inflation.

Maryland’s Juvenile Justice Reform Council has wrapped up its final report and recommendations, and the associated legislative package is making its way through the General Assembly. Several of those recommendations focus on giving law enforcement agencies more diversion options for youth. Amid calls to “defund the police,” lawmakers would be well served to focus on alternatives to arrest in the coming months as constituents look to hold them accountable.

Spring seems just around the corner, 121 million doses of vaccine have been administered, and Americans are eager to get back to normal after a year of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. President Biden recently raised the prospect of a festive Independence Day. What could go wrong? Hopefully, nothing will. But there are dark clouds amid the rosy scenarios. The big decline in viral spread evident in January and early February has stalled. The pandemic’s winter surge tapered off into a stubborn plateau in the national rate of new daily infections, which has been running at about 53,000 on a seven-day average.