Commentary

Sixty years ago, urban renewal came to Harlem Park, and the West Baltimore neighborhood has never been the same. In the cause of “slum clearance,” the city demolished dozens of houses with no plan to replace them or relocate their residents. Officials carved away half of gorgeous Harlem Square Park for a school and athletic fields, removed streetcar lines that connected the neighborhood’s residents to jobs and downtown shopping, and demolished 12 blocks of houses and businesses to make way for a doomed interstate connector that became known as the Highway to Nowhere.

Just hours before the Baltimore County Council was set to go into session Tuesday, the county executive’s office sent out a news release indicating that it was postponing the introduction of proposed legislation that would have severely limited the authority and independence of the county’s recently created Office of the Inspector General. The reason for the delay, as reported by The Baltimore Sun, was that “details of the draft prompted backlash from groups that said it would hamstring the county’s corruption watchdog.”

The field of contenders seeking to become Maryland’s 63rd governor so far includes a dozen men and at least one woman who vary in age, race and life experience with some having served in elected office and some not. But there’s one thing that most of the Democrats and Republicans in the field have in common: The vast majority aren’t from the Baltimore region.

The new guidelines for school reopenings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are much better than expected. They balance the need for getting students back to full-time, in-person instruction with the reality that covid-19 remains a danger for unvaccinated children. In recent weeks, I’ve been concerned that the CDC had thrown caution to the wind with decisions that resulted in the precipitous removal of mask mandates.

I moved to Annapolis at 22 for my first job where I made $500 a week. I couldn’t afford the most inexpensive apartments, where a studio costs over $1,000 a month. Fortunately, I found an above-garage flat owned by a friend. It was small, but comfortable and affordable, only $500 a month. That accessory dwelling unit (ADU), an additional dwelling on a single-family lot, helped me stay here, put down roots, start a family and now represent my community as an alderman.

City representatives have officially recommended against building a proposed high-speed SCMaglev train between Baltimore and Washington, with eventual plans to stretch to New York City. This recommendation might surprise some Baltimore residents. After all, how could an innovative technological project that promotes sustainability, provides jobs and creates faster connections to surrounding cities not be good for a struggling city like ours? The city’s reasoning, however, becomes more understandable when we consider the maglev project as part of a longer history of transportation planning in the Baltimore region.

Journalism — that irreverent, nettlesome profession that delivers the news every day — has an identity crisis. The problem with the job description these days is that anyone with a cell phone is a photographer and everyone with a computer is a reporter. Thus, the conundrum for federal officials trying to protect reporters from government intrusion with a shield law is one of definition and what’s in a name: Exactly what and who are journalists?