Commentary

Once again, the Ausherman Family Foundation has stepped forward to lend a helping hand to the government of Frederick and to the residents working and living in the city. This time, the foundation has contributed $1.5 million and is working with the city government to create a youth center downtown, where young people will be able to get access to services.

I’m 30 feet above Interstate 97, peering through a chain-link fence at the concrete trail below. Traffic is light on this bright May morning, but I feel like a red-tailed hawk testing the exhaust-flavored wind flowing up from all that horsepower. I try to picture how different it must have looked from this overpass on March 24, when 1,000 cars traveled it in a midnight stampede.

For a half-century, West Baltimore’s “Highway to Nowhere” has stood as a testament to how big transportation projects can run over, literally and figuratively, disadvantaged communities. The demolition of hundreds of homes and businesses to create what turned out to be an isolated 1.4-mile-long stretch of sunken blacktop was an example of what happens when a predominantly Black, working-class community is seen by the powerful as no more than an obstacle to progress.

Last month, Gov. Wes Moore signed into law one of the most ambitious housing bills in Maryland history. It removed regulatory and zoning hurdles for desperately needed affordable housing across the state. Around the same time, the Baltimore County Council filed legislation to stop the construction of new units under the auspices of expanding the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, otherwise known as “APFO.”

Institutions of higher education — particularly those as diverse as the University of Baltimore — still stand tall as places in contemporary society where people from vastly different backgrounds can come together to examine complex ideas. As times change quickly, and politics shift as suddenly as tectonic plates, that’s more important than ever.

Marylanders should be proud of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. But if it is to achieve equal educational opportunity for all our schoolchildren, its design must be strengthened. At the past session of the General Assembly about $580 million was added to Blueprint funding. A lot of money to be sure, but these funds did not add one penny to the funding that the Blueprint already promised. Alarming funding gaps remain, as I’ll explain later.

If you pay attention to local government, you are undoubtedly following budget deliberations this time of year. For the rest of you, well, your lack of interest is understandable. Too many numbers and not enough pictures. Money drives policy, though, and local government budgets are a form of pure power. Control the purse, control a community’s destiny.