Commentary

Gov. Wes Moore has backed off a bit from the draconian cuts he was threatening to transportation funding, and while the changes leave in place the worst reductions, there are still some things to like. First, what we dislike: There is still no construction funding for the widening of U.S. 15 through the city of Frederick, which remains the top priority for both the city and the county, as well as every person who needs to drive that dangerously overcrowded highway.

Gov. Wes Moore’s proposed fiscal year 2025 state budget, which was released on Jan. 18, includes the fourth largest cut to community colleges in the history of the Cade Funding formula, a $22 million reduction. According to the calculations in the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act (BRFA), Garrett College would receive a 21% reduction from the previous year and many other community colleges would receive double digit decreases as well.

Baltimore and Cleveland face similar challenges caused by the loss of jobs and decreases in population. Those challenges include a surplus of office space in the downtown business districts and a large inventory of vacant and abandoned properties. Cleveland, however, has done a far better job than Baltimore in meeting those challenges.

Despite last week’s announcement of a one-year infusion of cash, Maryland is wrestling with a projected $3.15 billion dollar transportation budget shortfall, exacerbated by the end of federal COVID-era support for transportation operations, overreliance on gas tax when vehicles are becoming more efficient, inflation, and more. The Moore administration recently proposed to balance the six-year transportation budget with 8% across-the-board cuts to all the agencies within the Maryland Department of Transportation.

When it’s time to talk about Baltimore’s economic revival, the conversation often starts with the big. Take the proposed redevelopment of Harborplace, the ongoing efforts at Baltimore Peninsula and the continued growth of the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore: big buildings, big cranes, and big stacks of cargo containers like pancakes on a dinner plate (mmm, pancakes). These things are identifiable, often controversial and any one of them may involve hundreds of new jobs — a veritable buffet spread of economic opportunity. (And who doesn’t like a good buffet?) Yet too easily ignored may be another potential driver of opportunity that’s on the smaller side, the small business side.

You know your public meeting has gone horribly wrong when the assistant city attorney assigned to it starts yelling at the chair: “Stop!” “Hold up.” “Please stop!” The gathering of the Annapolis Art in Public Places Commission devolved into angry accusations, indignant interruptions — “don’t talk to me like that” — and finger-pointing over how members wound up on the hook for public art gone awry.

Whether you love Donald Trump or loathe him, Maryland Secretary of State Susan Lee made the correct decision to put his name on the May Republican primary ballot, rather than follow the lead of her counterpart in Maine in disqualifying the ex-president. Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will be on the primary ballot in Maryland, Lee informed election officials. In a letter to state elections officials Monday, Lee said Trump and Haley generally met the qualifications for candidates who “generally advocated or recognized in the news media throughout the United States or in Maryland.”

The Baltimore Police Department has drawn so much scrutiny in recent years for poor policing practices, that one might assume the department had taken a firm hand with the most basic of chores — the management of time sheets. While preventing, responding to and solving crime is both difficult and often dangerous, setting an employee’s hours and making sure supervisors signed off is a piece of cake. Every organization, from the small mom-and-pop store to the most massive bureaucracy, faces this same chore.