Commentary

With the official start of Maryland’s summer beach season — the Fourth of July — within view, you can bet that weekend traffic backups along U.S. 50 at Sandy Point and Kent Island are not far off. It’s a tradition as old as the first two-lane Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which opened in 1952, and has kept right up through the addition of the three-lane parallel crossing in 1973 (especially Saturday morning eastbound and Sunday afternoon headed west).

In politics, money talks. And no one knows this better than the politicians running for elected office. It takes a lot of cash to pay for all those campaign ads, from TV commercials to pop-ups on social media, and the fastest way to raise the needed funds is to ask those who have a major stake in decision-making — from big business and labor unions to government contractors — to write the checks.

The news that Frederick County has a new flag likely provoked a few questions among residents, including “Why?” and “Why that one?” Some might have wondered: “Frederick County has a flag?” The winning design for the county flag was done by Marc DeOcampo, a registered architect who is the city of Frederick’s director of strategic planning.

What’s in a name? When a fire or other disaster strikes, do we turn desperately for rescue only to firemen, or do we welcome help from any and all firefighters? Right now, the name of our state’s firefighter’s association is Maryland State Firemen’s Association. Fortunately, the MSFA has the opportunity to modify its name at its June convention.

Gov. Wes Moore is moving forward with his campaign promise to restore the Red Line, the 14-mile east-west transit link from the Centers for Medicaid Services in Woodlawn to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The $2.9 billion project, pursued as a light rail line for a generation, was unceremoniously dumped in 2015 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan, despite the huge sums invested in planning and preparation and a $900 million commitment from the federal government.

Michael Harrison became Baltimore’s police commissioner in March 2019. He landed on his feet, and a good thing that, considering the dung heap he parachuted onto. He had to contend with the lingering community hostility in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s police-involved death, the revolving door of commissioners, the criminal scandal of the mayor who had appointed him, and a federal court consent decree mandating a revamping of the Baltimore Police Department from top to bottom.

Admissions and amusement taxes are so ubiquitous in Maryland these days, most people in Frederick County probably thought they were already paying some kind of small levy on movies, sporting events and other entertainment events or activities here. But they haven’t been.