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Commentary

Openness and bond hearings

Injustice happens in empty courtrooms. If any proof of the validity of this maxim were needed, one need only read the 21-page report “Inside Prince George’s County Bond Hearings” just released by Howard University’s Movement Lawyering Clinic.

Rethinking zoning

With Earth Day 2023 having just passed, it brings to mind how we are dealing with the Earth – more specifically, how we are making use of our land resources. How we use land and how we control the use of land have been contentious matters over the years. The application of zoning, the use of laws by units of local government that govern how real property can and cannot be used, first took hold in the late 19th century.

Episode 51: The Lakefront Library (Podcast)

Listen to Tonya Aikens, President and CEO of the Howard County Library System, discuss the proposed Howard County Lakefront Library.

Maryland shows good environmental policy is also good politics

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to increased enforcement over pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay from Pennsylvania as part of a settlement involving lawsuits brought by Maryland, neighboring states and environmental advocates. The proposed agreement is no small matter. EPA enforcement under federal Clean Water Act authority had clearly slackened under the Trump administration — both in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Does Maryland Need an ‘Innocence Inquiry Commission?’

There is no truer test of the morality and integrity of a state’s criminal justice system than its commitment to exonerate individuals wrongfully convicted of crimes through a process that is fair and impartial. If we learned anything from the Adnan Syed case in Baltimore, it is that a process that relies on elected local prosecutors is far too vulnerable to politics to consistently satisfy that standard.

I am an expert on the topic of grief. It doesn’t make loss any easier.

I am a grief expert. It’s somewhere on my LinkedIn page. I wrote a book about widowhood, have spoken internationally on the subject and even Hoda and Jenna and Katie Couric have been interested in what I had to say. But my grandmother, Emma James, died last week. I am experiencing what I now recognize as the unmistakable, unstoppable markers of grief. The shock. The sneak attacks of panic. The eye that just starts leaking out of nowhere.

glass half full
Baltimore’s Black neighborhoods must get safe, affordable water

Baltimore provides water and wastewater services to approximately 1.8 million people, many of whom are Black and low-income. Unfortunately, aging infrastructure, due to systemic underinvestment, has led to continuing problems with management, water quality and affordability. A new Baltimore Water Regionalization Task Force aims to rectify some of these issues. Yet, serious questions have arisen about the structure of this new task force and what it seeks to achieve.

Dan Rodricks: At Baltimore’s Loch Raven Reservoir, a good walk spoiled

You can understand why Jim Clemmens and members of his weekend walking group would like to take a stroll along Loch Raven Reservoir without cars and trucks whizzing by and some of the drivers cursing and making obscene gestures. Things were better before the pandemic: Saturdays and Sundays, for seven hours a day, yellow gates blocked a section of Loch Raven Drive to motor vehicles, and people enjoyed pleasant saunters along the road. You can understand why they’d want to resume that experience.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
School board shouldn’t grant voting power to student member

Lucas Tessarollo, the student member of the Frederick County Board of Education, recently made a strong pitch to the school board that the student member should get to vote on board matters. Impressed board members indicated they would consider at least some voting rights.

PSC is dialed in on law protecting Marylanders from phone scams

The April 13 commentary “With new policy, PSC is ordering a disaster” has it wrong. The Maryland Public Service Commission’s recent decisions cracking down on retail energy suppliers who telephonically enroll customers into high-cost contracts for electricity and gas without first obtaining the customers’ signed consent has nothing to do with pizza. While the PSC’s job is vast, it has never regulated food and never will. And its recent decisions protecting ratepayers from unscrupulous retail suppliers have interpreted the Maryland Telephone Solicitations Act (MTSA) the same way the Maryland Attorney General has for decades — without consequence to your dinnertime pizza plans.

 

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