Politics

Maryland Department of Natural Resources leaders have undertaken sweeping reforms of the state’s park system in the wake of complaints about sexual harassment and a toxic work culture, as well as the highly publicized rape trial of a former park manager, the agency’s top official told lawmakers Wednesday. “There were legitimate workplace culture, communication and transparency issues in the park service,” Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz told a joint legislative committee.

Maryland officials on Tuesday highlighted the availability of $120 million in grants for behavioral and mental health services to help K-12 students over the next year and a half. Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, described the funding as a historic investment that is critical to the state’s 900,000 school children at a time when kids are facing the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on learning and socialization.

Prince George’s County Council members on Tuesday said they’d reconsider legislation to codify the ability of the body’s first pregnant representative to participate in meetings virtually, an apparent course change after a rejection of the measure prompted forceful criticism from other elected officials, labor rights groups and county residents.

Maryland’s only historically Black land-grant university has missed out on $321 million in funding over the past three decades, the Biden administration has said in a letter to Gov. Wes Moore. The University of Maryland Eastern Shore and similar institutions across 15 other states have missed out on a collective $12.6 billion over the past 30 years, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack said in letters Monday to the governors of each state. The letters said the largest disparity was in Tennessee, where Tennessee State University has been underfunded by $2.1 billion.

The U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday awarded over $1.5 million to five community organizations, including a Baltimore nonprofit, “to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and harassment against underserved and marginalized women workers.” The department’s Women’s Bureau Director Wendy Chun-Hoon said these Fostering Access, Rights and Equity, or FARE, grants are part of the department’s work towards meeting the goals set out in President Joe Biden’s national action plan for addressing and preventing gender-based violence.

The Montgomery County Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to ban “right turns on red” at some intersections as part of an overhaul of the county’s traffic safety laws. The “Safe Streets Act of 2023” prohibits drivers from making right turns on a red traffic light at busy intersections in downtown and town center areas of the county. These designated intersections would be marked with “No Right Turn on Red” signs. The bill also lengthens walk times for pedestrians at crosswalks.

A bill critical to a project to renovate a long-abandoned building that used to house a historic general store in Galesville passed the Anne Arundel County Council unanimously Monday night. The legislation to reclassify the half-acre parcel in the south county town along the West River from a limited development area to an intensely developed area will enable the new owners, the resident-run nonprofit Galesville Community Properties Inc., to renovate and subdivide the property.