Politics

When her younger son, Connor, opted to attend Towson University in the spring of 2022, Monica Heinlein was overjoyed. For years, the Columbia school counselor diligently paid into accounts she held with the state of Maryland to finance her two sons’ college education, counting on the investment to earn enough interest so they’d never need to borrow money to earn degrees.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott shared some good news on Friday morning — he and his girlfriend, Hana Pugh, are expecting a baby in early 2024. Scott, 39, publicly announced the pregnancy in a series of social media posts. “Baltimore Baby Charm is on the way,” he wrote, before asking followers whether they think the baby will be a boy or a girl.

Baltimore City Council seized its first opportunity to grill acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley at a marathon hearing Thursday night, demanding accountability and change from the top cop who still needs its approval to permanently enter the office. The council asked heated questions about the mass shooting in Brooklyn on July 2 that left two dead and 28 injured. “This is not a performance.

U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-6th) has already spent more than $4.7 million on his campaign for U.S. Senate — about half of it on cable TV ads and other significant sums on digital advertising and slick campaign mailers. Trone’s expenditures in the early weeks of the 2024 open-seat Senate race dwarf the spending of his chief rivals for the Democratic nomination, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando, and have been fueled largely by his own fortune.

County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. signed off on new bylaws Thursday that give Baltimore County greater authority over land use decisions in greater Woodlawn and establish a new quasi-public authority to hasten progress on the county’s preeminent redevelopment project. Flanked by Maryland and County Council lawmakers and western Baltimore County community leaders at the O.W.E. Center in Security Square Mall Thursday afternoon, Olszewski said the authority will “transform our capacity to invest in western Baltimore County.”

Facing an angry Baltimore City Council demanding answers about how an annual community festival devolved into one of the city’s largest mass shootings, Baltimore Police leaders acknowledged their failure Thursday to learn of the event in advance and further admitted responsibility for failing to mobilize additional resources once the party was discovered.

Less than six months after her son was killed in the 800 block of Gretna Court, Donna Bruce watched with horror on Instagram Live as the Brooklyn Day event she knew well devolved into a chaotic shooting on that same street, without a police officer in sight. Bruce, who grew up in the neighborhood but moved out more than a decade ago, said she was not shocked to see the event go unpoliced and turn violent.

All’s well that ends well. Baltimore City Department of Transportation officials restored the street sign in the 1000 block of Orleans Street back to its intended spelling Thursday, one day after a Facebook user poked fun at an error: “Orelans.” Baltimore is known as the “city that reads,” after all. The transportation department owned up and apologized, chiding itself in good fun along the way.

The Baltimore City Council wants to know from police leadership and city agencies what they knew and when as it relates to the July 2 mass shooting at Brooklyn Homes. The Baltimore City Council Public Safety and Government Relations Committee is meeting at 5 p.m. Thursday for a hearing to dig into the police response to the mass shooting.