Politics

According to results from a survey by the Montgomery County Planning Board, just over half of residents surveyed said they are satisfied with conditions as they walk around the county — be it taking their dog for a walk, running errands or waiting for a bus. However, there are proposals to improve what planners call “the pedestrian experience” in the Maryland county.

The House of Delegates on Thursday gave preliminary approval to legislation that would bar police from detaining individuals simply because they smelled of marijuana. Following its voice vote, the House could vote as early as Friday on passage of the bill, which states that marijuana’s odor alone gives police neither reasonable suspicion nor probable cause to suspect someone of criminal activity. The smell, however, could still be a factor in an officer’s reasonable suspicion during a traffic stop that a person was driving while impaired by marijuana.

Gov. Wes Moore on Wednesday blasted a private health care contractor for abusing and neglecting veterans residing in a state-run assisted living and skilled nursing facility, announcing the state has taken steps to terminate the 21-year relationship. The state has paid HMR Maryland LLC hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to oversee management and operations of the 454-bed facility going back as far as 2002. The governor said the state will look to hire a contractor to replace HMR.

A plan is moving forward to help Maryland parents caught up in the problems with the state’s 529 College Savings plan. The state’s 529 college savings plan, which is a state-sponsored investment plan that enables users to save money for a beneficiary and pay for education expenses, had an error that left hundreds of people unable to take money out of their accounts, due to an interest calculation glitch within the program. Some parents said they were not able to tap the money they saved for years, while others said they lost tens of thousands under the plan.

Del. Kirill Reznik (D-Dist. 39) is leaving his seat in the Maryland House of Delegates to join Gov. Wes Moore’s administration as the new assistant secretary for inter-departmental data Integration for the state Department of Human Services. His vacancy will represent the fourth time this year that Montgomery County’s Democratic Central Committee will select a nominee to fill a General Assembly seat for the vast majority of a four-year term.

Maryland’s Senate is expected to pass a bill Thursday opening a retroactive “lookback window” that would allow childhood sexual abuse survivors to bring lawsuits even if their claims already expired under a previous statute of limitations. Senate approval would mean the long-sought legislation is likely to pass the full General Assembly this year; the House of Delegates has repeatedly voted in favor of versions of the bill in the past.