Politics

Signs sprouted up in the audience, heckling turned to boos, and then the Montgomery County Council voted unanimously to pass Thrive2050, the 30-year planning document that’s intended to guide future development. Before the vote, County Council President Gabe Albornoz (D) picked up his gavel and told the residents in the audience, some of whom commented loudly during the meeting, “I’ve never actually had to use this before, and I hope I don’t have to use it today.” Albornoz, a proponent of the plan, said delaying the decision — which had been in the works for 18 months — would be a mistake. He explained that he was born in Gaithersburg in 1976, and that the county’s master plan had not been updated in a generation.

As a first-time voter, Jaelynn Harris appreciated the chance to hear in person two candidates explain why they should be elected. Harris, 19, of Baltimore County, is a sophomore at Frostburg State University in the wildlife studies program. Monday evening, she was a student moderator at a forum for Maryland Congressional District 6 candidates Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. David Trone and Republican state Del. Neil Parrott. The event was hosted by FSU, Allegany College of Maryland, Garrett College and Hagerstown Community College. “This is going to be my first official election that I’m voting in,” Harris said and added that she learned more from seeing the candidates live at the forum than she has via political advertisements or websites. “I got a lot out of it. … It was a really good experience.”

After Democrat Calvin Ball defeated the incumbent Republican, Allan Kittleman, in the 2018 race for Howard County executive, Kittleman traveled to Ball’s election night celebration in Columbia, and the two candidates hugged. They’re not hugging now, though. Instead, they’re engaged in an increasingly bitter rematch.

In the last two weeks before Election Day, Anne Arundel County Council candidates are knocking on doors and making a final push for donations before voters head to the polls. Fifteen candidates — seven Democrats, seven Republicans and a Libertarian — are vying for seats on the seven-member council. The council currently is made up of four Democrats and three Republicans but that could change after the Nov. 8 election.

Fourth and eighth grade students in Maryland are lagging behind in both math and reading, according to assessment data released Monday, and one state lawmaker said the declines reveal how education reforms in the state’s “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future” are needed. The Blueprint was passed in 2021 to “enrich student experiences, accelerate student outcomes and improve the overall quality of education in Maryland,” and was formed based on recommendations from the Kirwan Commission, according to its website.

Fifteen years ago, the Baltimore City Council foolishly rebuffed efforts by former mayor Sheila Dixon to establish a “land bank” to reduce the number of blighted properties in Baltimore. Councilwoman Odette Ramos states that she intends to introduce a bill establishing a city land bank in the near future. When she does, the council should pass it. Baltimore has a long-standing problem with vacant, derelict houses. Most are located in the cluster of poor, predominantly Black neighborhoods known as the “Black Butterfly.”

Thousands of Maryland residents will not cast a ballot in this year’s election because they are behind bars. They have not had their voting rights taken from them. In fact, they have not been convicted of a crime. But because they are in jail prior to adjudication, they won’t get voting information. They won’t get a ballot. They won’t vote. Qiana Johnson knows the situation from personal experience.

Maryland’s ban on semiautomatic assault-style weapons passes constitutional muster because it is in keeping with the nation’s history of restricting “extraordinarily dangerous” offensive weapons dating to the bowie knife in the early 1800s, the state’s attorney general told the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week. Brian E. Frosh’s historical defense of the weapons ban followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer that gun regulations are constitutionally valid if they comport with the text, history and tradition of firearms restrictions when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791 or when the 14th Amendment extended the right to keep and bear arms to the states in 1868.