Politics

Comptroller Peter Franchot has endorsed Baltimore Del. Brooke E. Lierman in her bid to replace him as the state’s tax collector following November’s General Election. Lierman praised Franchot in a statement Wednesday, saying she’s ”excited to hit the campaign trail … with a message of being an independent voice for Marylanders, ensuring taxpayers receive the best value for our tax dollars, preventing waste and fraud, and unlocking opportunities for every Maryland resident, family, and business.”

Standing in front of an East Baltimore park, across from burned-out rowhouses, top Maryland law enforcement officials, including Gov. Larry Hogan and U.S. Attorney Erek Barron, announced more initiatives to reduce violent crime. Wednesday’s news conference, which included Mayor Brandon Scott, Attorney General Brian Frosh, Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison and officials from the FBI, ATF and DEA, was a public announcement about how the law enforcement partners planned to use the $3.5 million Hogan’s office awarded the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office in March.

In an effort to dispel the “circus-like atmosphere” that has occurred at recent Carroll County school board meetings, officials have proposed policy changes that would both limit the number of people in the general public who may speak and also what those speakers may talk about. At the end of the Carroll County Board of Education meeting Aug. 17, Superintendent Cynthia McCabe presented proposed revisions to the school system’s policy on Citizen Participation at Board Meetings. The policy was last revised in 2008.

Carroll County will soon have several new representatives in the Maryland House of Delegates. In July, voters chose from among eight candidates in the Republican primary for District 5 and among two Republican candidates in District 42C. There were no candidates from the Democratic Party in either race, so the winners of the Republican primaries are the presumptive winners of the election. District 5, which covers most of the geographic area of Carroll, has three representatives in the House of Delegates. Two of the three delegates who have represented Carroll in Annapolis for the last four years did not run for reelection.

Maryland and Virginia leaders have opposing views when it comes to where the FBI should build its new headquarters. Maryland representatives insist that Greenbelt and Landover make the most sense, while their counterparts across the Potomac River greatly prefer the third option identified by the General Services Administration, a site in Springfield, Va. What regional leaders agree on is that the FBI must abandon its current building, a crumbling hulk on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the U.S. Capitol. They have been pushing the U.S. General Services Administration, the federal government’s property management arm, to move the agency out of D.C. for over a decade.

Harford County leaders gathered at Aberdeen Proving Ground midday Monday to survey the military base at its first Immersion Day since the pandemic began. The “windshield tour” of the post included Edgewood Area stops at the Medical Research Institute for Chemical Defense and the Chemical Biological Center; a tech expo display by the Army’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center, which is headquartered at Aberdeen; a Science of Sound demo at the Aberdeen Test Center; a visit to the 20th CBRNE Command, the Army’s Chemical, Biological, Nuclear, Radiological, Explosives headquarters, also based at APG, to hear how the command would respond to a nuclear incident; and a visit to the range where the visitors were able to try their hand at firing some of the weapons being tested there.