Politics

Baltimore’s spending board unanimously approved an agreement Wednesday with the state over the city’s troubled Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant — the state’s largest such facility. Under the consent order agreement, which was announced earlier this month, the city pledged to repay the Maryland Environmental Service for its emergency repair work at the facility and drop its legal challenge against the state’s takeover of the plant.

Three Republican hopefuls are running to unseat incumbent Anne Arundel County Sheriff Jim Fredericks in the July 19 primary. The incumbent Fredericks was elected in 2018 after edging then-Sheriff Ron Bateman in the primary. His opponents include Warren Porter, a 10-year veteran of the sheriff’s office; Joe Delimater, a deacon and electrical worker; and James McNeill, a former Annapolis Police officer.

Maryland Democrats are making their pitch later this week to have more say in the presidential nominating process with an earlier primary in 2024. Party leaders are scheduled to address the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and By-laws Committee on Thursday afternoon, as the DNC looks to shake up the nominating process across the nation and allow different regions to be represented at the start of the primary season in 2024.

Maryland and Virginia politicians vying for the prize of a new FBI headquarters have just a few months left before a crucial federal government decision. The U.S. General Services Administration is expected to pick the best of three locations as soon as September, ending nearly two decades of advocacy, confusion and frustration across four presidencies about whether the FBI should move to the suburbs bordering the District of Columbia or stay downtown. GSA staffers told Congress last week during closed-door briefings that all three possible locations selected as options during the Obama administration — Greenbelt and Landover in Maryland and Springfield, Va. — are still viable locations for the future FBI headquarters.

Mayor Brandon Scott on Tuesday called on the Walters Art Museum to allow its employees to vote on unionizing, saying union membership helped his family join the Black middle class. “Unions give workers the platform to unite and advocate for their own working conditions and deserve to be celebrated,” Scott wrote in a letter to the museum’s board of trustees. “Ultimately, the right of workers to organize and form collective bargaining units is a fundamental component of our democracy and, as such, must be protected.”

The House 1/6 committee outlined on Tuesday Donald Trump’s relentless pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election, aiming to show it led to widespread personal threats on the stewards of American democracy — election workers and local officials who fended off the defeated president’s efforts. The panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol resumed with a focus on Trump’s efforts to undo Joe Biden’s victory in the most local way — by leaning on officials in key battleground states to reject ballots outright or to submit alternative electors for the final tally in Congress.

Katie Speert announced this week that she is dropping out of the race for a seat on the Carroll County Board of Education. Speert was one of eight candidates who filed to run for three open seats on the board. Speert, executive director of Westminster nonprofit Together We Own It, said the organization was awarded funding from a partnership with the Carroll County Public Schools system through the federal American Rescue Plan, creating a conflict of interest. She announced her decision to withdraw from the race in an emotional Facebook video post on June 8.