Politics

A coalition of former city officials, business executives, academics and economists that sought a ballot referendum that would have cut city homeowners’ property tax rates fell short of the number of signatures it needed to get on the ballot, the group said Monday. Renew Baltimore, which wanted to reduce the property tax rate by 44% over a six-year period, said it obtained about 9,000 signatures of the 10,000 required to put the question to voters. The group was collecting signatures for two petitions, one to amend the city charter and the other to set and cap city property tax rates

An emergency session of the Maryland State Board of Elections took place on Monday. Due to this year’s primary being moved from late June to mid-July, the board had to set new deadlines for candidates to withdraw from the general election ballot. The Board voted unanimously to set Aug. 16 as the date for nominees from the primary to withdraw from the general election ballot. That date is also the deadline for local election officials to remove candidates due to disqualification.

The votes from the Republican primary for the Harford County Council’s District D seat will be recounted as a result of a mere 11-vote margin between the top two candidates. Following the Harford County Board of Elections’ third vote-counting canvass Friday, James Reilly was the top contender with 2,862 votes, or 39.1% of the vote, with John B. Carl, Jr. on his heels with 2,851 votes, or 39% of the vote.

It’s still unclear whether the Baltimore County Board of Education is allowed to stick to a rule that calls for seven ‘yea’ votes to approve an agenda item, even when the 12-member board is missing members or some abstain. But things would look different if they hadn’t. They would have renewed the chief auditor’s contract, former member Cheryl Pasteur would have been the board’s chair, and construction funds for Towson, Dulaney and Lansdowne high schools would’ve been added to the budget, according to meeting minutes.

Baltimore County’s incumbent state’s attorney beat back an upstart primary challenger and will move on to the November general election. On the final day of counting, incumbent Scott Shellenberger added 182 votes to his nearly 2,000 vote lead and edged out Robbie Leonard. In all, Shellenberger finished with a more than 2,100 vote lead over Leonard. But the results took more than a week and initially Leonard led the 16-year incumbent by more than 800 votes. But in the days that followed, Leonard saw his lead eroded as more than 87,000 mail-in votes were counted.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a ban on semi-automatic firearms — the weapons used in multiple mass shootings during the last three months — on a near party-line vote. With the 217-213 vote, the bill, H.R. 1808, will head to the evenly divided Senate, but it’s unlikely to advance there, as the ban would need all Democrats on board plus 10 Republicans to get past a filibuster. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has not announced if he plans to bring the weapons ban to the floor for a vote. “Each year, more children die from gun violence than any other cause,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor. “Our nation has watched unspeakable horror as assault weapons have been used in massacre after massacre.”