Politics

Election reform had momentum heading into Maryland’s 2021 legislative session after voters overwhelmingly embraced absentee ballots, early voting and ballot drop-off boxes during the state’s highly unconventional 2020 election cycle. A slew of ambitious reforms were introduced — including an unsuccessful push to make mail-in voting the default option and attempts to reform the State Board of Elections — but only a few made it to the finish line and the most consequential bills became law without a signature from Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R).

The lack of mail service has been an ongoing problem for many for over a year now. “It’s really frustrating, bills are late because we’re not even receiving them. I just don’t know what to do at this point,” said Brittne Bryan, Dundalk resident. Some Dundalk residents said they are just now receiving their mail postmarked in April and have now resorted to making daily trips to the post office to see what’s the hold-up.

Yaakov “Jake” Weissmann, who served two Maryland Senate presidents as their chief of staff, plans to step down at the end of July. Weissmann will be replaced by Sally Robb, who is currently the deputy chief of staff to Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City). Robb will be the first Black woman to serve as the top staffer for a Maryland Senate president.

A seismic shift will rock college sports next month, when a handful of new state laws go into effect allowing student-athletes to make money off their personal images. It’s been against the rules governing collegiate sports for student-athletes to make a profit off their name or image — a practice that’s commonplace in professional sports. But a flurry of states has forged ahead with laws granting college athletes the rights to their own “name, image and likeness,” arguing that it’s a matter of fairness for student-athletes. Statutes in five states, including Georgia and Florida, will go into effect July 1.

Detectives were stumped by the 2010 shooting of Michael Anthony Temple in Odenton. The gunman left DNA on a cigarette and coffee cup, but a search of the police database found no match. Five years passed, the case went cold, and Temple died of his injuries. The breakthrough came when investigators submitted the DNA to consumer genealogy websites. Nine years after the shooting, they charged Fred Lee Frampton Jr.

Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby will introduce an emergency measure to offer grants to people to help pay security deposits in the wake of Mayor Brandon Scott’s veto of a deposit alternatives bill. Mosby, a Democrat, wrote a letter Friday to Scott about his plan to introduce the legislation next week. Mosby described grants of up to $2,000, based on renters’ incomes, to aid them in making security deposits.