Politics

Baltimore City Council members will consider whether to increase the minimum wage for tipped workers, a proposal that follows action by Maryland leaders last year that raised the floor pay for most other workers. The bill, introduced Monday by Councilman John Bullock, also comes after a failed attempt to enshrine a higher base-level pay for service workers — such as bartenders and restaurant servers — at the state level during the most recent General Assembly session.

In a county boardroom 4 miles away from the Delaware border, the five members of the Cecil County Board of Education grew increasingly worried about the state of the school system’s finances. Federal pandemic-relief dollars used to prop up the budget the past three years are gone. Inflation and health care costs have ballooned. Starting salaries for teachers need to be raised to $60,000 by 2026.

The first big batch of bills passed during the 2024 legislative session goes into effect next week. Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed 1,049 bills in the weeks after the 90-day session, which saw big budgetary issues and a push for changes in the state’s juvenile justice system, adjourned April 8 for the year. Negotiated in the session’s dwindling days and shortly after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed March 26 in Baltimore, the state budget for the next fiscal year goes into effect July 1.

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court upended 50 years of abortion law with its Dobbs decision, Maryland has reaffirmed its position as an abortion-friendly state while other states have restricted or banned the procedure outright. Providers in Maryland say they have seen an increase in patients, including an influx from states with restrictive laws.

An obscure but influential commission has begun to tackle a multibillion-dollar problem for the state of Maryland: How to pay for government’s ambitious climate goals. As state leaders tout Maryland’s tough standards for reducing carbon emissions — Gov. Wes Moore (D) earlier this month issued an executive order to advance certain climate initiatives — they have yet to identify ways to fund the various programs necessary to fully meet them.

Former Prince George’s County Council member Jamel “Mel” Franklin has been charged in a felony theft scheme in which authorities say he embezzled at least $130,000 of his campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, including rent, loans and cosmetic procedures for himself and a close friend. The scheme included falsifying information on reports filed with the State Board of Elections, located in Anne Arundel County, where the charges were filed Thursday.

The Anne Arundel County Council passed a bill Monday night eliminating reductions in pensions paid to county employees who retire and later return to work for the county. Introduced by Pete Smith, a Democrat representing Severn, the bill will eliminate reductions to a county employee’s retirement benefits if the person comes back to a different job 90 or more days after retiring.