Politics

Crisis intervention teams would pair Montgomery County law enforcement officers with medical professionals to respond to mental health crises in hopes of limiting negative interactions between police and civilians in crisis if a new bill introduced in the Montgomery County Council on Tuesday is approved. “This legislation would improve our county’s response to individuals in crisis using a model that is effective at de-escalating violent situations, diverting individuals from the criminal justice system and increasing access to needed follow up services,” said councilmember Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7), who is sponsoring the legislation.

With the Maryland Department of the Environment set to release a final recommendation in a matter of days on what the state needs to do to meet its ambitious climate goals, a coalition of environmental organizations, advocacy groups and community leaders has written to Gov. Wes Moore (D), urging his administration to adopt the most aggressive strategy possible.

Housing Officials from across the state of Maryland meeting at the Winter MACO conference in Ocean City highlighting the state’s challenges and solutions. Speaking at a panel, Housing and Community Development Secretary Jake Day says across the state Maryland is at least 92,000 houses short. That scarcity he says hurts the marginalized and low-income communities the most, calling on the state to meet the crisis level with investments.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Wednesday he would consider selling the financially beleaguered Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor hotel, a move that past mayors have ruled out in light of the likely financial loss the city would suffer. “We are open to anything,” Scott said during a City Hall news conference. “As we move forward with reimagining downtown and looking at how things operate, I’m quite open to someone coming in to operate the hotel and not having the city operate it.”

Quantaz Smith, a lifelong resident of Southwest Baltimore, is 22 now and well beyond the age of playing on playgrounds. But that hasn’t stopped his efforts to help bring a brand new and much-needed park to his neighborhood in Gwynns Falls. The work paid off. Smith was one of at least two dozen people present Wednesday as Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume announced nearly $1.3 million in congressional funding for the Gwynns Falls Mighty Park project and the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative.

The House Judiciary Committee held its third briefing on juvenile justice reform Tuesday, this time with representatives from a national policy organization, a local judge and six nonprofit organizations that work with troubled youth. The committee organized briefings in the fall to assess juvenile reforms as some lawmakers and community leaders said crime has increased, especially among youth.

For Ben Zaitchik, the moment had arrived. He’d been working at Johns Hopkins University for almost two years on a groundbreaking effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to define what it would take to make Baltimore climate-adaptive, resilient and just. Now, he paced nervously in a spacious corridor at Morgan State University’s Center for Built Environment and Infrastructure Studies, not far from Johns Hopkins’ main campus, making sure that everything was in order for the focus group meeting he had been planning for weeks. The topic: the urban heat island effect, his research specialty.

In the wee hours, after sending out amendments that would drastically limit the powers of Baltimore County’s inspector general, the chair of the County Council, Julian E. Jones Jr., summoned his fellow politicians to a private meeting about the changes. “Please see the attached documents,” Jones wrote in his message, sent after midnight on Sunday (December 3).