Politics

Baltimore mayoral candidate Sheila Dixon ended a campaign event at a bar early on Monday night, after a shooting one block away left two men injured. The former mayor was addressing a small crowd at Maceo’s, a neighborhood bar near North Avenue, about her 2024 mayoral platform. Mondays are a busy night for the tavern, where neighborhood residents watch football and play cards during commercial breaks. The Democrat said the bar owner had invited her to speak.

Half a dozen free-range chickens were scratching on a narrow patch of grass at a farm in Potomac Monday afternoon, looking for insects, seeds and other things to eat. The chickens, with names like Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, seemed happily oblivious to the four cloth chicken dolls stuffed into a cage on the grass before them. But for the humans gathered at Rosie’s Farm Sanctuary, the visual made for a stark tableau.

Gov. Wes Moore announced a state initiative Monday to locate the ancestral communities and rebury the remains of 15 people of possible African descent currently held at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory in Calvert County. “In order for us to be able to move forward, we must both remember and value our past,” Moore, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Ken Ulman knows what it’s like to win elections and he knows what it’s like to lose — and now he’s in charge of helping Maryland Democrats secure victory up and down the ballot. Ulman was overwhelmingly elected chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party by party officials on Saturday, kicking off a new challenge for the former Howard County executive who now is a plugged-in consultant.

Government officials in Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City will consider advancing two separate proposals Monday night that would compel both jurisdictions to implement requirements that could boost the supply of reduced-priced housing in both areas. Though the city’s legislative package differs slightly from the county’s proposal, they share a similar goal: that housing developments exceeding a certain size or value, or already receiving large public subsidies, should allocate at least a portion of the units for people at income levels below the Baltimore-area median — a practice known as inclusionary housing.

A pair of bills before the Baltimore County Council could enshrine the Office of the Inspector General in county law and bolster its subpoena power over noncounty records, but the charter amendments proposed don’t include guarantees for its right to obtain government records.County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. is requesting to put the charter change to referendum in the 2024 election, and reducing to 30 days, from 90 days, the period the IG must wait between requesting nongovernment records and requesting a court force their surrender.

The Frederick County Board of Education on Monday “indefinitely” tabled the question of how much voting power its student member should have, instead focusing on a state bill being drafted. Six of the board’s seven members said they supported granting some type of voting rights to the student member of the board, who is elected by Frederick County Public Schools middle and high schoolers.

After federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss one count and part of another, Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins asked the court on Friday to drop all of the charges against him in a machine gun conspiracy case. Prosecutors asked on Nov. 9 for one count in the indictment to be dismissed, after Jenkins’ attorneys pointed out a discrepancy between the language in the indictment and the March 2022 letter Jenkins signed, on which the charge is based.

The Prince George’s County Democratic Central Committee selected Del. Nick Charles on Monday to fill a vacant seat in the Maryland Senate. The committee will forward Charles’ name to Gov. Wes Moore (D), who has up to 15 days to confirm the appointment. Central Committee Chair Antwan Brown said he will forward Charles’ name to the governor’s office Tuesday. Charles, 40, an Air Force veteran, has served in the House of Delegates for more than four years representing the 25th legislative district, which includes District Heights, Forestville and parts of Upper Marlboro.