MarylandReporter.com (https://marylandreporter.com/)
Lawmakers hear pitches to fund $389 million Pimlico, Laurel track revamps, keeping Preakness in Baltimore, opening Laurel for more races and benefiting Park Heights neighborhood; bill to fund paid family leave before House committee; Speaker Jones pushes for $577 million for historically black colleges and universities to rectify funding imbalance; neighbors of odoriferous hemp farm take their complaints to Annapolis; bipartisan group seeks to put an end to coal power; state’s cannabis market generated $21.7 million in taxes, 4,000 jobs; and state retains coveted AAA bond rating.
Bipartisanship was on full display Tuesday as Maryland lawmakers and environmental advocates came together to support legislation that would phase out the burning of coal at the state’s six coal-fired power plants and provide money to take care of workers who would be affected by the transition.
For the Chinese New Year in January, Howard Community College language professor William Lowe was in Wuhan and Hubei province, the center of the outbreak of the coronavirus, with his wife Xiaoli and their daughter Weiya. They wound up quarantined there and then were able to be evacuated by the U.S. embassy back to the United States. They were quarantined again at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Tex. They got back to Maryland just after midnight last Friday, Feb. 21.
Here is a slightly edited version of the powerful journal professor Lowe kept of his family’s six-week ordeal. Fortunately, none of them got sick.
Stupid me for not reading the fine print when legislative leaders said they were not going to raise tax rates.
A recent study ranked Maryland No. 13 for the states with the highest African American political engagement. Former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening said: “Being number thirteen is good but it’s certainly not great. I think it illustrates the opportunity for us to expand participation significantly.”
Former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler weighed-in on Friday on the battle between Gov. Larry Hogan and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly over legislation that would increase mandatory minimum sentences for those who commit gun crimes — saying such punishment is appropriate for repeat offenders.
Calling violent crime in Baltimore a crisis, the governor re-designates his violent-crime package as emergency legislation and begs the General Assembly to immediately pass the bills so he can quickly sign them into law. “We don’t want to hear any more excuses. There cannot be any more delays. We need to stop playing politics. Pass these bills.”
Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher, D-Montgomery, said Maryland’s indecent exposure laws must be expanded to include touching oneself sexually in public while fully clothed
The American Heart Association said Tuesday that recommendations in a report newly released by Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot’s office aimed at curbing underage access to electronic smoking devices (ESDs) are good but do not go far enough because they do not call for an outright ban of flavored nicotine products.
Demographic changes and a rapidly rising senior population in Maryland are driving the demand for direct service workers, who make up a third of the health care work force. But they are in such short supply that the Maryland Regional Direct Services Collaborative (MRDSC) has declared the situation a crisis.
A day after federal prosecutors called for sending former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh to prison for nearly five years, state Sen. Jill Carter, D-Baltimore City, said she does not believe there is any “public utility” to locking up the disgraced politician. Pugh’s attorneys echoed that sentiment, asking for a sentence of one year and one day in a sentencing memorandum filed with the federal court on Friday, according to the Baltimore Sun.