Local government

The Baltimore County Council is taking up two bills requested by County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. One bill would codify the Office of the Inspector General in the county’s charter, and the other would enable Madigan to subpoena noncounty records at any point during her office’s investigations of government fraud, waste and abuse.

The Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division released the names of three Baltimore County Police officers who responded to a reported domestic disturbance Friday night and exchanged gunfire with a Parkville man who police say fatally shot his wife inside their home.

Eligible organizations may seek up to $40,000 in grant funding to protect themselves against hate crimes.

What exactly the memo might reveal remains unclear, but it could prove consequential to an impending decision from the Maryland Public Service Commission on the utility’s plans to finance investments in the Baltimore conduit system.

Shannon Sneed gave us an early peek into 2024 campaign finances this month, when the Democrat filed new records of donations in order to qualify for public financing.

Repping religious origins, eccentric architecture and the legacies of Vietnam War dissenters and Civil Rights pioneers, these spires serve as soaring landmarks in both the geography and history of Baltimore.

Schools in Howard and Montgomery counties are not doing enough to ensure that Palestinian and Muslim students are not intimidated or silenced as tensions heighten during the Middle East crisis, parents of those students say.

Mr. Sid, as he’s affectionately known throughout the building, has greeted six mayors, more than 35 City Council members, and a steady parade of countless other Baltimoreans in nearly two decades of public service.

The Anne Arundel County Library’s board recently rejected a request by employees to form a union, maintaining that it didn’t have authority to accept such a petition until enabling legislation is passed at the state level. AFSCME disagrees.

“We’d just talked about guns proliferating our neighborhoods and how the patrons knew young children, minors, that needed families or mentors to step in and guide them,” Dixon said.

The bills granting new powers were drafted in consultation with county Inspector General Kelly Madigan, lifted directly from the report put forward in February 2023 by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Ethics and Accountability.

The city’s inclusionary housing bill package advanced to third reader Monday, setting it up for a final vote as early as next month.

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.

Mayor Brandon Scott kicked off his campaign, surrounded by about 100 supporters at the Cahill Recreation Center.

The revitalization of rec centers and public spaces for city youth are a favorite issue of Scott’s and he's chosen to launch his reelection campaign at Leakin Park's Cahill Recreation Center.

Here’s what The Banner found when we dug through the most recent income disclosure reports.

City Councilman Robert Stokes owns 49% of a development company with ties to Ernst Valery, a prominent local developer.

In the final minutes of the Baltimore Regional Water Governance Task Force’s penultimate meeting Thursday night — expected to end with a vote on its recommended reforms to Baltimore’s water and sewer system — task force members decided too many equity questions remain unanswered.

Their alliance was not exactly a secret. Dixon had appeared at a major Costello fundraiser over the summer, while the councilman appeared at a public safety town hall in Little Italy, outside of his district, that Dixon held this month.

“I’m always concerned when we have budget deficits like that,” said Mayor Brandon Scott. “But I’ve been around for ones a lot larger than one hundred million. So I know what we can do.”