Snow Halts Driver For Hours; Disrupts Power. Hundreds of cars sat idle for several hours Wednesday night as the second round of a winter storm delivered fast-falling snow in Maryland. Many of the drivers who left Wednesday arrived home on Thursday. It took as many as nine hours for many people to get home. More than 110,000 BGE customers were still without power Thursday morning, and BGE spokesman Rob Gould said more outages are possible Thursday. About 43,000 people in Anne Arundel County were still without power at 6 a.m., while 19,000 Baltimore County customers didn’t have power.
School Superintendents Make Pitch For Construction Money. Many Maryland schools superintendents spent Wednesday in Annapolis as part of their annual Hope-A-Thon, where they make their pitch for more school construction money.Whether it was in the board room or in the hallway, the plea for money was still the same.”Our priorities on our state request are three 100-seat additions and renovations for three of our elementary schools to help address growth in the Route 1 corridor in our county,” said Ray Brown of Howard County schools.
Slots Likely To Continue To Subsidize Horse Racing. Annapolis legislators on Wednesday got a briefing on the status of gaming in Maryland as they consider table games, and it looks as if slots proceeds may continue to be used to subsidize horse racing for years to come.Last month, the O’Malley administration approved a short-term fix for the industry’s problems. The Maryland Economic Development Corp., known as MEDCo, loaned track owners up to $4 million toward operating costs.
Baltimore Agencies To Release More Data To Public. Baltimore agencies will soon be making more data available to the public. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake signed an executive order Wednesday creating an initiative called OpenBaltimore.The order directs all city agencies to post online all data sets that are under their control. Rawlings-Blake said the amount of data shared with the public will be unprecedented. She said she hopes the initiative will lead innovative people to collaborate with government and find ways to save money and improve city services.
