25th Street Station

Harbor East, Harbor Point and most of Locust Point would be removed from a state enterprise zone that offers businesses tax breaks under new maps drawn up by the Baltimore Development Corp. The Baltimore City Council will review the plan this month to shrink the city's enterprise zone from 22,000 acres to 14,000 acres. The state enterprise zone program gives tax breaks to businesses for investing in property or hiring workers. "The enterprise zone has done its work in those areas," said Larisa Salamacha, the BDC's managing director of business development.

Bermuda offers genuine assets, not just a tax dodge The Sun `s editorial "Bermuda tax dodge" (May 15) contended that some U.S. insurance companies have devised a devious scheme for avoiding payment of their federal taxes by establishing a presence in Bermuda. The editorial, like the proposed legislation it supports, discriminates against Bermuda and is wholly misguided. It fails to take into account the real reason insurance companies use Bermuda as a base. Bermuda offers a wealth of industry experience and expertise (it is the third-largest insurance market after New York and London)

Belinda Conaway, a two-term city councilwoman, chair of the powerful budget committee and daughter of a prominent West Baltimore political family, does not fit most definitions of a political outsider. But after losing the Democratic primary to a political newcomer allied with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Conaway has launched a write-in campaign in which she paints herself as an enemy of - and threat to - the political establishment. "The mayor, governor and other powers-that-be don't want any independent voices on the city council," Conaway told supporters at a campaign kick-off event this month.

Luther Spruill bends over the gutter in front of his Remington home, scooping up litter with a broom and snow shovel as cars speed past on a steamy recent morning. In three decades on this well-traveled block, the 74-year-old retired machinist has watched the neighborhood fall in and out of blight. "I've seen them move in and I've seen them move out," says Spruill. "It boiled down that there weren't but three families left up and down this street, but now everybody's building it back up."