Action Plan

State officials have missed their first major deadline for complying with a three-year-old law calling for Maryland to curb its emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Under the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, the Department of the Environment was required to give the governor and lawmakers a draft plan by the end of 2011 for scaling back statewide releases of carbon dioxide, methane and other climate-affecting gases 25 percent by the end of the decade. But Environment Secretary Robert M. Summers wrote Gov. Martin O'Malley and legislative leaders late last month that the draft plan would be "slightly delayed" until mid-February.

IN RECENT WEEKS, a new crop of children have entered Maryland's first-grade classrooms to begin the process of learning to read -- we hope.I would like to direct the attention of every parent and teacher to an excellent new publication titled "Every Child Reading: An Action Plan."This document was published recently by the Learning First Alliance, a coalition of 12 major national education organizations, including the National Education Association and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

After declaring himself opposed to the death penalty last month, Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett said last night he supports affirmative action. One of the most conservative members of the House, the 6th District Republican voted in 1998 to prohibit affirmative action in higher education admissions. Last night, Bartlett told a crowd at a candidates forum in Westminster sponsored by the Carroll County NAACP: "I'm very supportive of affirmative action, but not quotas. "If there are two candidates for a job and one is a minority and one is not, I would give the job to the minority candidate," assuming both are equally qualified.

The Ecker administration plans to conduct public hearings soon to develop a consensus on housing issues, an administration spokesman saidyesterday.The ultimate goal, said county housing and community development coordinator Rochell Brown Jr., is to develop a "housing action plan" that will guide the council through its next comprehensiverezoning of the county.Such a plan would deal not only with the housing needs of low-income people, Brown said, but also with the needs of new families, the elderly, single parents and employees new to the county.

WASHINGTON -- In the first major meeting of black leaders since the Million Man March, the National African-American Leadership Summit -- chaired by the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and spotlighting Louis Farrakhan -- convenes today to develop a strategic action plan."

With their minds on national incidents of schools breached by armed individuals, the members of the Carroll County school board have zeroed in on school security - and an action plan designed to increase it. Larry Faries, coordinator of school security, laid out the facts for board members during a work session on the issue. While schools in Baltimore City and Prince George's and Montgomery counties can rely on a number of staff members who are focused on security - more than 100 in Baltimore's school police department, and about 200 each for Prince George's and Montgomery - Carroll schools' staff and students have one person, Faries, assigned to protect them, he said.

Maryland will need to spend billions of dollars on work force training, education and transportation projects to prepare for an influx of more than 15,000 defense-related workers and their families, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown said yesterday. "There's considerable work to be done in Maryland," said Brown, who unveiled the final report of a committee formed by Gov. Martin O'Malley to ready the state for the thousands who will relocate here with their families as part of the Defense Department's extensive restructuring of its domestic military bases.

MOUNT VERNON SQUARE is a European-flavored plaza surrounded by many of Baltimore's leading cultural and historical institutions. Those institutions recently pitched in $40,000 to hire consultants to help devise ways to make that cultural district more appealing."

The Anne Arundel County teachers union called off its plans yesterday for a district-wide job action, saying it has reached a tentative agreement with the school board on a new contract after an initial disagreement over health care benefits. "There was some give and take on both sides," said union President Sheila M. Finlayson. "We worked hard to come up with an agreement for everybody." Two weeks ago, several hundred teachers voted to protest a school board proposal that would have raised their health care premiums.

The county liquor board yesterday declined to take action against the sponsors of a play in which a brief nude scene was believed to violate the county's liquor law."Upon conferring with the county attorneys, the board has been advised by them that we have a weak case in regards to the regulation that pertains to the play, 'Bent' . . . ," the board said in a prepared statement."Bent," which opened to a small crowd Thursday, chronicles a homosexual's self-discovery during the Nazi regime. The two-hour drama contains a 30-second scene in which a male actor walks on stage nude.