Compromise

State lawmakers have crafted deals that could send Towson University not only $300,000 to save its men's baseball program, but also $2 million to build a new women's softball field. The day after Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to give Towson money to keep the baseball program afloat drew criticism, lawmakers on Thursday reached a compromise that they said would help Maryland colleges address the financial and legal challenges that led Towson to cut its men's soccer and baseball programs.

A bill to give health regulators more oversight of facilities like the now-closed Monarch Medspa in Timonium is making a late surge in the General Assembly after weeks of discussions among state and industry officials. The House of Delegates unanimously passed the legislation Monday afternoon. It needs to clear the Senate, including an extra procedural step, within the next week. The legislative session draws to a close April 8. If passed, the law would close a regulatory gap that does not allow state health officials to proactively inspect and oversee plastic surgery centers.

I find it puzzling that the House of Delegates and the Senate have failed to come up with a compromise on the pit bull legislation currently stalled in Annapolis ("Pit bull compromise in danger as houses differ," March 13). A simple, breed-neutral approach is necessary to prevent continued discrimination against a single breed based on the irresponsibility of their owners. If the General Assembly fails to pass this legislation, each member should be required to volunteer 90 days per year at a local animal shelter so that they can see and experience the results of their inability to enact such common sense legislation.

A failure to resolvea scheduling conflict with the Orioles has jeopardized the Ravens' chances of hosting the NFL's 2013regular-season opener, an honor bestowed on the Super Bowl champions for the last decade. The NFL was expected to announce the Ravens' opponent for the Sept. 5 game at this week's league meetings. Instead, league and team officials said Monday that the game's location is in doubt because the Orioles are scheduled to host the Chicago White Sox at 7:05 the same night.

A deal environmentalists thought had been worked out to stop mostly out-of-state paper mills from cashing in on Maryland's renewable energy law by burning so-called "black liquor" has come unglued. The state's only paper plant in Allegany County has backtracked on a pledge not to oppose the move in return for being allowed to keep collecting from the state's utility customers for another five years. The New Page mill in Luke and several others out of state have reaped millions of dollarsfrom Maryland ratepayers over the past eight years by taking advantage of an obscure provision in the "renewable portfolio standard" law, passed in 2004 to reduce the state's reliance on climate-warming fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. Under the law, Maryland's electricity suppliers must increase the amount of power generated  from renewable sources to 20 percent by 2022.

In case anyone has missed the dueling budget proposals out this week from Rep. Paul Ryan on the Republican side and Sen. Patty Murray for the Democrats, don't fret. You could easily have slept through the last four months and missed nothing. They are pretty much where the two sides have been for even longer than that. And that pretty well sums up where Washington stands on the issue of federal spending, taxes and the deficit. Both parties have won approval to some degree from voters for taking these stands, and so the incentive for actually coming up with a compromise is clearly too small for either to go out on a limb — at least for the moment.

A compromise in the General Assembly over legislation to undo a court ruling that declared pit bulls inherently dangerous has unraveled, turning what had appeared to be a settled issue into a dogfight between two veteran legislators. The breakdown in the understanding between Sen. Brian E. Frosh and Del Luiz R.S. Simmons — both Montgomery County Democrats — raises the chances that owners of the breed will continue to face heightened liability and the possibility of eviction. "I am extremely disappointed in Brian Frosh," said Simmons.

The gas tax plan unveiled this week by Gov. Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly's top leaders is a complicated proposal that wouldn't represent our first choice in how best to pay for Maryland's transportation needs. But, on balance, it's a better-than-expected solution to a problem that has been nagging the State House for two decades. Better than expected because efforts to increase the gas tax have been practically dead on arrival in Annapolis for years, thanks to high prices at the pump and public hostility toward anything that might raise them further - even as alternatives like vehicle registration and licensing fees hit Marylanders harder than a few pennies on the gallon would.

Advocates for animals packed an Annapolis hearing room Wednesday in support of a recently negotiated compromise bill that would undo a court ruling last year that declared pit bulls inherently dangerous and made its easier to sue their owners and their owners' landlords. Representatives of the Humane Society of the United State, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other groups told the House Judiciary Committee that the legislation, which would tighten liability standards for dog owners but not distinguish among breeds, strikes a fair balance between the interests of pet owners and dog bite victims.

The road to meaningful U.S. immigration reform will no doubt prove rocky and difficult, but at least Washington has taken its first big step on the most critical part of the route - down the so-called "path to citizenship" that now has bipartisan support in the Senate. That's quite a change since 2010 when so many in the GOP invoked the term "amnesty" as a dirty word. That's not to suggest that the findings of an eight-person work group have provided the definitive answer for the nation's dysfunctional immigration policy, but getting four prominent Republican senators to sign off on a path to citizenship is a notable accomplishment.