NEWS
By Laura Smitherman | March 14, 2009
Maryland's Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez has been tapped to run the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, President Barack Obama announced yesterday. Perez's move, which had been widely rumored for weeks, means he will rejoin an agency where he worked as a federal prosecutor in the 1990s. As head of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, Perez helped to craft the state's response to the foreclosure crisis. His political career in Maryland also included a stint as the first Latino elected to the Montgomery County Council and a campaign for state attorney general that he abandoned after being disqualified for lacking the required legal experience in the state.
NEWS
By Gus G. Sentementes | January 9, 2009
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and housing advocates warned Maryland homeowners yesterday to avoid shady businesses that charge high upfront fees to avoid foreclosure. Since the mortgage and housing crisis began widening last year, Maryland officials have tried to stem the tide of people losing their homes to foreclosure. Since September, officials said, they've seen a troubling trend of struggling homeowners turning to for-profit companies that offer so-called "loss mitigation consulting" or "foreclosure prevention."
NEWS
By Gus G. Sentementes | December 1, 2008
The paper unemployment check will soon be a thing of the past for Maryland residents who file for the insurance benefit starting today. In its place comes plastic. The state's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will issue prepaid debit cards to people seeking unemployment insurance benefits and forgo the use of paper checks for new applicants. Department officials said the switch to plastic will save taxpayers about $400,000 annually in postage, paper, staff time and other processing costs.
NEWS
By JACQUES KELLY | November 14, 2008
A memorial service for Nancy Erwin, a former Maryland Department of Labor official who had worked in consumer affairs in the Jimmy Carter administration, will be held at 11 a.m. Nov. 22 at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St., where she was a member. The Tuscany-Canterbury resident died Nov. 2 of complications from cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was 62. Born Nancy Smick in Cleveland, she earned an English literature degree at Purdue University and a master's degree in consumer economics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
NEWS
By FREDERICK N. RASMUSSEN | October 14, 2008
John R. Bashaar Sr., a hearing examiner for the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation who had worked for nearly three decades as a lawyer in Baltimore County, died Oct. 5 of cardiac arrhythmia at his Towson home. He was 65. Mr. Bashaar was born at Fort Benning, Ga., and was raised in Zelienople, Pa. He was a 1961 graduate of Freedom High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Columbia University in 1965 and a master's in business in 1967, also from Columbia.
NEWS
By Jamie Smith Hopkins | November 21, 2007
Unemployment in Maryland rose and job growth slowed last month as national economic troubles touched off by the slumping housing market continue to take a toll. The state's jobless rate was 4 percent in October, up from 3.9 percent a month earlier and 3.7 percent the month before that, the federal government said yesterday. But it remains better than the U.S. unemployment rate, which was 4.7 percent last month. Employers added 28,600 jobs in the past 12 months, according to preliminary estimates - a slowdown since the summer, when year-over-year gains topped 30,000.
NEWS
By Laura Smitherman | October 25, 2007
Maryland's secretary of labor, licensing and regulation outlined yesterday to state legislative committees in Annapolis proposals aimed at ending unscrupulous lending practices and giving troubled homeowners more time to get their finances in order before foreclosure actions are filed. Rising loan defaults on subprime mortgages, those extended to borrowers with weak credit histories, have shaken housing and credit markets nationwide. In Maryland, there were 7,000 foreclosures from July to September, compared with about 950 in the corresponding period last year, according to data analyzed by the Department of Housing and Community Development.
NEWS
By Andrew A. Green | June 14, 2007
Gov. Martin O'Malley announced an initiative yesterday aimed at preventing home foreclosures through credit counseling, enforcement of lending practice standards and refinancing assistance to stop what he said is a rising threat to the state's middle class. The state has received commitments for $100 million in private capital to allow about 500 households to refinance from adjustable rate loans into fixed mortgages. It will use $10 million in surplus funds from the state's mortgage insurance program to leverage another $200 million in private sector capital and will spend $1 million for foreclosure prevention activities, such as counseling for homebuyers.
NEWS
By Andrew A. Green | January 23, 2007
Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to announce today that Thomas E. Perez, the one-time attorney general candidate, will be his nominee as secretary of labor, licensing and regulation. Sources close to the selection process also confirmed that the administration will announce that James E. Lyons Sr., a California educator, will be the state secretary of higher education. Lyons is president of California State University, Dominguez Hills. Perez, a former Montgomery County Council president and attorney in the federal departments of Justice and Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration, said he was drawn to the post in the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation because of the secretary's ability to help working families.
NEWS
By Jamie Smith Hopkins | December 22, 2006
A warning to mortgage loan officers with clever plans for avoiding Maryland's new license law: The state says it's on to you. The licensing requirement for loan originators employed by mortgage brokers doesn't go into effect until Jan. 1, but the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation is already gearing up to investigate companies that it hears are trying to skirt the new rules. "We have a list of places we're going to visit shortly thereafter in January," said Joseph E. Rooney, the department's deputy commissioner for financial regulation.