Make Maryland

Blackened eyes and bruises are nasty evidence of things gone wrong. But as more victims are unwilling to silently tolerate domestic violence, providers are overwhelmed with pleas for help. The House of Ruth, for example, served 400 women and children in its initial year in 1977. Last year, 8,000 individuals benefited from an array of programs that range from a shelter for 24 women and children to counseling and legal assistance for battered women as well as their mates.The House of Ruth is just one of more than 100 health and human service agencies supported by the United Way of Central Maryland, which kicks off its 1991 fund-raising campaign today.

Surrounded by religious leaders, civil rights activists and others who have fought for years to stop executions in Maryland, Gov. Martin O'Malley signed legislation Thursday repealing the state's death penalty. Unless the law is overturned in a referendum, Maryland will become the 18th state to end capital punishment, leaving life without parole as the maximum penalty for any crime. "We have a responsibility to stop doing those things that are wasteful and ineffective," O'Malley, a Democrat, said before putting pen to paper.

There were 34 of the best high-school football players in the state chosen for the Maryland Big 33 team.Most of them were playing together for the first time. But in a week's time, teamwork would prevail and Maryland would defeat Pennsylvania, 17-9, for the first time since 1987.Each of them carried away more than just the victory; he carried away a special friendship."They learned to appreciate people from different areas of the state and different walks of life to a certain extent," Doug DuVall, Maryland Big 33 coach and Wilde Lake High School football coach, said.

After protesting at a nearby coal plant in 2008 and becoming discouraged with his own dependence on unsustainable energy, Charles County Commissioner Ken Robinson decided to build a wind generator on his coastal property and get off the grid. He became the first individual in Southern Maryland to build one on his land. After Mr. Robinson made the rounds to neighbors, the community embraced his idea. "Only slightly taller than a flag pole," the 33-foot turbine produces 30 percent to 40 percent of Mr. Robinson's power.

One of the most exciting developments in years for the nonprofit sector is just now beginning to unfold in Maryland. A group of 40 volunteers, known as the Nonprofit Policy Agenda Project and coordinated by the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations (Maryland Nonprofits), has just published the Partnership Platform 1995-1998. The report represents eighteen months of intense effort. Its release was timed to coincide with the current election campaigns.Maryland Nonprofits remains on the cutting edge of policy development for its members, which is critically important in today's fast-paced world.

ANNAPOLIS -- An attempt to make English the official language of Maryland, a perennial loser in the General Assembly, is getting serious consideration for the first time.An array of ethnic and human rights groups yesterday attacked the proposal, which would make Maryland the 20th state to adopt some form of "official English" legislation.Representatives of Latino, Asian, Native American and even deaf Marylanders who use American Sign Language led a news conference to brand House Bill 982 and its companion, Senate Bill 467, as discriminatory.

ANNAPOLIS -- Gov. William Donald Schaefer said yesterday that he may lend his considerable clout to an effort to make Maryland the third state in the nation to ban military-style assault weapons."

The financial crisis that's affecting every sector of the economy, from home values to manufacturing to consumer spending, has taken its toll on the arts, too. Theaters, symphony orchestras, opera companies and museums have been hit by a triple whammy of falling box-office revenues, plummeting donations and shrinking endowments as the values of their stock portfolios decline. The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith reported recently that some organizations are considering cutting expenses or trimming staff to weather the storm.

TECHNOLOGY companies will play a major role in Maryland's future. That's why state officials have hired the top economic development official at the U.S. Department of Commerce to attract more technology companies.Phillip A. Singerman left his post as an assistant secretary at Commerce to begin what amounts to a start-up venture for Maryland. He will be the first president of the Maryland Science, Engineering and Technology Development Corp., known as TEDCO.The quasi-public group's purpose is to make Maryland a mecca for high-tech firms.

Inside the state, it's no secret that the Maryland of today is a much-improved version of the Maryland of a decade ago. But it's taken awhile for the economic makeover that created this "New Maryland" to finally get some recognition from outside the state. Just last week, for instance, Maryland earned high marks in the 14th annual "Development Report Card" created by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development, which tries to foster economic development by working with state and local government agencies, private companies and other organizations in various roles.

Steven Leibowitz is trying to run as fast as he can, but the trail is muddy and tree roots are hiding under the soil, slowing him down. Now there's a stream blocking his path, with no way to cross, save a few widely spaced rocks. But Leibowitz can't give up. He has to keep running. It might sound like a scene from "The Hunger Games" or "The Blair Witch Project. " But for a runner in the XTERRA Trail Run Series, it's just the path to the finish line. XTERRA, a national multisport company, puts on races that are much more than your average 5K on the street.

The spending cuts associated with the impending fiscal cliff - known more technically as sequestration - hold potentially ominous consequences for the U.S. economy, and for Maryland in particular, if the White House and Congress cannot strike a deal soon to avert them. The "sequestration" clause of the Budget Control Act of 2011 triggers an approximately 8 percent across-the-board cut in federal discretionary spending. Although all states in the U.S. are likely to be harmed, perhaps no state will be more adversely affected than Maryland, with its high concentration of bioscience and federal employees.

What makes the University of Maryland's move to the Big Ten look like such a winner is the school's participation in the Big Ten Network, one of collegiate sports' most successful and savvy TV operations, with its audience of 80 million homes. At least, that's what economists and TV executives were saying Monday as the school announced its 2014 departure from the Atlantic Coast Conference, which it had helped charter in 1953. "TV didn't matter in 1953," said media economist Douglas Gomery, a professor emeritus of journalism at College Park.

I support marriage equality. Assuring that loving same-sex couples have the same rights my wife and I have to live our lives together is, quite simply, a matter of justice and core civil rights. But I have another reason for supporting Question 6 - less idealistic, perhaps, but just as real: Marriage equality is good for business. It certainly would be good for my organization, Johns Hopkins. Our most important assets, by far, are our people. We compete tooth-and-nail with universities around the world to attract the best scholars, teachers and researchers, and our faculty are the wellspring for all we do. Once they are here, we work very hard to support and nurture them so that they can do their best work - and so that other universities don't swoop in to snap up, say, a potential Nobel laureate.

State legislators often prioritize important legislation the way kindergartners rank vegetables among the food groups. They focus on media-friendly social legislation instead of structural reform requiring time and effort to understand and craft. Why, for example, did they pass gay marriage and a law regulating how long a child must face rearward in a car seat but not figure out the budget until the absolute last minute? And why didn't they spend time this year on how to pay the pensions of the 373,000 people in the state retirement system?

Maryland's General Assembly adopted today a ban on arsenic additives in chicken feed, which if signed into law would make the state the first in the nation to take such a step to keep the toxic chemical out of food and the environment. By a vote of 101-31, the House of Delegates gave final approval to the bill , ending a lengthy debate over the issue that had pitted environmentalists and food safety advocates against the state's major poultry industry.  Similar measures had failed to pass since 2009.

The Maryland Technology Showcase, the state's annual exhibit of high-tech goods and services, is set to kick off this week with a new venue, a new managerial team and big expectations.This year the showcase -- the third -- is moving to the Baltimore Convention Center, where it will stretch out over 240,000 square feet in three rooms. In addition, the state is using a private company, American Show Management Inc. of Portland, Ore., to manage and plan the show, which will have more than 300 exhibits, including displays devoted to education, career opportunities and online government services.

Due to a problem in typesetting, there was a garbled line in the Friday editorial "Brady for Maryland's Economy." The line should have read that a top priority for James T. Brady's economic-development team is persuading Dr. Robert C. Gallo "to locate a world-class virology laboratory at the University of Maryland instead of Virginia."The Sun regrets the error.Gov. Parris N. Glendening picked wisely in selecting Baltimore business executive James T. Brady as his top economic development aide yesterday.

Maryland's constitution mandates that every student have access to an adequate (indeed, "thorough" is how it's described) education. Court cases have backed this up, and the state legislature's response was the Bridge to Excellence in Education Act, more commonly known as the "Thornton" funding that ensured even the state's poorest jurisdictions had enough money for K-12 schools. Crucial to this transfer of tax dollars from the state to local school systems was the assurance that Baltimore and the 23 counties would maintain their share of that financial responsibility, too. Otherwise, the $1.3 billion in Thornton assistance would not provide a boost to schools but merely give local governments an opportunity to slack.

Shortly before Gov.Martin O'Malleytook the rostrum in the House of Delegates for his State of the State address today, his office issued a preview of the speech in the form of a word cloud - a visual representation of the most-used words in the speech in which those that are most emphasized appear the largest. The biggest word, by far, was "jobs," larger even than "Maryland. " Conspicuously absent was the term that would probably show up biggest if Maryland legislators or many of the state's residents were to come up with word clouds for their own personal State of the Governor addresses: "taxes.