Maryland Committee

David M. Funk Twelfth Floor 35 South Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21201-3111 May 20, 2003 Re: Ehrlich Reception - Maryland Insurance CEOs On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, the Chief Executive Officers of Maryland Insurance Companies are sponsoring a reception for Governor Ehrlich. The reception will be held at the offices of Monumental Life Insurance Company in Baltimore from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The new insurance commissioner will attend as an honored guest. As the chief executive officer of an insurance company domiciled in Maryland, you may wish to consider sponsoring the event.

State and local officials will join law enforcement agencies today at the state police barracks in Westminster to renew a 10-year commitment to get motorists to buckle up.State and local authorities have declared May and June as Maryland Chief's Challenge months, exhorting motorists to comply with seat belt laws because statistics show that correct use of the belts reduces the risk of fatal or serious injuries."

Molly B. Jacobs, who had been active in cultural, educational and charitable organizations for more than four decades, died of heart failure Monday at the Brightwood nursing home in Lutherville. The longtime Stevenson resident was 77. She was born Molly Carter Bruce in Baltimore, the daughter of Albert Cabell Bruce, an industrialist, and Helen Eccleston Whitridge Bruce. She was a great-granddaughter of Oden Bowie, who was Maryland's governor from 1869 to 1872 and a founder of the Preakness Stakes.

1965: reapportionment tussle On Dec. 2, 1965, a citizens' committee contended that the Maryland legislature's reapportionment bill, which would retain one senator for each county, "cannot pass constitutional muster" under Supreme Court rulings. "It contains numerous and substantial departures from the controlling requirement that representation ... must be apportioned on a substantially equal population basis," the Maryland Committee for Fair Representation said. The committee urged the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court to declare invalid the reapportionment bill and uphold a rival plan that would create a 43-member Senate based more closely on population and combining smaller counties into senatorial districts.

Md. ranked in top 10 for child careMaryland is one of the nation's top 10 states for child care, according to Working Mother magazine. This marks the fourth straight year Maryland has made Working Mother's 10 best.In its June issue, Working Mother listed, but did not rank, the top states. In addition to Maryland, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin made the cut.The magazine rated the states on quality, safety, commitment and availability of care.

Despite the big dollhouse in the lobby and antique toys in a showcase, you are not likely to find children in Sandra Skolnik's office.You'll find computer printouts by the dozens, stacks of telephone messages from powerful people, brochures and proposals and loose-leaf binders full of data -- all of it pertaining to children. The little ones themselves, however, are hardly ever around."But I grab them whenever they walk by," laughs Mrs. Skolnik, who for 16 years has been executive director of the Maryland Committee for Children.

BETWEEN 1990 and 1995, for-profit HMOs grew 15-fold in market value and overall membership. This rapid growth is particularly startling considering that for-profit corporations are obligated to maximize the return on the shareholder's investment, creating an inherent conflict between quality of care and profit.This concerns a group of us, first-year medical students at Johns Hopkins. We fear that medicine is headed in the wrong direction: that by the time we take the Hippocratic oath, physicians will no longer be allowed to put the interests and that of their patients above financial considerations.

In a fuchsia shirt and color-coordinated tie, Cockeysville metal- smith David Paul Bacharach cheerfully holds court in his prime corner booth at the American Craft Fair in the Convention Center.He greets a friend with a peck on the cheek while meticulously arranging earrings in a glass case and describing to another visitor the melting pot of influences found in his work. Such finesse comes readily to Mr. Bacharach, one of the godfathers of the national crafts craze.He was there in 1965, when New England artisans converged in a Vermont ski resort to sell their wares.

Therese Weil Lansburgh, a social worker who was a pioneer in children's day care, died Saturday of congestive heart failure at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was 81 and a resident of University Parkway. Mrs. Lansburgh was president of the Maryland Committee for Children for two decades through the mid-1980s, and a day care advocate during the 1960s. The traditional extended family, with grandparents at home, was a thing of the past, she pointed out, and young children needed a "warm and acceptable" place to stay while their parents worked.

Last year the Rouse Company inaugurated a program allowing working parents employed by the firm to use their own sick leave when a child was home ill. No longer do Rouse employees have to pretend they're sick to stay home with an ailing child.Although a relatively small step -- far less elaborate than creating an on-site day-care center -- the move was applauded by employees with small children, recalls William Boden, head of Human Resources at Columbia-based Rouse."People were happy they didn't have to fib about the situation.