Montgomery County

In between his swearing-in and attending receptions, S. Saqib Ali was changing diapers and preparing baby bottles. For his first legislative session, the Democratic delegate from Montgomery County has moved his wife and 8-month- old daughter to Annapolis, and the 31-year-old software engineer said he thinks that being part of a young family can help him connect with many of his constituents. S. Saqib Ali But Ali's distinction as the first Muslim to serve in the General Assembly has garnered the most attention, somewhat to his chagrin.

LANGLEY PARK -- Tara Harden made it halfway across University Boulevard on a recent afternoon, stepped off the median into the crosswalk and immediately jumped back when several cars barreled by her. When the cars passed, Harden hesitantly made her way to the other side of the street, looking slightly defeated. Harden, in her 50s, said she rarely sees drivers yield to pedestrians when she crosses the particularly dangerous stretch of University near New Hampshire Avenue in Montgomery County, where the crosswalk is not at an intersection.

Baltimore's property values are growing faster than anywhere else in Maryland, while the rate of increase in wealthy Montgomery County trails the state, according to 728,185 reassessment notices to be mailed today by state officials. The topsy-turvy results showed the smallest percentage increases in the state's most prosperous places -- such as Montgomery and Howard counties -- while areas that often lag economically saw much greater gains, despite a sluggish real estate market. "Anyone who's been paying attention to the city of Baltimore has watched it become a much more desirable place to live," said Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon, referring to recent news of a slight increase in the city's population after decades of population declines.

Records turned over to a federal grand jury investigating municipal tax-sale auctions show that two of Maryland's largest tax-sale investors didn't bid against each other for properties during the past four years in Montgomery County. Bidding lists were among documents demanded in the subpoena, which also sought any records from 2002 to 2007 that would show whether bidders communicated with one another about what properties they would bid on and prices they would pay, or about any inducement not to bid on certain properties or not bid at all. The subpoena is part of an investigation being coordinated by the Justice Department's antitrust division in Washington.

Ten years after a failed incorporation attempt, leaders in Edgewood are reviving efforts to make a town out of the area that is home to 23,000. About 40 people gathered to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of incorporation at an Edgewood Community Council meeting last week. For a lesson from the past, they watched an hourlong video of a 1997 Harford County Council meeting during which community activists proposed incorporating Edgewood and council members overwhelmingly rejected their proposal.

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has edged past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in campaign donations from Maryland, but the Republican presidential candidates lag far behind Democrats in contributions coming from the state. According to the latest campaign finance reports, nearly one of every two Maryland dollars given to a presidential campaign between July 1 and Sept. 30 went to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who widened her local money advantage over her nearest rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

Negotiators from the House of Delegates and state Senate have deadlocked over what to cut from Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget proposal, setting up a last-minute showdown over funding for stem cell research, the University System of Maryland and the Intercounty Connector. The key to the impasse is O'Malley's plan to delay a $53 million payment for the ICC, a long-awaited road connecting Interstates 270 and 95 through Montgomery County. The governor has said the payment, which is required by law, is not needed this year, and he asked the legislature to authorize a delay so the money could be used for other needs.

Maryland has become the second-richest state in the country, Gov. Martin O'Malley said in a speech a few weeks ago. But he never said why. Why is our unemployment rate only 3.8 percent? How, in only two years, did income for a typical household shoot up 16 percent to $60,512? Why did we blow the doors off Connecticut, the former No. 2? And why, while we're thinking about it, haven't housing prices collapsed? Economist James Galbraith, son of the late John Kenneth Galbraith, has answers.

You're a relatively small landscaping company, a computer repair outfit or the local muffler shop. You may think you have little leverage in Annapolis, where the fat cats frolic. You are so wrong! You rocked. You and a legion of tax resisters - from Montgomery County and elsewhere - tailored and reshaped Gov. Martin O'Malley's tax reform proposal. Instead of taking even modest steps toward broadening the base of the sales tax, legislators left it alone almost entirely. There had been hope that modernizing the system - extending the sales tax to cover services and making the income tax more progressive - might be a byproduct of the effort to erase a $1.7-billion budget deficit.

Landlords in Howard and Montgomery counties cannot turn away low-income renters who pay for their housing with federal vouchers, Maryland's highest court ruled yesterday. The unanimous ruling upholds fair-housing laws in those counties and, housing advocates say, provides momentum for a drive to pass a statewide law requiring landlords to accept rental vouchers. Such a law, advocates say, would make it easier for poor people to live in affluent communities with better jobs and better schools.

As state and local officials in Maryland began deploying enforcement cameras in work zones and near schools last week to deter speeding, results from Montgomery County came in showing just how effective the strategy can be. In a report to the Montgomery Council on that county's pioneering automated speed enforcement program, the Office of Legislative Oversight found that speeding had been cut in half and collisions had fallen 28 percent over one year...

State fiscal analysts revealed Thursday that a corporate income tax change sought by an influential labor union as an alternative to budget cuts could have raised as much as $170 million if it had been in effect several years ago. The report from the comptroller's office could bolster support in the General Assembly for so-called combined reporting, which proponents say would prevent corporations from dodging taxes by hiding profits in other, lower-tax states....

A Mount Airy cabinetmaker and maintenance worker found dead Friday evening in his home along with his wife and two children shot them in their sleep before killing himself, state police said Saturday. Charles L. Dalton Sr., 38, shot his wife, Jennifer A. Dalton, 37, their son, Charles L. Dalton Jr., 14, and daughter, Emmaline E. Dalton, 7, each once in the head Thursday night or Friday morning with a .12-gauge shotgun, said state police spokesman Greg Shipley. Police found the children lying in their beds in separate bedrooms at the front of the house on Contour Road.

Maryland commuters - particularly those with thoughts of traveling between I-95 in Laurel and Montgomery County's I-270 technology corridor - received a bit of sticker shock this week. Tolls on the Intercounty Connector could top $6.15 for a one-way trip in peak hours. No Maryland road, bridge or tunnel has ever charged anything approaching that. The most expensive facility currently operated by the Maryland Transportation Authority is the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway, the 48-mile portion of I-95 north of Baltimore where cars face a $5 toll at the Tydings Memorial Bridge, but that's only assessed on northbound travelers; the southbound trip is free.

It could not have been a more memorable proposal. A man took his girlfriend hiking Sunday afternoon on the gorgeous - albeit rocky and rough - Billy Goat Trail near Great Falls in Montgomery County. At some point, he popped the question. She said yes. As they continued their walk, the woman apparently slipped, fell down a rock face and was injured. Unable to easily reach her any other way, emergency responders had to use a U.S. Park Police helicopter to pluck her off the path. Authorities said the woman, who briefly lost consciousness, suffered bumps and bruises and injuries to her head and chest, but her injuries were not life-threatening.

CALIFORNIA, Md. - - Approaching Evergreen Elementary, it's clear right away that there's something different about this new school. A pair of silo-like structures squats in front of the two-story brick building - cisterns storing rainwater for flushing the toilets. Then there are the cactuses and other plants growing atop the entrance canopy - put there to soak up more rain. Evergreen represents the latest in green school design in Maryland. The $20 million elementary school, which started classes last week in this woodsy, suburban community in St. Mary's County, has been designed and built to save bundles of energy and water, and to reduce the building's impact on nearby streams and wetlands.

Ex-state trooper charged with sexual assault A former state trooper was arrested Wednesday night and charged with sexually assaulting a woman he took into custody during a traffic stop last year in Montgomery County, according to Maryland State Police. The woman told authorities that Marlon E. Iglesias, 42, of Montgomery County squeezed her thigh in the front seat of his patrol car after he arrested her in July 2008, then fondled and kissed her at the agency's Rockville barracks. According to police, the woman had been stopped by a Montgomery County officer on southbound Interstate 270 near Interstate 370 for following too close and suspicion of driving under the influence.

At least two developers are vying to lure the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from its outdated Rockville complex in Montgomery County to spacious new digs in Prince George's County. Each firm is interested in building almost 1 million square feet of office space for HHS near a Metro stop in Prince George's County. If constructed, such a complex would relocate about 5,000 federal jobs to the county, fatten property tax coffers and serve as a major anchor near a transit station.

It's never too early to smother a really, really bad transportation project. These things take on a life of their own if they're allowed to progress too far, and before you know it you're being tossed out of your home so that folks who freely chose to live in outer suburbia can race home in congestion-free comfort to down their dinner a little earlier in the evening. That's apparently the plan for 251 families who live along the Interstate 270 corridor in Montgomery and Frederick counties.

One might think that in the depths of a recession that has governments across the country slashing expenses and ordering layoffs and furloughs, a proposal for a $4.6 billion widening of Interstate 270 from Montgomery County to Frederick with four toll lanes would be dismissed out of hand by elected officials. After all, construction on the $2.6 billion Inter-county Connector to link Montgomery and Prince George's counties is still unfinished. In Howard County, officials are still waiting for state funding to widen northbound Route 29 by one lane approaching Columbia, and there's no money to widen Route 32 from Clarksville to Interstate 70 either.