Montgomery County

The final section of the Intercounty Connector will be open by 6 a.m. Nov. 22, according to Jack Cahalan, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Transportation. Previously, the state had not said exactly when the section would open. "The weather has played in our favor," Cahalan said. Construction on the toll road, which cost $2.6 billion, started in 2007. The ICC is currently open from Route 97 (Georgia Avenue) through Interstate 370, which feeds into Interstate 270, the main artery between Frederick and Washington.

Can you challenge the logic behind Gov. Martin O'Malley's decision to give $9.5 million in taxpayer money to Bechtel Corp.? No governor wants to lose 1,250 jobs to a neighboring state. Especially if he's a Democrat and the neighbor, Virginia, has a Republican governor bragging about low taxes. Especially if he recently lost another economic development contest when Northrop Grumman chose Fairfax County, Va., instead of Montgomery County, Md., for its headquarters. This time O'Malley won!

Officials with the Sykesville Police Department hit the streets on two Segways at the town's annual fall festival early this month, and rolled them out again this past week at Century High School's homecoming parade. Donated to the station by the Montgomery County Police Department, the Segways have already proven an important tool in helping police patrol the town and stay connected to residents, according to Sykesville Police Chief John Williams Jr. "They come in quite handy," Williams said.

Dozens of law enforcement officers, some on horseback and aided by volunteers and dogs trained to sniff for cadavers, searched two parks in northern Montgomery County for signs of 11-year-old William McQuain on Sunday. The search through the woodlands came three days after the arrest of Curtis M. Lopez, who is accused of killing William's mother, Jane McQuain, 51, in her Germantown apartment sometime in the past two weeks. McQuain's body was discovered on Wednesday, and Lopez, who is McQuain's estranged husband, was arrested in North Carolina on Thursday after police located McQuain's car near Charlotte.

Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley released his congressional redistricting plan Saturday evening, hours after a handful of African-American lawmakers walked out of a Legislative Black Caucus meeting and prevented the group from taking an official position on an earlier draft. O'Malley's map makes only a handful of changes to the boundaries drawn by an advisory committee, adding some neighborhoods in Montgomery County to the 8th Congressional District that Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen had requested.

Money from higher prices at bars and liquor stores is paying for athletic fields in Howard County, renovations to schools in Montgomery County and a new high school performing arts center in Anne Arundel. On Wednesday, Maryland's Board of Public Works approved $18 million for school construction projects in the three counties, doling out the first chunk of revenue from the 50 percent increase in the sales tax on alcohol that the General Assembly approved in April. The tax rose to 9 percent, from 6 percent, starting July 1. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, emphasized the jobs that would be created by the projects, asking officials from each school system who attended the board's meeting to estimate how many workers would be needed.

Does Pastor Oxentenko's God condone men of the cloth being disingenuous? Or maybe the pastor "forgot" his current building plan (which scores of residents testified against a few months ago) is for two buildings totaling 84,000 square feet on a 40,000-square-foot footprint (filed Aug. 13, 2010), twice the square footage of his previous (July 28, 2005) plan? This is quite contrary to his assurances to the Laurel Leader "they have scaled their plans down from two buildings for the church and school encompassing 72,000 square feet, to a single multilevel building with a 28,000-square-foot circumference" ("County Council, church dispute rages on," Leader, Sept.

Imagine if your legislative representative served only one-half or even one-third of the number of constituents he or she currently represents. Do you think your vote would matter more? Would your representative more accurately represent your community if given fewer constituents? Of course they would; they would be elected by a much smaller voting populace. The likelihood of seeing your elected official campaigning on your street could be twice or three times as likely. This could become a reality in Maryland's House of Delegates.

Elizabeth Kathleen Green and Thomas Patrick Meadowcroft were married April 16 at the Hilton Hotel in Baltimore. Green is the daughter of Charles "Bob" and Laura Green of Calverton. Meadowcroft is the son of Denny and Paula Meadowcroft, of Bel Air. Green graduated from Palottti High School and Salisbury University. She received her master's in education from Northern Illinois University. Meadowcroft graduated from John Carroll School and Salisbury University. Though they were students at Salisbury at the same time, they didn't meet until 2005.

A Montgomery County judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a conservative foundation demanding that a Montgomery County community college end its practice of offering in-county tuition rates to illegal immigrants. A spokeswoman for Montgomery College, which has campuses in Rockville, Takoma Park and Germantown, told The Baltimore Sun last year that the school's policy is to offer the reduced tuition rate to anyone who can demonstrate that he or she lives in Montgomery County or graduated from a public high school there within the past three years.