New System

Recently, the Better Business Bureau scuttled its system of rating businesses and replaced it with letter grades. Instead of a "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" rating, the BBB now issues grades F to A+. The BBB says using letters makes ratings easier to understand. But the change has sparked controversy across the country. The only way to achieve the highest grade of A+ is if you are a paying member of the BBB. That has raised questions whether the new system is a case of "pay to play."

Thanks to an upgraded, $12 million fingerprinting system, the state expects to make tens of thousands of hits on previously unmatchable fingerprints, and has already made more than 150 matches in Howard County alone. The new Maryland Automated Fingerprint Identification System allows law enforcement officials to make quicker, more accurate fingerprint hits with a Web-based, digitized system by producing high-definition fingerprint images - a system that state and law enforcement officials say is helping them make hits at a pace they've never seen.

Drivers who regularly avoid paying tolls on Maryland's roads, tunnels and bridges face a new challenge in the effort to beat the system: technology that captures their license plate numbers and alerts police to their violations. The Maryland Transportation Authority announced this week that it has stepped up its enforcement of toll violations by implementing the new system - known as LPR, for License Plate Recognition. The system is intended to crack down on chronic toll violators - such as drivers who use E-ZPass lanes without having the required transponders and accounts.

The Maryland Senate unanimously approved a bill yesterday that would require the state to scrap its $65 million electronic-voting system and switch to new machines that have a paper record. If the bill wins final approval and is signed by the governor, voters would not use the new optical-scan equipment until the 2010 election. The measure is contingent on state funding, and the new system is projected to cost $18 million to $20 million. For Maryland officials, the move would mark the second time in five years that the state has overhauled its voter system.

Recently my wife and I decided we hadn't taken on enough debt with just a mortgage, car loan and college loan, so we replaced the old heating and air-conditioning system in our home with a brand new system. The new system costs an obscene amount of money. Oh, but don't worry about us. We can certainly swing it, especially if I pick up a second and third job somewhere, maybe at Wegman's or someplace like that. Anyway, I'd like to be able to report that we're enjoying the new heating and air-conditioning system, except that wouldn't be true, because we're afraid to touch the new thermostat.

Can the Broncos get quality quarterback play from Bubby Brister or Brian Griese? Do the Jaguars have enough defense to get to the Super Bowl? Will the Vikings' dominating offense pick up where it left off last season?Those are several of the major questions on the NFL's table as another season kicks off this weekend. But every question pales next to the gigantic one everyone was asking during the exhibition season:What, exactly, are the referees watching in those instant replay booths on the sideline?

WASHINGTON -- A billion-dollar air traffic control system that is scheduled to start service next spring will jeopardize air safety, according to the union representing the technicians who will maintain it, because it lacks alarms and monitoring systems to warn when it is beginning to fail.In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration is not sure the new software, which will not enter service until 1999 at the earliest, will function properly after the calendar rolls over to 2000.The union, the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, is seeking a delay in the phase-in, which is scheduled to begin in March 1999 at Reagan National Airport near Washington.

The Baltimore school board will spend $24 million to buy two computer systems -- one to keep track of students and their records and a second to manage budget and financial data.For years, the city school system has been unable to track its students accurately, despite a 1988 order by a federal judge requiring the system to find a computer system that would detail the progress of special education students.The new system, which will be paid for over four years with state funds, is expected to help accurately track attendance, enrollment and other key data as well as hold the academic records of each child in the system, according to Roger Reese Jr., the school system's chief financial officer.

WASHINGTON -- One day Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., announces plans to hire a staff of 80 to investigate fund-raising by the Democratic National Committee. Then the committee votes 52 subpoenas. And we learn that the Justice Department has 25 lawyers working on the same question.In the House, another Republican-led investigation headed by Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana also begins issuing subpoenas. And the Washington Post tells us that the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that China may have steered some contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign last year.

The county's 14 volunteer fire companies will switch to a radio communication system at noon today that will enable them to talk to dispatchers privately and without interference for the first time in more than 30 years.Under the old system, "all incidents had to be run at once" by the county's emergency communications office on two low-band channels, said Duane Ludwig, president of the Carroll County Fire Chiefs' Association."If someone else was talking, you had to wait your turn," he said.

WASHINGTON - -Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials. The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Barack Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

Thanks to an upgraded, $12 million fingerprinting system, the state expects to make tens of thousands of hits on previously unmatchable fingerprints, and has already made more than 150 matches in Howard County alone. The new Maryland Automated Fingerprint Identification System allows law enforcement officials to make quicker, more accurate fingerprint hits with a Web-based, digitized system by producing high-definition fingerprint images - a system that state and law enforcement officials say is helping them make hits at a pace they've never seen.

Recently, the Better Business Bureau scuttled its system of rating businesses and replaced it with letter grades. Instead of a "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" rating, the BBB now issues grades F to A+. The BBB says using letters makes ratings easier to understand. But the change has sparked controversy across the country. The only way to achieve the highest grade of A+ is if you are a paying member of the BBB. That has raised questions whether the new system is a case of "pay to play."

Two years after the General Assembly authorized a switch to a paper-ballot voting system, state elections officials warn that no vendor would be able to meet the law's stringent requirements by tomorrow's bidding deadline. Maryland's move to paper ballots also has raised concerns among the disabled community, which objects to a system that diminishes voting privacy because some would need assistance to complete paper ballots. And fiscal conservatives say the estimated five-year cost of nearly $39 million is too much to pay when the state is struggling to balance its budget.

No one likes getting pulled over for speeding. But Howard County police promise that a new technology deployed recently at least makes such stops more convenient for highway scofflaws. More than 50 county cruisers have been equipped with a system developed by the Maryland State Police that allows officers to issue electronic traffic citations more quickly and in a less-messy form. With the new system, called E-TIX, officers scan the driver's license, select the violation and print a copy of the citation on waterproof, hard-to-rip thermal paper.

After angry foster care providers grumbled that the state Department of Human Resources was acting like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, the department secretary scrapped a plan to delay foster payments until the end of the month. A test this month of the department's new automated payment system for foster providers meant that city group homes would have received money several weeks later than they are accustomed to, with the first batch of checks going in the mail Dec. 23. Because small group homes often survive month to month, some officials feared they would not have been able to make payroll, pay bills or provide holiday treats for the kids in their care.

Inevitably, the altogether appropriate rethinking of Maryland's state-of-the-art shock trauma system will get political. To put it another way, we are entering the "sausage" phase. That's the moment when our leaders will make important decisions about whether to buy new helicopters for the system, how many to buy and where to base them. "Sausage," of course, is the image for making laws and setting of policy. It's not a completely fair image, but the prospect of various issues coming together to establish a new system is likely.

DALLAS - Remember that scene from Meet the Parents where actor Ben Stiller waits as an airline agent types in about a million keystrokes to find out if he can get an earlier flight? Pat Stock, a customer service agent for Southwest Airlines at Dallas' Love Field, lives it every day. "I've had people say, 'Why does it take all that? I'm just going to Houston,' and I just say, 'Because Mickey Mouse made it,'" she said, her fingers furiously clacking away to help a customer who had a paper ticket.

The bad news: You still have to take off your shoes. The worse news: You're exposing more than that hole in your sock. Yesterday, BWI unveiled a new security system, and, well, let's just say unveiled is the right word -- those love handles that defy any number of oblique crunches, that birthmark that only your mother and your spouse should know about and, yes, what the Brits call the naughty bits. They've already taken away our water bottles, our contact lens juice, our anything-beyond-3-ounces of toothpaste, hair gel and deodorant.

The homeland security secretary unveiled yesterday a new checkpoint screening system being tested at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and announced other measures to make providing identification at check-in less hectic for travelers. The $2.1 million pilot program at BWI, called Checkpoint Evolution,travelers' includes new X-ray machines to better scan carry-ons and "whole body imaging" machines that show potentially hazardous objects that may be concealed under a passenger's clothing.