Office In Baltimore

A start-up banking company, headed by a former top executive of Mercantile Bankshares Corp., plans to raise as much as $15 million in an initial public offering.Bay National Corp. plans to sell from 900,000 to 1.5 million shares to the public at $10 a share.Hugh W. Mohler, a former executive vice president at Mercantile, who is president and chief executive officer of Bay National Corp., declined to comment because the company is in the Securities and Exchange Commission's "quiet period."The offering could begin early next month, if Bay National receives approval from the SEC. It is expected to close Jan. 31, but could be extended to March 31, according to the company's prospectus filed with the SEC.Bay National executives are not using an underwriter and will sell shares in the company themselves.

IN RESPONSE to a mandate by the Maryland General Assembly, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell has submitted a 39-page report on revamping Baltimore's malfunctioning criminal-justice system.It describes problems succinctly. But it fails to spell out timetables for reform or who is responsible for implementing them."It's not a bad discussion piece," says Montgomery County Del. Peter Franchot, who has scheduled a public safety subcommittee hearing Oct. 19 to discuss the report. "But it needs goals, time lines, actions to be taken so that we on the outside can hold the system accountable."

Crestar Bank said yesterday that it plans to open 75 branches inside Safeway Inc. grocery stores in Baltimore and Washington beginning next year.In addition, the bank will install automated teller machines in 123 Safeway stores that operate in Maryland, Virginia and Washington by 2002.Ten ATMs will be placed in stores in greater Baltimore, said J. Scott Wilfong, president of Crestar's Maryland region. "It is a significant investment. It is a real opportunity for us to continue to expand our franchise here," Wilfong said.

Andrew Hudyma works from a run-down former grocery store on Pennington Avenue in rough-and-tumble Curtis Bay. Prostitutes walk by his neon red "FAST TAX REFUND" sign. Drug dealers haunt his intersection.And he'd like to move to an even rougher neighborhood.Hudyma, the accountant for hundreds of people in this south city section, has his eye on a new office on 10th Street in nearby Brooklyn, about a block from that neighborhood's public housing project. His goal: to be closer to his customers.

Federal agents arrested 19 suspected illegal Mexican immigrants at Baltimore-Washington International Airport yesterday as they got off a US Airways flight from Pittsburgh, where the group had flown earlier in the day from Phoenix.Benedict J. Ferro, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Services office in Baltimore, said illegal aliens occasionally fly into BWI, but yesterday's incident was unusual because of the size of the group."It just shows the escalation in smuggling [illegal aliens]

A man shot by a Baltimore police officer Thursday night in Southwest Baltimore was released from the hospital yesterday and charged with assault, a handgun offense and drug possession, police said.Joseph Michael Stokes, 24, of the 400 block of Colleen Road was shot once in the upper left back, police said. He was treated at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after the 11: 10 p.m. incident at Augusta and Massachusetts avenues.The officer was identified as Robert Probeyahn, 35, a five-year veteran assigned to the tactical unit.

George J. Hynes, 77, retired printer for The SunGeorge J. Hynes, a retired Baltimore Sun printer and World War II veteran, died Wednesday of cancer at his Arbutus residence. He was 77.Mr. Hynes, who was also a former union official with the Baltimore Typographical Union No. 12, began his career in the composing room of The Baltimore Sun Co. in 1954. He retired in 1986.He had been a former secretary-treasurer and chairman of the union's Baltimore Sun chapter.Born and raised in Irvington, he was a graduate of Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School.

BALTIMORE IS such an overwhelmingly Democratic town that only two of eight city districts offer Republican opposition.The GOP has the best chance to make headway in the 47th District, which is divided into subdistricts A (South Baltimore and Curtis Bay in the city) and B (Catonsville and Woodlawn in Baltimore County). Edward Fowler, 40, a Catonsville psychiatric researcher with a doctorate, is challenging Democratic Sen. George W. Della, 55, who is seeking a fifth term.Some of Mr. Fowler's positions sound distinctly libertarian.

A long-awaited plan to rebuild downtown's west side and the blighted Howard Street shopping district recommends the areas be infused with new middle-class housing units, shops, offices and cultural and hospitality-related uses.To be unveiled today by a partnership of city officials, private foundations and property owners, the West Side Task Force's study is aimed at improving the character of a large district that is underused and marked by vacant buildings and small retail operations.The study calls for the reopening of Lexington Street to vehicles from Liberty Street to Eutaw Street -- a stretch that was made into an urban mall in the 1960s.

When Jervis S. Finney takes his seat in a closed ethics hearing room in Annapolis next month, he will see a familiar face next to state Sen. Larry Young -- defense lawyer Gerard P. Martin, who worked with Finney two decades ago at the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore."