Overdue

Thomas J. Bollinger Sr., associate judge of the Baltimore County Circuit Court, hit the mandatory judicial retirement age of 70 last month, but he's still on the bench, and a certain Catonsville minister must be happy about that. Roan Faulkner, a Pentecostal bishop, sexually attacked a distressed woman who had gone to see him for help. For this he got an 18-month prison sentence, and the accommodating Judge Bollinger suspended all of it. That's not even a slap on the wrist; it's a caress.

The architectural style is "Florida Picturesque," and the baseball amenities make Ed Smith Stadium a field of dreams, but there really is only one way to describe the dramatic restoration project that has created a beautiful new home away from home for the Orioles. Long overdue. Two decades after they began their quest for a new all-purpose spring training facility, the Orioles will christen Ed Smith Stadium on Tuesday afternoon against the Tampa Bay Rays in what will be a celebration for an organization that has endured substandard and outdated spring facilities for years.

Pietro Di Pilato's essay on the "Dime a Drink" proposal to raise liquor taxes ( "'Dime a drink' tax would cost thousands of jobs," Feb. 22), omits some crucial facts: If you are paying taxes at the tax rates of 40 or 50 years ago, you can only belong to one business in Maryland: the liquor industry. All other businesses, as well as individual taxpayers, have subsidized the liquor industry tax rates for decades. We have all paid more because they have paid so much less, and it probably runs into the billions of dollars.

Who among us has not been lost in Columbia? The planned Howard County community has much to offer — if only we could find it. There is commerce there, but it is tucked away in well-camouflaged pockets. These can be discovered by the cognoscenti, but for the uninitiated is a struggle. Signage — the traditional method of giving the populace a clue as to where the dentist's office, the pet store or the shopping center is located — is minimal. Since Columbia's birth in 1967, its rulers, guarding against garish commercialism, have prescribed signs that favor tasteful discretion over utilitarian illumination.

State auditors say Maryland's office of financial regulation has a backlog of mortgage firms overdue for examinations, a problem officials have been grappling with for years but believe will be fixed soon. The office, part of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, is required by law to put each mortgage lender, servicer and broker firm under the microscope once every three years to make sure no rules are being broken. More than 360 of the state's 2,090 licensed firms were overdue for a visit as of early November, some by years, legislative auditors said.

Coppin State University failed to follow proper procedure in pursuing overdue tuition payments and allowed students who hadn't paid their bills to continue registering for courses, according to a state audit released Tuesday. Audits released in 2007 and 2004 raised similar concerns about the university's debt collection. "It's on the bad side," the chief legislative auditor, Bruce Myers, said of the university's debt collection. "A lot of the state schools do a good job with their receivables.

The third paragraph in most newspaper stories about efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay by restricting some human activity — the harvesting of crabs, the spreading of chicken manure on farmland, the development of more suburban housing — contains the predictable "warning" about the consequences of the action. The most recent example of this could be seen on the front page of The Baltimore Sun on Saturday: "The head of the Maryland Oystermen Association warned that the state's move threatens the livelihood of the few hundred watermen still actively harvesting oysters because it would bar them from working many of the most productive shellfish bars or reefs left in the bay."

Since his February 2009 high-water mark of nearly 80 percent, President Barack Obama has seen his approval ratings drop about 30 points. If approval ratings are the primary currency of a president's political capital, that's a lot of money down the drain. Strip away any effects from how he handled two inherited wars, or culture war issues like abortion, and what largely accounts for Mr. Obama's changing fortunes are his actions on one policy and his inaction on another. The action came hot and heavy, if slow and unsteady, on health care reform.