Proposed Legislation

State legislative leaders said yesterday they haven't decided whether to support a last-minute request by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland for legislation to convert from a nonprofit to a for-profit company and sell stock."

If downtown business owners get their way, soon there will be a lot less panhandling at night on city streets. Today, members of the city's Planning Commission will hear proponents argue for legislation making it illegal to aggressively beg for money at night. The discussion will also center on programs and services needed to assist the city's growing homeless population. The Baltimore Safe Streets Coalition -- an organization of downtown business owners, retailers, health care advocates, property owners and individuals -- is strongly pushing for the two-pronged approach, which they say is necessary to make tourists and residents feel safer when they are downtown at night and to aid homeless people.

Baltimore County residents feeling besieged by cellular telephone towers and wireless communication industry representatives clamoring for more antennas found agreement on one thing yesterday: A proposal to regulate the placement of towers needs more work.At a public hearing held by the county's planning board, community leaders argued that proposed zoning restrictions were too lenient."The residential areas are under attack," said Louis W. Miller of Timonium. Holding up the proposed regulations, he added, "This is a monstrosity of nothing."

The O'Malley administration is completing legislation that would give the city the right to acquire nearly 200 properties in East Baltimore for the future expansion of the Johns Hopkins medical campus. The proposed legislation, scheduled to be introduced when the City Council returns from summer recess Monday, would amend the urban renewal plan for the Middle East area just north of the medical campus, which includes the hospital and schools of medicine, nursing and public health. A public hearing on the plan is tentatively scheduled before the city's Planning Commission in early November.

WASHINGTON -- Despite some misgivings, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, announced yesterday that he would support legislation allowing reporters to shield the identity of confidential news sources from prosecutors and law enforcement officials. "The shield law is, frankly, a license to do harm, perhaps serious harm, but it is also a license to do good," McCain said during an appearance before an audience of reporters, editors and publishers from the Associated Press, the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The Anne Arundel County delegation is supporting legislation to help homebuyers who fail to ask enough questions about the neighborhood into which they will be moving. Anne Arundel delegates and senators have been deluged with calls from frantic neighbors who never expected a megamall in North County, an auto racetrack on the Solley Peninsula, or expansions at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Officials say it's time homebuyers became more careful and developers more forthcoming.

To make it tougher for drug dealers to operate, several City Council members want to eliminate push-button pay phones in Baltimore's drug-free zones.Councilman Lawrence A. Bell III says the idea behind the proposed legislation, which would require public phones in those areas to have rotary dials, is simple."

Frustrated by the Baltimore Development Corp.'s handling of real estate deals affecting their neighborhoods, west-side shopkeepers and Little Italy residents urged the General Assembly yesterday to adopt legislation that would open the quasi-public city agency's meetings. M. J. "Jay" Brodie, the nonprofit development agency's president, however, warned members of the Senate Economic and Environmental Affairs Committee that Baltimore's efforts to attract jobs and investment could be hindered if the BDC is forced to give the public access to its deliberations and documents.

BALTIMORE STATE'S Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. support legislation they contend would stop witness intimidation, but they have not explained how it would ensure that Maryland's citizens are safer if they become a witness in a criminal case. The short answer is they can't. The proposed legislation is not concerned with the safety of witnesses but with a witness who already has been intimidated or harmed. In most cases, once the intimidation has occurred or the witness has been harmed, it is too late to be concerned.

These days, one of the most effective tools in preventing and fighting crime is a cotton swab. That's why the General Assembly should approve a measure that calls for the collection of DNA evidence from suspects arrested for violent crimes. Opponents of the bill raise concerns about privacy. To understand why those concerns are unfounded, it is important to understand not only how DNA is used to solve crimes, but also the limits of forensic DNA analysis. The forensic examination of DNA is conducted with commercially produced kits.