Public Access

A new plan calls for increasing public access to the Chesapeake Bay by adding more than 300 new spots along the shore where people can fish, swim, put a boat in the water or just enjoy the view. The draft " watershed public access plan " released late last week by the National Park Service lays out a blueprint for boosting by more than 25 percent the number of sites where the public can get to the bay and its tributaries.  That was one of the goals in a 2010 bay restoration strategy developed by the Obama administration.

Scenes from the Grand Prix of Baltimore on Saturday: View from the cheap seats The McBride family was out in force, trying to see what they could without actually buying a ticket. They weren't having a whole lot of luck. Eye-level banners attached to the fence along Russell Street pretty much blocked any view of the racers, and even when a brief gap in the banners gave a view of the track, the traffic barriers kept the cars hurtling down the street fairly invisible.

David Robeson would bump into them in the aisles at the supermarket: shoppers who had no clue how to prepare a meal."They're just standing in front of the cases and they want dinner, but they don't even know what they're looking at," said the 31-year-old Columbia man who said he's found a way to help the domestically challenged.Mr. Robeson is producing a show called "Food for Thought," one of four new health programs scheduled to appear this fall on public access Channel 6. It is the greatest number of health shows ever produced at one time for the cable channel, said public access coordinator Don Perkins.

A new plan calls for increasing public access to the Chesapeake Bay by adding more than 300 new spots along the shore where people can fish, swim, put a boat in the water or just enjoy the view. The draft " watershed public access plan " released late last week by the National Park Service lays out a blueprint for boosting by more than 25 percent the number of sites where the public can get to the bay and its tributaries.  That was one of the goals in a 2010 bay restoration strategy developed by the Obama administration.

Gay activists and evangelical preachers. Rock 'n' roll and baby showers.All could be part of the lineup when Baltimore's public access cable television channel opens for business on Sept. 6."It's going to be a potpourri," predicted Phil Sibley, a local producer who plans to air two rock 'n' roll variety programs. He is among a disparate group of would-be producers who want air time for their shows.Public-access cable television -- which allows citizens to air programs that commercial stations can't produce or aren't interested in producing -- has been a staple in other cities for years.

Aiming to get the word out to minorities about county services, a local group will take to the airwaves with a series of shows on the county's public access station. The first of four shows, Voz Latina, which translates to Latino Voice, starts tonight at 6 on Channel 99 on Comcast and Channel 39 on Verizon's FIOs television services. The rest of the programming slate, which will begin airing next month, includes, Our Community, Your Voice, targeted at African- Americans and a show called Korean-Americans in Anne Arundel County.

Worried about the safety of police officers, a judicial panel and leaders of Maryland's two most populous counties took steps yesterday to bar public access to arrest warrants until suspects have been served.A Maryland judicial rules subcommittee that governs criminal rules and procedure for the state's courts voted unanimously to close public access to unserved warrants, saying the threat to police officers far outweighed the public's right to know.And Executives Wayne K. Curry of Prince George's County and Douglas M. Duncan of Montgomery County said they would ask their state legislators to sponsor a bill next month to restrict warrant access.

Next month, public officials in Carroll will begin serious talk about their spending plans but, for the most part, the public won't be in on the discussions.While most of the county's elected leaders generally agree that the public has a right to know how its money will be spent, some see nothing wrong with keeping the public away from budget workshops, public employee salaries and other financial details.While Maryland law gives elected officials broad leeway in deciding what is public, at least two municipal councils in Carroll County have been challenged this year for refusing to open their proceedings to the public.

The Community Media Center, which has put life in Carroll County on TV for 13 years, televising everything from town meetings and candidate forums to the 4-H Fair and the Maryland Wine Festival, is about to get a new space with a soundproof studio, sophisticated lighting and advanced broadcast technology. The $1.7 million building under construction in Westminster is a vast improvement on the basement headquarters the community access television station has called home for the past decade.

For centuries, Americans have had the right to inspect almost all records filed in their courthouses. All they had to do was go there and ask. Now that court records are increasingly stored in computers, accessible from people's homes through the Internet, this cherished right is under attack. For example, advocates for personal privacy and victims' rights argue that the easy access to court files, particularly in criminal cases, is unduly intrusive and potentially hazardous. The serious problem of witness intimidation in Baltimore and elsewhere has heightened their concerns.

As an educator, certified Maryland public librarian and member of the Harford County community, I am disappointed and embarrassed by the Harford County Public Library's decision to censor the "50 Shades of Grey" series by E. L. James ("Too hot for Harford, librarian concludes," May 31). County library director Mary Hastler has denied censoring the book. However, by the American Library Association's own definition, censorship is "the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons - individuals, groups or government officials - find objectionable or dangerous.

The city expects to start construction this fall on one of the final sections of the seven-mile Inner Harbor promenade. The $6.6 million project will replace a temporary wooden walkway with brick to match the rest of the promenade. It will connect to the path at President and Lancaster streets and stretch about a quarter-mile, from East Falls Avenue to Katyn Memorial Circle. The work, which to minimize disruptions will be done from barges, is expected to take a year to complete.

George Huguely V sits in the corner of a narrow, white room, at the end of a long wooden table, looking every bit the college athlete who just rolled out of bed after a normal night out — but for the bloody scratches ringing his right ankle. Hours earlier, he had used that leg to drunkenly kick in his girlfriend's bedroom door, he tells Charlottesville detectives, during a 64-minute recorded interrogation into the fatal beating of Cockeysville native Yeardley Love. The public got its first look at the video Tuesday, two years after it was made, on the morning of May 3, 2010, and nearly three months after Huguely was convicted of second-degree murder in Love's death at her University of Virginia off-campus apartment.

In Virginia, the attorney general, skeptical of global warming, tried to use his subpoena powers to build a fraud case against a climatology professor. In Wisconsin, Republican Party officials sought the emails of a history professor, trying to demonstrate that he had misused his public account to stir political unrest during the state's highly publicized battles over organized labor. Maryland Del. Sandy Rosenberg, a Baltimore Democrat, has cited these controversies, which garnered national attention, as he vows to prevent a similar situation from arising here.

In a deal some say could be a model for government land preservation in lean budget times, a wealthy businessman and former Anne Arundel County politician has agreed to give up development rights -- and grant limited but free public access -- to a 950-acre former wildlife sanctuary on the Eastern Shore that he bought 18 months ago. Robert A. Pascal, a former county executive and state senator, has offered to donate a permanent conservation easement...

In a deal hailed as a model for land preservation in lean budget times, a wealthy businessman has agreed to give up development rights — and grant limited but free public access — to a 950-acre former wildlife sanctuary on the Eastern Shore that he bought 18 months ago. Robert A. Pascal, a businessman and former Anne Arundel County executive, agreed to donate to the state a permanent conservation easement on the former du Pont family hunting...

The City Council overwhelmingly approved awarding a 12-year cable franchise to Comcast last night after a year of negotiations that recently turned contentious over funding for public access programming. The 16-1 vote, with two abstentions, was one of the last measures acted on by the departing council at a meeting filled with ceremonial send-offs for seven incumbents not returning Thursday to be inaugurated as members of the newly elected council. The council's approval delivered a final legislative victory to Mayor Martin O'Malley, who will begin his second term with a noon inauguration today at the War Memorial Building.

Advocates of public-access television -- some with video cameras in hand -- swarmed a City Hall hearing last night to voice opposition to a proposed 12-year franchise deal with cable provider Comcast, a contract that some fear could freeze out citizen programs. Mayor Martin O'Malley's administration supports the deal, in which Comcast would pay the city $4.3 million a year. Comcast would also collect a 50-cents-a- month subscriber fee -- or about $700,000 a year total -- to fund public channels for government, education and public-access programs.

Baltimore officials agreed this week to lease a 6-acre waterfront parcel worth nearly half a million dollars to developer Patrick Turner for free for 40 years. In return, Turner pledged to plant trees, widen a ravine and wetland area, and maintain the land as a public park. The land is sandwiched between the site of Turner's planned $1.5 billion Westport development and an Interstate 95 bridge, according to a lease agreement. "We're actually saving the city money by taking the liability off of it," Turner said.

During the marathon debates this spring over Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake's plans to overcome Baltimore's severe budget crunch, one issue dominated the discussion out of all proportion to its importance to city residents: the fate of the Mayor's Office of Cable and Communications. That's a branch of the city government that runs TV25, Baltimore's public access cable channel. Ms. Rawlings-Blake had been strongly critical of it when she was City Council president, saying it was little more than a $750,000-a-year public relations department for former Mayor Sheila Dixon.