Public Officials

Up to half of sexually active young people will get a sexually transmitted disease by the time they are 25, yet many don't seek testing because it may be difficult, costly or embarrassing. Public health officials nationally and in particularly affected cities like Baltimore, however, say they've found a method that seems to address the major hurdles — a website that supplies free in-home testing kits for three of the most commonly reported STDs. "The highest prevalence is in young adults, and we knew we had to reach these kids," said Charlotte A. Gaydos, a professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

A tour bus company with headquarters in Maryland has been shut down by federal safety officials after an investigation determined its drivers and vehicles pose an imminent hazard to public safety. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Wednesday ordered Washington DC Party Shuttle, which also does business as Onboard DC Tours, to immediately cease all operations for "egregious" violations that demonstrated "blatant disregard for motor coach passenger safety. " The bus company has offices at National Harbor in Prince George's County and operates primarily as a tour bus service in the Washington metropolitan area, New York City and Las Vegas.

* Alan Newcomb, 42, of Spencerville, manager of Fast Frames in Dobbin CenterMeetings should not be closed. As public office holders, they are beholden to the public, and the records should be available to the public. There should be very limited circumstances when and where they should have closed meetings. Officials don't want to be on the record with a lot of things. If you're quoted, it can be devastating. But I don't agree with it. They should be accountable 100 percentof the time.

New laws passed by the Maryland General Assembly late last week would put stricter penalties and an element of public shaming behind the state's open-meetings laws. State lawmakers said public officials have been able to flout the rules without significant consequences. "It has no enforcement whatsoever," said Del. Dan Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the bill to toughen open-meetings laws. "This is the first bill that actually creates some enforcement. " Maryland's public officials are barred from conducting public business behind closed doors, but the penalties for doing so in the past have been a rarely levied fine and a written notice that Morhaim said was often ignored.

Rosario "Sol" Cicero, a Baltimore barber to an era of public officials, died Thursday of a heart ailment and pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 105. He cut hair for 70 years in the heart of the city for a clientele that included downtown businessmen and lawyers, governors and even prizefighters, until he retired in 1980. His customer roster read like a who's who of the officials at the time -- including Mayor and Gov. Theodore R. McKeldin, Rep. Edward A. Garmatz, Govs.

Every president from George Washington to Bill Clinton has probably wished that he could file a libel suit against the media for disseminating some outrageous falsehood about his personal official conduct.During the early days of the Clinton sex scandal, the public was flooded with media reports, some of which appear to be false. The report that a DNA-stained dress would topple the president seems to have been discredited. And the Dallas Morning News retracted its report that a witness might have caught Monica Lewinsky and the president in an intimate encounter.

IT'S a tradition in Maryland -- a shameful one -- that when politicians break the law and disgrace their elective offices, they are quickly forgiven, usually with a mere slap on the wrist. The latest examples are now sadly unfolding. Larry Young, a former state senator removed from office for using his legislative post to enrich himself, has been acquitted by a jury. Bruce C. Bereano, a top lobbyist who spent time in prison for defrauding clients, used his connections to get top judges and politicians to praise him as a paragon of virtue in an effort to avoid disbarment.

Art Geiselman, a former Evening Sun reporter who relished catching crooked police officers and exposing squalid conditions at prisons and mental hospitals over a 47-year career in journalism, died Dec. 21 of injuries suffered in a fall at the Copper Ridge residential care home in Sykesville. The York, Pa., native was 85. Mr. Geiselman borrowed a sentiment from David Copperfield to explain his life philosophy, shaped by the accidental death of his father when he was a boy and his first wife's death from illness only a few years after they married.

New laws passed by the Maryland General Assembly late last week would put stricter penalties and an element of public shaming behind the state's open-meetings laws. State lawmakers said public officials have been able to flout the rules without significant consequences. "It has no enforcement whatsoever," said Del. Dan Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the bill to toughen open-meetings laws. "This is the first bill that actually creates some enforcement. " Maryland's public officials are barred from conducting public business behind closed doors, but the penalties for doing so in the past have been a rarely levied fine and a written notice that Morhaim said was often ignored.

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. It was hijacked. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech, and corporations are now people. Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they're treated as public nuisances -- clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending.

Baltimore activist Kim Trueheart was back at City Hall last week after a judge lifted a ban on her presence there that was at least unjustified and possibly illegal. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who often bears the brunt of Ms. Trueheart's criticism of city government, has said if it was up to her, the trespassing charges against Ms. Trueheart would be dropped because City Hall "is the people's building. " It would be easy to chalk the whole thing up to a mistake by someone in the police department and declare no harm, no foul.

Del. Hattie Harrison, who was the longest-serving member of the House of Delegates, died Monday night, House Speaker Michael E. Busch announced. She was 84. Delegate Harrison, a Democrat who represented East Baltimore's 45th District since 1973, served until recently as chairman of the House Rules and Executive Nominations Committee. She was the first African-American woman to chair a legislative committee in Maryland, holding that position 33 years until being named chairman emeritus this year.

Activists, public officials and residents gathered Saturday outside an east Baltimore liquor store — where a man was severely beaten on Christmas Day — to protest violent attacks on gay people Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts told the crowd of about 40 people that his department plans to set up an advisory group to meet monthly to work with gay, lesbian and transgender people. "I want to come together as a community and make sure we connect and do the right things for every part of our community," said Batts, who became commissioner late last year.

Anne Arundel County Public School officials said on Thursday the county Department of Health has not recommended additional cleaning steps to be taken amid the Tuesday death of a Glen Burnie High School junior, who had become ill the day before with symptoms associated with bacterial meningitis. School officials on Wednesday said that a letter was sent home to students' parents outlining the girl's death and providing information about bacterial meningitis. "The county Department of Health has not recommended any additional cleaning procedures for us outside of our normal daily cleaning procedures," said Anne Arundel schools spokesman Bob Mosier.

It has been a fallow interval at the blog because of some hectic days at the paragraph factory, domestic exigencies, and the like, but I am back today to advocate, in my small way, sanity. Immediately after the late election, the outbreaks of looniness came thick and fast. A gentleman wrote to The Baltimore Sun to say that he was halting all charitable donations and putting his resources into bottled water and ammo, presumably against the collapse of civil order that President Obama's re-election made inevitable.

The Anne Arundel County measure that could have required County Executive John R. Leopold to repay his legal expenses was withdrawn Monday night before it came to a vote. County Councilman Jamie Benoit, the sponsor, said he plans to let the state deal with the question of forcing public officials to repay taxpayers when a politician's actions put the government on the losing end of a lawsuit. The withdrawn legislation by Benoit, a Democrat from Crownsville, was similar to a state bill proposed by Sen. Bryan Simonaire, a Republican from Pasadena.

The Maryland State Archives in Annapolis has made available an important new reference resource for historians and genealogists.The resource, "An Historical List of Public Officials of Maryland," has the names of nearly 32,000 Maryland public officials from 1632 to the present and will be of enormous value to scholars and researchers interested in the history of Maryland.The book is the first volume in a new series of the Archives of Maryland collection of transcribed documents and indexes that was published from 1883 to 1972.

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese last night accused public officials who criticized the verdict in the Rodney King police brutality case of pouring "gas on the flames" rather than trying to ease tensions that led to rioting in Los Angeles two weeks ago.Mr. Meese said that the criticisms created "an atmosphere that appeared to justify the type of disorders that took place [in Los Angeles] and elsewhere in the United States.""It [the rioting] should not have happened," he said in a speech before the National Troopers Coalition,which is meeting at the BWI-Holiday Inn in Linthicum.

Whatever they've got to say, they can say in front of everyone. This is a modern take on the founding notion of the United States that the public is entitled to know about the formulation implementation of public policy. There are a few instances under the law that allow government business to be conducted in a closed forum, but they are specific and designed to protect the public interest in, for example, land dealings. They are not, as Harford County government's chief of staff put it earlier this week, to make it possible to have a meeting "in a very constructive setting.

Mitt Romney wants to open up more federal lands and waters to drilling for oil and natural gas. His party is pushing, in the name of freedom and economic opportunity, to roll back a variety of environmental protections. Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, are seeking to ease pesticide regulations; some are even questioning the Environmental Protection Agency's ban on DDT, reopening a controversy that stretches back half a century. Fifty years ago this month, Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring.