Realignment

A new report by an anti-sprawl group warns that building the Intercounty Connector highway in the Washington suburbs could prevent Maryland from tackling traffic congestion elsewhere, while diverting growth from Baltimore and the District of Columbia to the suburbs along the road. The report, commissioned by 1000 Friends of Maryland, cautions that the ICC's $2.4 billion price tag could jeopardize the state's ability to pay for other highway and transit projects, especially those planned to handle thousands of new jobs and households coming to the Baltimore area in the next several years with military base realignment.

Let's get companies off the dole in Md. Howard County Executive Ken Ulman is worried about growth, and who can blame him? Defense realignment is bringing an estimated 2,259 jobs and 1,853 residents to the already booming locality. He wonders who'll pay for all the extra roads, schools and police officers that will be needed. Incoming federal employment "brings some very significant challenges," Ulman said in a speech a couple of weeks ago, and he's begging Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski for Washington money to finance it. So why the heck are his economic development people stoking even more growth and throwing away scarce tax dollars in the bargain?

When the NFL realigned the National Football Conference after the 1970 merger, the owners could never agree on one plan.They finally narrowed the options down to five, put them in a bowl and had then-commissioner Pete Rozelle's secretary pick out the one the teams still use 29 years later.Except for the addition of Tampa Bay to the NFC Central in 1977 and Carolina to the NFC West in 1995, the NFC remains unchanged. The AFC remains unchanged except for the addition of Seattle to the AFC West and Jacksonville to the AFC Central.

The Anne Arundel County Ethics Commission has found no violation of county ethics laws by a former top administrative official when he helped realign a proposed road in a way that could have aided a developer's quest for a major zoning change.In a ruling made public yesterday, the commission said that county officials "deviated from the usual county procedures" in attempting to move the road without public input or oversight, but found no wrongdoing on the part of Thomas C. Andrews -- then administrative officer, and now the county's land-use and environment officer.

Call it "revenue realignment," a restructuring of major-league baseball's divisions according to spending power, the only thing that counts in the sport anymore.The idea is the brainchild of Cincinnati Reds general manager Jim Bowden. It has no chance of gaining acceptance. It has even less chance of working.But such is the state of the game, it appears as reasonable a solution as any to the widening payroll disparity between teams in high- and low-revenue markets."You look at all kinds of creative ideas," said Sandy Alderson, the former Oakland GM who is now MLB's executive vice president of baseball operations.

A state highway plan for Howard County unveiled last night did not include construction money for the realignment of Route 216 in Scaggsville, which did not surprise county officials."

DENVER -- Interim commissioner Bud Selig all but acknowledged yesterday that he will accept the role of permanent commissioner when baseball owners meet tomorrow in Chicago.Selig, who has held the office on an interim basis since September 1992, clearly has the support of the required 75 percent of ownership. He resisted earlier attempts, but finally agreed last month to a regular term. His approval tomorrow at a special ownership meeting at the O'Hare Airport Hilton Hotel is considered a formality.

Major League Baseball Players Association chief Donald Fehr never has been afraid to say no to baseball ownership. He is the stubborn union leader who blocked baseball's attempt to put a cap on salaries, and he has emerged as the most powerful voice in the debate over realignment.The San Francisco Giants can cry all they want about the negative effects of the radical realignment plan that would put them in the same league with the Oakland A's, but Giants owner Peter McGowan does not have the power to stop it. Fehr can tell the owners tomorrow that it isn't going to happen and it isn't.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- The Texas Rangers' neighborhood is on the verge of significant change.At the least, the Rangers may finally be placed in the same division as the Houston Astros, with the intention of creating an intense Texas rivalry.At the extreme, the Rangers could be just a small cog in a massive realignment of major-league baseball that would sweep away the National and American leagues as they've been known for 97 years.Instead, baseball's 30 teams would be split into two leagues, one consisting of two seven-team divisions and another of two eight-team divisions.

CLEVELAND -- Major League Baseball's schedule/format committee met for 90 minutes yesterday to discuss realignment, but no decision was made on the format for the 1998 season.The committee continues to examine a variety of options aimed at geographic realignment and enhanced divisional play. The most likely scenario has the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays moving from the American League West to the AL East, the Detroit Tigers moving to the AL Central, the Houston Astros switching leagues to replace the Devil Rays in the AL West and the Kansas City Royals moving into the National League Central.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Public Service Commission are doing their best to save Maryland from Constellation Energy. Just when the state was plunging into its biggest recession since the early 1990s, Constellation threatened to spend $8 billion and create 4,000 construction jobs on a new nuclear power plant on the Chesapeake. Fortunately, the commission has ordered endless, expensive, irrelevant hearings that are likely to make Constellation and its partner, EDF Group, give up. So diligent is O'Malley that his energy department tried to suppress testimony from the commission's own expert showing that Marylanders would save a billion dollars over eight years from the new electricity supply and resulting lower prices.

Across from the precisely manicured lawns of Fort Meade stands a row of boarded-up businesses, tattoo shops, an adult bookstore and some faded bars. Once a bunch of bustling bars and arcades earned the area across from the military base the nickname Boomtown. But while nearby communities have blossomed in recent decades, Boomtown has fallen into decay. The shooting of four men, two fatally, early Sunday morning in a parking lot here is only more evidence, neighbors say, that many businesses and abandoned properties have become magnets for criminals.

The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore chose J. Thomas Sadowski yesterday as president and chief executive officer to replace Christian Johansson, who stepped down in July. Sadowski, who joined the economic alliance as executive vice president in January 2006, has been serving as interim president and chief executive. The alliance, a private economic development marketing group, has been working to entice companies in the life sciences, financial services, information technology and defense sectors to the region.

Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown announced yesterday about $600,000 in federal funds for projects designed to ease the impact of the military base realignment process known as BRAC. Funding includes $94,000 for a new construction technology center at Baltimore City Community College; $100,000 for Towson University to bring an "elementary engineering" program to Harford County public schools; and $100,000 for Monster Government Solutions to create a Web site for Maryland military families. The funds are part of a $4 million BRAC-related grant to Maryland's labor department from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The Baltimore-Washington region is better equipped than much of the nation to weather the economic downturn in commercial real estate, thanks to the proximity of federal government jobs and top universities that attract employers, according to an outlook released yesterday by the Johns Hopkins University's real estate department and a local chapter of the Appraisal Institute. Trend Watch 2008, an annual survey of about 120 regional experts in real estate, development, investment sales and business, says the federal government will continue to be a stable source of jobs, while universities will attract employers in defense, life sciences and telecommunications, helping to cushion the region's commercial real estate market and keeping property values stable for the next couple of years.

With the first wave of defense jobs expected to transfer to Maryland this year from military base realignment, officials in Baltimore and the suburbs are gearing up to sell workers in New Jersey and Northern Virginia on making their homes in the state. Live Baltimore Home Center, the nonprofit group that promotes living in the city, plans to bus defense workers and their families to Baltimore on April 12 for a daylong introduction to urban life on the Patapsco River. The "Greenlight" tour, as Live Baltimore has dubbed it, will include a community fair, narrated neighborhood bus tours and an afternoon reception at the Top of the World in the World Trade Center.

WASHINGTON -- The state's congressional delegation is asking Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to spare Maryland when the Pentagon decides where to cut funds for base realignment projects next year. In the omnibus spending bill approved this week by Congress, lawmakers met the funding level demanded by President Bush in part by cutting nearly $1 billion from the money he requested to carry out the recommendations of the Base Realignment and Closure commission. It will be up to the Defense Department to decide which of the hundreds of projects nationwide might get less money.

I have heard it from merchants. I've heard it from car dealers, Realtors and bankers. Sure, Maryland's economy is slowing, they concede. Homes are sitting empty. Store sales are sinking. Loans are going bust. But the thousands of jobs that the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission is shifting here will not only keep Maryland out of trouble but ensure decent growth even if the country goes into recession. If only it were so. Base realignment will limit any pain, true. But the defense jobs moving here are a smaller part of the economy than many believe, and their potential effects have been widely exaggerated.

Several hundred Baltimore parishioners met at Wayland Baptist Church in Ashburton last night to lobby public officials for more affordable housing and work training as part of the national base realignment process, which is expected to bring thousands of jobs to the region. Organized by the politically active religious group BRIDGE, the meeting was attended by Mayor Sheila Dixon, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and other elected, religious and union leaders. The group is asking officials to promote mixed-income housing, public transportation and work-force training to ensure that base realignment strengthens city neighborhoods.

A group of Baltimore-area church leaders plan to press state and local officials Thursday night to ensure that the influx of jobs and people from military base realignment does not harm Maryland's environment or the region's working families. Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon and several legislators are expected to attend the meeting of BRIDGE, a coalition of area congregations committed to improving social equity, said Gary Gillespie, a spokesman for the group. BRIDGE stands for Baltimore Regional Initiative Developing Genuine Equality.