Realignment

If he had to show up every day in his office at the Defense Information Systems Agency, Greg Krawczyk says he probably wouldn't be working there. The round-trip commute between his waterfront Pasadena home and the agency's headquarters in Arlington, Va., can take 2 1/2 to four hours - sometimes longer, depending on traffic and weather. But thanks to the agency's liberal tele-work and work schedule policy, Krawczyk, 48, says he only has to make that grueling drive around congested Washington every other workday.

Showing off newly developed office parks and housing in the Middle River area yesterday, Baltimore County officials declared the region's most populous jurisdiction poised to accommodate its share of the jobs and households expected to pour into Maryland in the next four years from the national military base realignment. "We're getting ready," County Executive James T. Smith Jr. told Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown as Brown and members of the O'Malley administration's base-realignment planning "subcabinet" convened in a recently constructed business park on White Marsh Boulevard.

South River field hockey goalie Virginia Jorden doesn't mind the possibility of playing No. 1 Severna Park three times this season. Jorden has faced the 16-time state champion Falcons four times in the past two seasons, twice in the regular season and twice in the Anne Arundel County championship game. Now that the Falcons have moved from Class 3A, where they won three of the past four state titles, to Class 4A, where South River won in 2004 and 2005 and was the runner-up last season, there's a strong possibility Jorden could see the Falcons in the East regional playoffs.

Aiming to pull in newcomers expected to be shifted to Maryland as part of the nation's military base realignment process, Baltimore officials formally presented a plan yesterday to beef up local services and infrastructure. The city's "BRACtion" plan asks the state to improve parts of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, increase MARC service into Harford County and develop housing near the MARC station in West Baltimore, among other items. Mayor Sheila Dixon informally presented these plans recently when Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and the state Cabinet subcommittee in charge of base realignment visited the city to assess what changes the city might need to lure in newcomers.

NORTH EAST -- Cecil County officials appealed yesterday for state help in handling some of the growth expected to spill into the county as military base realignment brings thousands of defense jobs to nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground. Meeting with the O'Malley administration's base realignment subcabinet, county officials asked the state to extend MARC commuter rail service through Cecil, lift tolls on Interstate 95 and allow the county to expand sewage treatment plants for commercial and residential development.

The O'Malley administration's effort to prepare Maryland for the arrival of thousands of defense-related workers and their families began in earnest yesterday, with a tight six-month deadline to come up with a plan for accommodating the looming migration. Gov. Martin O'Malley opened the first meeting of the state's Base Realignment and Closure Subcabinet with a call to "maximize the opportunities" presented by the expected influx in the next several years of 45,000 to 60,000 defense-related jobs as a result of a nationwide military base reorganization.

As real estate brokers report the first trickle of what promises to be a torrent of military employees and contractors pouring into Maryland, the state is assembling a package of incentives to encourage first-time homebuyers and renters to move to Baltimore, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown said yesterday. State leaders want to make the city, with its affordable housing stock and varied transit options, a bedroom community for an estimated 60,000 defense workers and contractors who are predicted to move to Maryland from across the nation to work mainly in and around Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Despite facing huge financial gaps in preparing for the influx of people and jobs coming via the federal base realignment and closure process, Maryland is using the changes "to do regional planning we should do anyway," a Maryland congressman told about 175 people gathered for a semiannual BRAC summit yesterday in Crownsville. "BRAC has become a very useful vehicle," said freshman Rep. John Sarbanes. "It's teaching us how to cooperate across regional, political and administrative lines," and "jumps the state forward.

Maryland's small and mid-sized business owners continue to be a bit more optimistic than their peers across the nation despite the threat of rising energy costs, fallout from the subprime market and a proposed minimum wage increase, a nationally known economist said yesterday. The forecast by Stuart Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group, was the Pittsburgh-based bank's first for Maryland and followed its acquisition last month of Baltimore's Mercantile Bankshares Corp.

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.