NEWS
By Dan Singer | May 2, 2013
Laurel has undergone many changes since the 1980s, but one thing has remained consistent over the years: the Laurel Board of Trade's annual Main Street Festival. This year's Main Street Festival, the 33rd one overall, will be held on Saturday, May 11, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Main Street will be closed to traffic between southbound Route 1 and Seventh Street for the festival, which could attract upward of 100,000 people. The festival usually hosts about 300 vendors and service organizations are spread out along the street, said Janet Able, treasurer of the Laurel Board of Trade.
BUSINESS
By Lorraine Mirabella, The Baltimore Sun | April 27, 2013
Small businesses would be protected from the type of fraud allegedly committed by Harford County payroll firm AccuPay Inc. under legislation being proposed by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski. The Maryland Democrat plans to introduce a bill that would require payroll service providers to register with the Internal Revenue Service and be either bonded or certified by the tax agency. It also would set federal penalties for payroll firms that fail to send clients' tax payments to the government.
BUSINESS
By Candy Thomson, The Baltimore Sun | April 26, 2013
The Great Gourmet is Kimberly Scott's way of introducing the world to Maryland seafood. Her Eastern Shore company sells crab cakes, oysters and clams to wholesale and retail markets. In 2006, just three years after opening, The Great Gourmet was logging $1.8 million in revenue. Three years after that, Scott had revenue of $3.8 million, 15 employees and a place on Inc. Magazine's 500/5000 fastest-growing companies list. With her company expanding, Scott turned to Richard Loeffler at the Eastern Region Small Business and Technology Development Center at Salisbury University in 2009 for advice about a small-business loan that would allow her to move from rented space to a building of her own in Federalsburg with more freezer space.
NEWS
April 22, 2013
Just when you thought Annapolis had run out of new ways to tax us, now we're all going to be hit again with the accurately named "rain tax" ("Anger grows over stormwater fees," April 16). Of course, the editors of The Sun think this is just wonderful and sorely needed to pay for all the new storm drains, collection ponds, stream restorations and so on mandated the E.P.A. Funny though, how it was only a couple of years ago that we were told the major cause of pollution in the bay was manure from chicken farms and agricultural run-off on the Eastern Shore.
NEWS
By Scott Dance and Blair Ames, Baltimore Sun Media Group | April 12, 2013
Sen. Ben Cardin lamented snowballing damage from federal budget cuts in town hall meetings with federal workers and small-business leaders Friday, pledging to work toward an alternative budget solution by October. But he acknowledged that achieving a compromise between similar budget proposals from the Senate and President Barack Obama and another from the House of Representatives could be a challenge. He spoke to two dozen Howard County business owners and more than 50 employees at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
NEWS
March 26, 2013
It was only a matter of time before Gov. Martin O' Malley and his groupies pushed another tax burden upon us ("House approves increase in gas tax," March 23). House Majority leader Kumar Barve estimates that this increase will cost motorists $10.10 a month, based on the example of someone who drives 15,000 miles a year in a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon. That may be the case in his world, but unfortunately not mine. My small business requires a truck that at best gets 13.5 miles to the gallon and an annual mileage exceeding 50,000 miles a year.