State Officials

Four trucks laden with 100 slot machines arrived early Wednesday morning at the nearly completed casino at Arundel Mills mall. For the next two hours, workers wheeled banks of the gleaming new machines, one by one, inside on hand trucks. Installation of the first set of slots moved Maryland Live! Casino, the state's largest, another step closer to its scheduled opening in three months. That's progress for Maryland's lackluster gambling program, which has yet to be fully implemented more than three years after voters approved five slots locations statewide.

A Chinese bank will establish its first U.S. office in Maryland, state economic development officials announced Friday. The Export-Import Bank of China and the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development signed a cooperative agreement allowing the bank to open an office at the World Trade Center Baltimore at the Inner Harbor. The bank will focus on business development, project evaluation and building relationships in the U.S. market as well as consider providing funding for Chinese companies looking to invest in the United States.

Ongoing battles between state officials and Constellation Energy Group escalated again Thursday when Maryland regulators ordered a review of the company's deal with a French utility and Constellation quickly countered with a lawsuit. The Public Service Commission, the state's top energy regulator, determined that Constellation's $4.5 billion deal to sell half its nuclear power assets to Electricite de France must be in the public's interest. The order adds a regulatory hurdle to completing the transaction, which the company had hoped to do by October.

Update on my Tuesday column about "forced bundling," where an insurance company requires you buy an auto policy from it if you want a homeowner's policy. Maryland wants to ban this practice.  I mentioned that Florida-based Merastar Insurance Co. notified Maryland officials of its intention to require consumers to buy both homeowner's and auto insurance from it if they want any coverage. State officials say Merastar has withdrawn its filing.

Maryland officials say they've detected little or no trace of radiation in the state from the Japanese nuclear reactor accident, though federal agencies are reporting slightly elevated levels of radioactive iodine in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Maryland secretary of health and mental hygiene, said that monitoring by state agencies of air, water and food supplies has found "no reason for public health concern. " The Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Sunday that "very small amounts" of radioactive materials might be detected in air and precipitation across the country using very sensitive equipment.

State officials lifted all restrictions on flu shots yesterday, saying there is enough vaccine on hand to offer influenza vaccinations to everyone - not just people at high risk from the illness. Maryland joins at least 17 other states that have done the same after the federal government eased restrictions last month, according to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. A national shortage of flu vaccine prompted Maryland officials to limit those eligible to receive it. The shortage occurred when 48 million doses of adult vaccine - roughly half the expected U.S. supply - were pulled from the market after bacterial contamination was found in a British production facility.

Pointing to statistics on motor vehicle accidents and studies of a lack of maturity among teenagers, state officials urged a House of Delegates committee yesterday to support legislation to increase restrictions on young drivers, one of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s top priorities. Maryland transportation officials told the House Environmental Matters Committee that statistics from 2003, the state's latest, show that 146 of the 651 vehicle fatalities that year, 22 percent of the total, involved drivers ages 16 to 20. And nearly half of the young drivers involved in the fatal crashes were not wearing seat belts.

Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein is suggesting that he and other top state office-holders sacrifice part of their forthcoming pay raises because of Maryland's budget crisis and to demonstrate sensitivity to the 75,000 rank-and-file state workers whose cost-of-living raises seem to be in jeopardy.Goldstein, citing an alarming slump in state sales tax revenue, said at a Board of Public Works meeting last week that ranking office-holders ought to get smaller pay raises."I'm going to propose that state officials take a discount," the comptroller said.

Every morning a state trooper arrives at Oakland Hall, the Calvert County home of Louis L. Goldstein, to whisk the state comptroller 40 miles to work. For the next 12 hours, the trooper will not stray far from him.Mr. Goldstein is among an elite group of Maryland politicians who together receive nearly $2 million a year worth of protection and transportation from the state police.More than 30 troopers guard the governor and six other state officials, including the lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, Senate president and House speaker.

WASHINGTON - In an important victory for patients, two federal appeals courts have ruled that poor people may sue state officials to compel them to provide benefits promised under the federal Medicaid law. Michigan, North Carolina and other states had argued that they were shielded from such lawsuits by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. But in separate rulings this month, three-judge panels of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., and the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, Ohio, unanimously rejected those arguments.

Aramark will lay off 64 workers in Silver Spring in May when it stops managing the Kirkland Conference Center at the National Labor College, the company told state officials Tuesday. Aramark filed a notice with the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. The company said it would stop providing management services as of May 21. Lorraine.mirabella@baltsun.com Text BUSINESS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun Business text alerts

William Arthur Urie, a former FBI special agent who later was secretary of the state Department of Licensing and Regulation, died of cancer Monday at his Silver Spring home. He was 92. The son of a store owner and a beautician, he was born and raised in Rock Hall. After graduating from Rock Hall High School in 1935, he earned a bachelor's degree from Washington College in 1939. He attended law school at George Washington University. He served as a military policeman and later an Army provost marshal from 1941 to 1945, when he was discharged with the rank of captain.

As President Barack Obama proposed a new round of military base closures and reorganization, Maryland's political and business forces already are working to protect installations here and position the state to benefit from any future moves. Maryland still is growing from the last round of the base realignment process known as BRAC, which brought new commands, new missions and tens of thousands of new jobs to Fort Meade, Aberdeen Proving Ground and other military installations around the state.

Maryland is on track to reduce climate-altering greenhouse gases 25 percent by the end of the decade, according to a state environmental official. In a preview of the state's overdue plan to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, George S. "Tad" Aburn Jr., head of air management for the state Department of the Environment , told members of the House Environmental Matters Committee Wednesday that Maryland should exceed the goal set in a 2009 law if all 65 control programs laid out in the draft blueprint work as planned.

As elected officials in Baltimore and Annapolis seek to address the debacle that was the city's voter turnout during the mayoral primary and general election last year, it's clear that the thing they care about the most is what voters care about the least: what's in it for the politicians. State House leaders (in particular, Senate PresidentThomas V. Mike Miller) don't like the fact that the current system allows city officials to run for governor or the legislature without giving up their seats - in essence, allowing them a free shot at higher office.

The assessed value of Jack Becker's three-bedroom split-level home in Reisterstown dropped nearly $90,000 in the past five years. But in a bad economy, Becker still thought his assessment — and property taxes — were too high. He filed an appeal to the state Department of Assessments and Taxation. It was denied. Then, Becker waited more than nine months for a hearing with a local appeals board, finally getting one in November. He still hadn't gotten the results of the hearing when he paid his tax bill in December.

Police and state transportation officials urged lawmakers yesterday to expand the use of speed cameras in Maryland, saying they want to save lives, not raise revenues. Baltimore City and Howard County are among the local governments seeking to join Montgomery County with state legislation authorizing deployment of cameras to catch speeders. Local and state officials told members of the House Environmental Matters Committee that the devices have proven effective in reducing speeding and accidents and that they are more economical than posting a policeman on the roadside.

Owners of the unlicensed assisted living facility in Owings Mills where a caretaker was fatally stabbed this week were running four other group homes in the area, health officials learned yesterday. One of the owners of A Touch of Love Assisted Living Group Inc. told health investigators last night that the company provided service to 24 mentally ill men and women at five group homes in the Owings Mills area. Four of the homes were in the Briarwood apartment complex where the stabbing occurred, and the fifth was nearby.

The state Board of Physicians Tuesday suspended the license of a Salisbury pain doctor, who the board said had not been using proper safeguards in prescribing opiates. Separately, state health officials had suspended Dr. Brent R. Fox's authority to write prescriptions for opiates and other controlled dangerous substances last week after their own investigation showed he was prescribing drugs in amounts outside of standards and was not conducting thorough exams of patients. The new action means the doctor can't practice medicine in Maryland for now. The doctor had been referred to the state by a managed-care organization with which Fox was affiliated, and the state has become more aggressive in tackling abuse of highly addictive painkillers.