Unchanged

In recognition that Baltimore's downtown office market has yet to recover from the industry's collapse, the latest state assessments of downtown office buildings have remained unchanged from previous, downwardly adjusted levels.State officials, who mailed the triennial assessment notices to property owners late last week, expect the latest round of valuations to be less vulnerable to significant reductions through appeals. This time, they said, the current assessments accurately reflect the status of the local commercial real estate market.

Maryland employers added 4,700 jobs in March, gains driven by the private sector, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Friday. It was the fourth straight month of increases, though at a lower level than the previous three. The expansion brought Maryland within about 5,000 jobs of finally regaining the number of positions the state had before the effects of the last recession set in - compared with nearly 2.9 million jobs still to go nationwide, more than the country added in all of last year.

WASHINGTON -- In an unexpectedly benign report, government figures showed yesterday that inflation vanished at the producer level in March, as both energy and food prices turned down.Not only was the price of finished products unchanged for the month, constituting the best performance since October, but goods at earlier stages of production also settled back to a pace that calmed jitters that had been developing from sharp price increases since late last year. March marked the end of the fourth year of economic recovery and expansion following the 1990-1991 recession.

Maryland employers added 6,700 jobs in January, picking up the pace from the end of last year, the U.S. Department of Labor said Monday. Businesses added 5,300 jobs in December, according to the agency's revised estimates. In both December and January, all gains came from the private sector as government agencies cut back — eliminating 1,500 jobs in each month. January's uptick wasn't large enough to lower the unemployment rate, which held steady at 6.7 percent. The U.S. jobless rate was 7.9 percent that month.

The Ravens have the same head coach from last year. Aside from a new quarterback, they essentially have the same starting lineups on offense and defense. It seems like virtually everything has remained the same ... except for the record. Falcons@Ravens Sunday, 1 p.m., Ch. 45, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Ravens by 4 1/2

WASHINGTON -- MCI Communications Corp.'s first-quarter profit was unchanged from a year earlier, the company said yesterday, as wider losses in new local phone and international operations offset an increase in long-distance earnings.The nation's No. 2 long-distance company behind AT&T Corp. said it earned $295 million, or 42 cents a share, the same as a year earlier. The earnings were a penny short of the average estimate of 43 cents a share, based on a survey of 15 analysts by IBES International Inc. MCI shares fell $1.375, to end at $37.375, in Nasdaq trading yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve policy-makers yesterday left unchanged the overnight bank lending rate -- a sign that tumult in world financial markets outweighs central bank concerns that the U.S. economy may be growing fast enough to spark accelerating inflation.In a move that sent stocks sliding and caused bonds to rally, the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee kept unchanged at 5.50 percent its target for the federal funds rate on overnight loans between banks."This is a situation where a prudent central banker does nothing and waits until the markets settle down," said former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley, a consulting economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.

Unemployment in the Baltimore area declined in January, from 6.9 percent to 6.4 percent, while the jobless rate in Maryland remained unchanged from December to January, officials reported today.The decline in the metropolitan area was attributed to a major recall of workers in the auto manufacturing industry. State officials attributed Maryland's stable rate to a decrease in the state's labor force rather than a decline in the number of people without jobs.In Baltimore City, the jobless rate dropped by almost a full percentage point from 10 percent to 9.1 percent.

Federal Reserve policy-makers left a key-interest rate unchanged yesterday at a 40-year low but opened the door to a cut later by saying the risks of economic weakness outweigh the prospects of inflation. Though the Fed's announcement had been expected, Wall Street was disappointed. All three major indexes were down more than 2 percent for the day. "It signals that they are concerned about the economy's plight, but they are not panicked," said Mark Zandi, chief economist with Economy.

NEW YORK -- Westinghouse Electric Corp. said yesterday it has completed the $5.4 billion purchase of CBS Inc. to become the nation's biggest broadcaster.The former industrial company has 211 affiliated television stations that reach 33 percent of U.S. households. It broadcasts its television shows to the U.S.'s six largest markets, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.Westinghouse agreed Aug. 1 to buy CBS, the nation's No. 3 station in prime time behind General Electric Co.'s NBC unit and Capital Cities/ABC.

The poverty rate in Baltimore held steady last year with about 1 in 4 counted as impoverished by the U.S. Census Bureau - a situation that economists say reflects the fits and starts of the nation's economic recovery. After a jump of more than 4 percent in the city's poverty rate between 2009 and 2010, the rate held steady in 2011, according to data released Thursday. That stagnation reflects the national trend. In the past two years, 15 percent of the U.S. population was living in poverty, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, the year the Great Recession began, according to census estimates.

A report last week that the University of Maryland Medical Center is one of 10 hospitals across the country this year that will begin offering new residency programs in addiction medicine is welcome news for Baltimore, which for decades has suffered from epidemic levels of drug and alcohol abuse and a violent drug trade that claims hundreds of lives every year. Estimates of the size of Baltimore's substance abuse problem range anywhere from one in 10 to one in six city residents. No city can make progress when such a substantial portion of its residents are mentally and physically disabled by substance abuse problems.

Ten years ago Monday, scenes out of Baltimore gripped the nation and much of the world when a CSX freight train carrying hazardous cargo derailed and caught fire in the century-old tunnel that winds below downtown. For a week much downtown activity stopped. Three Orioles games at nearby Camden Yards were canceled. Freight rail traffic along the East Coast was paralyzed. Temperatures in the tunnel rose as high as 1,500 degrees as a witches' brew of chemicals burned alongside paper and pulp products, and smoke poured from the openings.

For the third year in a row, Harford County's tax rate would remain at $2.73 per $100 of assessed value for the next fiscal year. From The Aegis of May 29, 1986 For the third year in a row, Harford County's tax rate would remain at $2.73 per $100 of assessed value for the next fiscal year. The Harford County Council had finished its review of the FY1986-1987 budget, called the "tamest" in 13 years, and approved the $108 million budget, 7 percent higher than the previous year.

An influential panel voted Tuesday to delay discussion of altering the state's corporate accounting rules, a move welcomed by the chieftains of large companies who worried that the change could hurt their bottom lines just as the economy appears to be brightening. The change, known as combined reporting, would make it difficult for companies to steer Maryland revenues to shell corporations in other states with more favorable corporate tax rates. Tightening corporate accounting rules has long offered a tempting, even populist, way for lawmakers to chip away at the state's persistent budget shortfalls.

More than 115,000 retirees and beneficiaries collecting state pensions won't see an increase in their checks next month — a first since annual cost-of-living adjustments were put in place in 1971. Retirement payments were actually set to drop slightly in lockstep with the Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation that fell in 2009 after rising for more than half a century. Instead, the General Assembly decided to hold the benefits steady and plans to subtract from any increase next year the amount added this year to make up for deflation.

This week marks the last issue of To Your Health as a separate tabloid section of The Evening Sun. We will still bring you a special section of health news every Tuesday, but starting next week it will be found within the pages of Accent on Health, an expanded feature section.Production and economic circumstances necessitate the change in format. Unchanged, however, is our commitment to bring you useful and timely health news. Also unchanged, we hope, is the reader support To Your Health has enjoyed since its launch three years ago.

The county Health Department's Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program has moved its administrative office and changed its main telephone number.The new site is Suite 200 in the North County Health Services Center, 791 Aquahart Road, Glen Burnie.The telephone number is 410-222-6797. Program services and check-pickup sites are unchanged, the agency said.Pub Date: 1/11/98

The Baltimore County school system's $1.37 billion budget proposal is slightly less than last year's budget but still meets the state's funding requirements. The fiscal year 2011 budget, which the County Council will vote on Thursday, is a decrease of $277,000 from this year's expenditures. The proposal includes funds for new construction, renovation, salaries and education initiatives. School officials project that enrollment will not change significantly; teacher salaries will remain competitive, with no threat of layoffs or furloughs to current staff; and students will not pay more for meals.

A Howard County judge has ruled that the county elections board properly followed state law when disqualifying names on petitions that sought to block a supermarket that critics said would be too large. Judge Timothy J. McCrone ruled late Monday that the board acted in accordance with Maryland law when it declared the drive to block the Turf Valley market dead on March 12, 2009. The elections board had decided earlier that a first batch of 2,603 names was sufficient to allow the campaign against a zoning change to proceed.