Those inter­ested in the strug­gle (and why is this a strug­gle? Every­one agrees, right?) to get an audit of the Bal­ti­more City Depart­ment of Recre­ation and Parks ought to tune in to the Marc Steiner Show tonight at 5 p.m. (less than an hour from now, sorry) on WEAA, 88.9 FM. From Steiner: “Tune in tonight at...
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So the Bal­ti­more Grand Prix has its third cor­po­rate coor­di­na­tor in less than a year, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced yes­ter­day. The Sun had it first, focus­ing on the mar­quee name of Michael Andretti.  But the online Bal­ti­more Brew has a bit more con­text about the real new leader, James P. Grant—noting that he’s given Rawlings-Blake...
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EPA Air-Pollution Allegations at Baltimore Plant" width="80" />

Amer­i­can Sugar Refin­ing, Inc., has been sued by the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) over the oper­a­tion of boil­ers at its iconic Domino Sugar plant over­look­ing Baltimore’s Inner Har­bor. Accord­ing to the law­suit, filed May 9 in U.S. Dis­trict Court in Mary­land, Amer­i­can Sugar is liable for per-diem penal­ties for each day it vio­lated...
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UPDATE: A sen­tence has been removed from this post at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Daniel McIn­tosh has long main­tained he’s been the major­ity share­holder of Sonar night­club in down­town Bal­ti­more since he took over from co-founder Lon­nie Fisher in 2007. But if new fed­eral charges against McIn­tosh and nine oth­ers,...
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Justin Fen­ton has scoop: Fred­er­ick Beale­feld, Bal­ti­more City’s police com­mis­sioner, is going to announce that he’s step­ping down today. And the Mayor’s office con­firms, Sun says.….
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“20 by 2020” Tax Cut Passes; Some Dissent" width="80" />

In a rare dis­play of non-unanimity, City Coun­cil mem­bers Bill Henry (4th Dis­trict), Carl Stokes (12th), War­ren Branch (13th) and Mary Pat Clarke (14th) voted to send a prop­erty tax break for city home­own­ers back to com­mit­tee. The ten other coun­cil mem­bers, includ­ing Coun­cil pres­i­dent Bernard C. ‘Jack” Young, voted against the mea­sure and...
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Secret Ser­vice mem­bers to receive spe­cial ethics train­ing at Johns Hop­kins. From this morning’s Bal­ti­more Sun: “Ninety-nine times out of 100 they know the right thing to do. The ques­tion is, what do you do when you hit a tough moral case?” [Christo­pher Dreis­bach, direc­tor of Applied Ethics and Human­i­ties for the Divi­sion of...
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In a little-noticed rul­ing, (link to pdf) the Mary­land Court of Appeals has changed a long-standing “one free bite” rule regard­ing dog bite vic­tims’ rights to receive com­pen­sa­tion for their injuries: We are mod­i­fy­ing the Mary­land com­mon law of lia­bil­ity as it relates to attacks by pit bull and cross-bred pit bull dogs against humans....
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Fresh­man City Coun­cil­man Nick Mosby has pub­lished an ambi­tious web-based (Flash Player) “mag­a­zine” called Seven, look­ing back at his first 100 days in office and fea­tur­ing sev­eral well-written mini fea­tures about some high­lights of the dis­trict such as the STEM school, Art Blocks and Sha­lik Ful­ton, an up-and-coming young leader. Mosby also high­lights a...
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Below, repro­duced in its entirety, is a press release we just got from our friends at ACA Inter­na­tional, the debt col­lec­tors’ consortium: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Con­tact: Mark Schiff­man, PR Director Tel. (952) 259‑2124 or schiffman@acainternational.org DEBTORS’ PRISONS DON’T EXIST, NOR ARE THEY RETURNING MINNEAPOLIS – (April 26, 2012) – ACA Inter­na­tional, rep­re­sent­ing the credit and col­lec­tions...
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The head of the Bal­ti­more City Recre­ation and Parks Advi­sory Board sent a testy let­ter this morn­ing to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, chal­leng­ing her to imple­ment reforms the board has been push­ing for sev­eral years. “Since our Advi­sory Board was appointed four years ago, the Depart­ment of Recre­ation and Parks has had three Direc­tors and faced at...
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The own­ers of South Moun­tain Cream­ery (SMC), the Fred­er­ick County dairy farm and main­stay of Baltimore’s farm­ers mar­kets, are fac­ing a new phase of legal trou­ble with the Mary­land U.S. Attorney’s Office (MD-USAO). As City Paper first reported on Wednes­day, the bank account where SMC deposits its farmers-market pro­ceeds was emp­tied in late Feb­ru­ary, pur­suant...
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