Baltimore Brew

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email this article Print this article The uncensored audit of the millions of dollars spent on renovating the Rocky Point Golf Clubhouse cites potential charter and code violations by the Olszewski-Klausmeier administrations in their successful effort to divert public funds to underwrite a pet project championed by County Executive Johnny Olszewski before he left office.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email this article Print this article To catch a glimpse of the rancor and paranoia now washing over the Brandon Scott administration as Isabel Mercedes Cumming, the city’s waste and fraud watchdog, proceeds with her lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court for records access, consider this: Following an interview with the OIG, a senior Scott employee complained to another city leader: “You know Isabel reads all my shit because she thinks its legal for her to have...

Until it was disclosed in an upbeat but vague press release, the public had no idea that P. David Bramble’s real estate company was slated to get a lucrative tax break for its plan to reconfigure Baltimore’s Inner Harbor with retail and high-rise apartment buildings. That’s because when the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) approved the massive property tax reduction for MCB Real Estate – up to 95% for as long as 25 years – they did it in a secret meeting never advertised to the public.

Twenty-five years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center, Francine Halvorsen put what she experienced into words for herself and in an email to a friend. Here’s what she wrote four days later at 4 a.m. while staying at the home of friends on Church Street who were out of town: Alone. I awaken in anxiety, heart beating, wash, turn on TV and it’s that old movie, Inside Daisy Clover.

It’s been more than a half century since Mayor William Donald Schaefer declared the Bradford pear the official City Tree of Baltimore. Since then, its reputation as America’s fast-growing, spring-flowering, urban-street-tree of choice has crumbled. These days, Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’, as it’s technically known, is reviled as an ecological menace.

Earlier this week The Brew reported that, since 2020, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been using the GUNTRY gun range in Owings Mills to train agents – leading some people to cancel their membership.

A last-minute shuffle by the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs, diverting $3.9 million of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds to a private trash hauler, was lauded by city officials yesterday. The reason: so the money is spent by December 31, 2026, the last day before unused funds must be returned to the U.S Treasury. “Proper fiscal oversight, Mr. Comptroller and Mr. President,” Mayor Brandon Scott asserted at the virtual images of Comptroller Bill Henry and Council President Zeke Cohen.

Not just cruel, but unconstitutional and out of step with much of the rest of the country. That’s how tenant advocates describe laws on the books in Baltimore City and Baltimore County that turn a person’s possessions over to the landlord the minute an eviction is served. The door is locked, the tenant is out, and the landlord can do whatever they want with what’s inside. That’s not how it’s done in other places.

Promising “a welcoming environment,” the GUNTRY gun range in Owings Mills showcases its inclusivity with pistol classes for women, archery training for kids and special discount days for seniors.

Citingarticles published in The Brew, six past members of the Baltimore County Council are demanding the release of the unredacted auditor’s report about $6.6 million in public funds spent to renovate a golf clubhouse at the direction of former County Executive Johnny Olszewski and his successor, Kathy Klausmeier.