One of three pick-up zones for domestic airline passengers who park their vehicles in BWI lots. Travelers who park off-site are limited to just one pick-up point, necessitating longer walks. (Photos/VoB staff)

AIRPORT SHAFTS TRAVELERS
WHO PARK AT OFF-SITE LOTS;
LONG WALK TO LONE PICK-UP

Passengers are treated unfairly
to boost BWI parking revenue
 
By David Maril
 
There’s a lot to like about BWI-Thurgood Marshall.

Compared to most other metropolitan- based airports, BWI is easily accessible from two cities, Baltimore and Washington.

It’s also not difficult to drive through the entire airport, connecting to all of the terminals.

If you don’t think BWI is extremely approachable by car, try driving to and flying out of Logan Airport in Boston. If the ordeal of passing through one of the long, traffic-snarled tunnels under Boston Harbor doesn’t faze you, try timing how long it takes to navigate the confusing, crowded exits and ramps that lead from one terminal to another.

And while Logan offers free shuttle service to travelers who need to get from one end of the sprawling airport to the other, BWI is structured so everything is much closer together.

For a discount option in getting to BWI, the Baltimore Light Rail offers cheap, although slow, service from Hunt Valley and Timonium, through Mount Washington and the city, to the airport.

While the car rentals have relocated off the airport grounds, shuttle service is frequent and the rental facility is large, modern and functional.

Thanks to Southwest Airlines, the popular king of discount flights, BWI keeps expanding and growing. Southwest, making Baltimore its hub of the northeast, has rapidly taken over the airport’s A and B terminals and is starting to spill into C.

In conjunction with Southwest’s expansion, the A terminal was remodeled a few years ago and is an impressive example of a modern, user-friendly facility that includes moving walkways and a wide variety of eating places and shops. The B terminal has also been upgraded and is superior to what passengers experience in most other airports.

While BWI has lost a lot of its international flights, there’s optimism this trend will be reversed as Southwest, finishing its takeover of AirTran, begins to offer flights out of the country.

Read more »

 
NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday June 20

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia]
 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

Nearly everyone says the Washington Redskins should change their name, but hardly anyone complains about their cheerleaders. On Wednesday the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board canceled the team’s trademark. On Thursday, Md. gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan criticized the action.

•  CANCELLATION OF REDSKINS’ TRADEMARK MEANS LITTLE; HOGAN SLAMS PATENT OFFICE DECISION

In the wake of the U.S. Patent Office’s cancellation of six of the Washington, D.C. football team’s trademarks, Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan condemned the federal agency’s decision, saying he does not consider the team name to be a racial slur.

Hogan said the decision of whether or not to change the name should be left to the team and its fans “without the politically-motivated interference of pandering state and federal politicians.”

Read More at:  Sports Illustrated
| Baltimore Sun | New York Times

•  RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL DENIED MOVE TO LOTHIAN

The popular festival failed to get zoning approval from Anne Arundel County for its planned move from Crownsville.

Read More at:  The (Annapolis) Capital

•  2nd OFFICER SUSPENDED IN SLITTING OF DOG’S THROAT

According to court documents, the second officer held the dog down while a fellow officer cut the animal’s throat. Both Baltimore City police officers have been suspended, one without pay, one with; and both are more-than-20-year veterans of the department.

Read More at:  WBAL-TV (Channel 11)

•  TOP COP RESCUES MOTHER, SON FROM CRASH

It was the second high-profile incident Commissioner Anthony Batts has recently been involved in. Last month he helped arrest a gun suspect by punching him in the face.

Read More at:  WBAL-Radio (1090AM)

•  HOUSE GOP CHOOSES McCARTHY AS MAJORITY LEADER

The California Republican replaces Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, who is relinquishing the post after losing his primary election last week in an upset.

Read More at:  Wall Street Journal | CNN
 

Read more »

Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (blue polo shirt, center) and his run- ning mate, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman (red shirt, cen- ter), shown here campaigning in Crisfield, are the odds-on favor- ites to win Md.’s Democratic gubernatorial primary June 24th. (VoB File Photo/Veronica Piskor)

DISINTEREST IN ELECTION PROCESS
FOR MARYLAND’S NEXT GOVERNOR
REVEALS SEVERITY OF PROBLEM

Politicians milking system
bear responsibility for
this dangerous cynicism
 
By David Maril
 
The primary elections for governor in Maryland are looming large, just ahead on June 24th.

Turnout, however, gearing up for the Nov. 4th general election, looms small.

Make that microscopic.

However it isn’t a case of the electorate coming up short in the issues and complaint departments.

Many voters object to the growing taxes on gasoline. Some feel we are spending too much on inefficiently run social programs.

Others insist we don’t spend enough.

Some Marylanders view casinos and gambling as the lucky answer to all that challenges the state’s economy. Others predict revenue won’t be what the shills and lackeys with vested interest promise and will cause a number of other expensive economic and social problems.

We debate how to deal with, and who or what is responsible for, the pollution of the Chesapeake Bay.

Most Baltimoreans feel the city doesn’t get enough financial attention, while many county dwellers, pointing to the decreasing population, feel the city should be losing its influence.

Advocates of gloom and doom, who want to cut everything, revel in arguments that the local government is driving people, businesses and the affluent tax base to move out of state.

People on the other side take pride in Maryland’s being one of the more progressive states in the country.

We are also not coming up short in the number of candidates for governor to succeed Martin O’Malley.

Read more »

Mailer sent to city residents on behalf of the seven sitting Circuit Court judges up for election in Baltimore in the upcoming June 24 primary advises voters to “Skip #2,” obliterating the name of challenger Page Croyder, who is listed alphabetically on the ballot in the No. 2 position.

PAGE CROYDER RUNNING
TO ATTEMPT TO UNSEAT
CIRCUIT COURT CHIEF

Opposed reappointment
of Judge Alfred Nance
by Governor O’Malley

SKIP #2 — NOT A JUDGE
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
Page Croyder wants to unseat the Chief Judge of Baltimore City’s Circuit Court for what she describes as “sexual miscon- duct” and “inappropriate judicial behavior.”

Gov. Martin O’Malley was “wrong” to reappoint him, Croyder says, and “should have advertised” the position instead of blindly permitting Judge Alfred Nance to run for a second term as a sitting judge.

The governor is focusing on his “next step” — running for president — she told Voice of Baltimore in a free-wheeling interview earlier this week focusing on her upstart candidacy to unseat one of the city’s seven Circuit Court judges up for election June 24th.

“Every time he gets a step, he begins to run for the next one,” she said of O’Malley. As such, he is not paying attention to the judiciary, she charged.

O’Malley reappointed Nance for a second 15-year term, to which he must be elected this November, beginning with the party primaries Tuesday after next. Nance was originally appointed to the court in 1997 by then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening and was elevated to Chief Judge in February of this year.

In an attempt to make the judiciary “nonpolitical,” Maryland, like many other states, requires sitting Circuit Court judges to run for election after their appointment — which they typically do on both major party ballots as a “slate,” that in Croyder’s estimation deludes voters into thinking they have to vote for all the judges listed, to the detriment of independent candidates like herself.

The sitting judges created “this slate business,” she says, to enable themselves to run as a “tested and trusted” group — their words, she points out — implying that all challengers to their incumbency are therefore not similarly “tested and trusted.”

But the question is, she adds: “‘Tested and trusted’ by whom?” [See box below.]

Croyder maintains voters “should never vote for an entire slate,” that they should vote only for a specific judge or judges that they have “a particular reason” to want to keep on the bench, much as voters do when electing a state delegate, where three seats are open in each district but a single vote may be cast if desired.

Read more »

 
NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday June 13

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia]
 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

Hells Angels bikers stopped at a restaurant in Gambrills; Anne Arundel Executive Laura Neuman is criticizing Steve Schuh over it.

•  NEUMAN HITS SCHUH ON HELLS ANGELS VISIT TO RESTAURANT

In April the gang stopped at the Greene Turtle restaurant in Gambrills and left without causing any problems.

Relative to the visit, Neuman brushed aside criticism from Schuh — who is running against her for Anne Arundel County Executive — for allegedly “using the police department for political purposes” to criticize Greene Turtle, calling it “clearly a political statement intended to cover up bad public policy” at the restaurant.

Schuh is the owner of several restaurants managed by GT-Mid States LLC, a holding company for restaurants including Greene Turtle Sports and Grilles in Gambrills, Pasadena and Annapolis. He is the company’s financial adviser and is not involved in the day-to-day operations of the businesses.

Read More at:  The (Annapolis) Capital

•  COUNTY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT FOUND IN VIOLATION OF ETHICS CODE

Baltimore County Superintendent Dallas Dance took a consulting job with a professional development company that does business with the school system. He promised not to do that anymore.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun

•  EARLY VOTING BEGINS FOR JUNE 24 MARYLAND PRIMARY

The polls opened statewide Thursday morning at 10 a.m. They will remain open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. through next Thursday, June 19th.

Read More at:  WBAL-TV (Channel 11)

•  MD. JUDGE RULES AGAINST ONLINE BALLOTS FOR BLIND, DISABLED

Citing concerns about ballot security, a federal judge in Baltimore said Thursday he would not require elections officials to provide online absentee ballots for visually impaired and physically disabled voters in the June 24 primary election.

Read more »