The  Allegany County Commissioners last week voted to approve a number of businesses that have met existing standards to qualify for Enterprise Zone Certification. The  program provides real property and state income tax credits for businesses located in a Maryland enterprise zone in return for job creation and investments. Businesses located in Focus Areas may be also qualified for personal property tax credits on new investment in personal property and enhanced income tax credit for creating new jobs. Nathan Price is the project manager and he reports the program is having a tremendous economic impact…

A tentative date in February is on the calendar for a town hall meeting designed to address business owners’ questions and concerns about the impact of the Baltimore Street renovation project. At this month’s meeting of the Downtown Development Commission, executive director Melinda Kelleher She said she has also been working with Matt Miller and Stu Czapski of the Cumberland Economic Development Corp. on the development of a mitigation plan for the project. That plan will be in the hands of business owners next month, followed by the public meeting in late February….

He leaves office in just over a month and last week Maryland Governor Larry Hogan offered some budget advice for his successor. In making his final budget recommendations to Gov.-elect Wes Moore, Hogan pointed out the state had a $2 billion surplus and a $3 billion Rainy Day fund – a fund five times as large as it was when he took office eight years ago. With economic uncertainty, Hogan urged caution to Democrats. However, he is recommending expanding spending for – among other things –expanded health care, including mental health care, in rural communities. Hogan said his administration and…

Members of the District One legislative delegation have concerns about the possibility of  Maryland accelerating minimum wage increases. Beginning in 2023 it will be $13.25 for larger businesses and $12.80 for small businesses, with the current plan to raise it to $15 by 2025. Governor-elect Wes Moore has expressed an interest in hiking the Maryland minimum wage to $15 before 2025. In addition, Moore has spoken about possibly indexing the minimum wage to inflation. Those plans are concerning for House 1C delegate elect Terry Baker who said local businesses would be hit hard…

As he prepares to leave office next month, Maryland Lt Governor Boyd Rutherford says he hopes to see the opioid epidemic continue to be a state priority. Rutherford was appointed chair of Maryland’s Heroid and Opioid Emergency Task Force in 2015 and has worked tireless on the crisis since- lobbying the general assembly for funds for a variety of programs ranging from  peer recovery services;  increasing the available stock of naloxone and law enforcement drug arrest operations; and additional mental health services for those who are addicted…

• CDC COVID-19 Community Level: Medium • Percent of Allegany County Population Fully Vaccinated (based on CDC data): 57.4% • Cumulative Allegany County COVID Cases: 20,904 • Cumulative Allegany County Deaths: 380 • Cases Per 100,000 People: 11.16 (Maryland: 15.92) • Positivity Rate: 5.57% (Maryland: 12.16%) Daily statistics can be found at https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/. Counts are updated by 11 a.m. each day. The Allegany County Health Department continues to offer free drive-thru COVID testing at the Allegany County Fairgrounds on Mondays from 2-7 p.m. and on Wednesdays and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. COVID vaccination clinics are held by…

WBAL reports the Maryland Lottery will move away from televised lottery drawings and move to a computer system that will pick the winning numbers. Lottery players may be used to seeing Maryland Lottery drawings live on WBAL-TV. But come Monday, that will change. "No more rolling machines out of a secure vault into a TV studio. No more placing ping-pong balls one by one and counting them endlessly. Now, it's a computer," said Patrick Morton, who has managed drawings for 20 years for the Maryland Lottery. The computer is called Random Number Generator. "RNG is not a new technology. We've…

A bust of a Supreme Court Justice from Maryland could be removed from the U.S. Capitol. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which defended slavery and denied the citizenship of Black Americans. The House passed a bill that would remove his statue from public display at the U.S. Capitol. A statue of Taney, who was born in Calvert County, was removed from Maryland's State House grounds in 2017. The measure also directs removing Taney's bust and replacing it with a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the court's first Black justice.  

Event organizers have announced that St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Sierra Ferrell, The California Honeydrops and Peter Rowan will be among the artists appearing at the 2023 DelFest. The four-day event will feature more than 30 performers, including daily shows from the Del McCoury Band. Additional acts will be added in the weeks leading up to the Memorial Day weekend event. One of the top bluegrass and Americana music events in the country, DelFest is held at the the Allegany County Fairgrounds in Cumberland. The dates for this year’s festival are May 25-28.

Maryland added thousands of more jobs for the month of November. U.S. Labor Department data shows Maryland's total jobs increased last month by 1,400. Leisure and hospitality saw the highest amount of growth, followed by the financial activities, mining and logging sectors, to name a few, with an increase of 2,200. Manufacturing, education and health services saw declines. The state's unemployment rate also fell two-tenths-of-one percent to 4.3% in November.