Stories

Amber is in Maryland’s foster care system, but she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in mid-October, shortly after she tried to kill herself. WYPR is not using her real name to protect her privacy. Most of Amber’s days for the last three months have followed the same schedule. The teenager wakes up, eats breakfast,…

Howard County, Md., is home to roughly 50,000 federal employees and government contractors. County officials estimate the government shutdown affected at least 10 percent of the people who live there. And the three-week funding agreement that Washington, D.C., political leaders reached yesterday gives many of those federal workers little reason for optimism. This story aired…

In his quest for the Democratic nomination for governor, Ben Jealous raised more than $2 million. Nearly half of his roughly 20,000 donors had addresses in California, Maryland or New York. But several dozen donors listed addresses outside the United States. Read the full story.

Thirty-five-year-old Cory McCray checked his list of registered Democratic voters before climbing each set of porch steps and knocking on each door in a Northeast Baltimore neighborhood on a recent afternoon. “I’m Cory McCray, your state delegate,” he told a resident who answered her door. “I’m in a very contentious race, so when you go…

  Since the first 9-1-1 call was made 50 years ago, not much has changed about how Maryland’s 9-1-1 system functions. As a result, there are times when 9-1-1 doesn’t work. That’s what happened to Carl Henn on July 25, 2010. The 48-year-old was having a picnic with some friends at a park near his…

  Maryland residents are expected to save nearly $3 billion on their federal income taxes in 2018 as a result of the new federal tax law, according to a report state Comptroller Peter Franchot released Thursday. But residents will likely lose at least $400 million in state and local income taxes, unless lawmakers act to…

  The opening day of the General Assembly session is always filled with platitudes about bipartisanship and displays of camaraderie. Along these lines, Gov. Larry Hogan urged cooperation in his opening remarks to legislators on Wednesday, the first day of the 2018 legislative session. “Over the next 90 days, our goal is going to be…

    Thirty-seven-year-old Tara Herbert entered a classroom at the Little Flowers Early Childhood and Development Center in West Baltimore, where she’s a teacher. Five one-year-olds sat around a small table while a movie played nearby. Another teacher was spoon feeding one of the toddlers. “Yeah, they all sleepy. It’s almost their lunch time,” Herbert…

Odell Jones describes himself as a “working addict.” For decades, he maintained a career in social work and politics, as well as a family — four children and a wife — while using and selling heroin. ”An individual would not know that I was a drug user, or a drug dealer, for that matter, unless…