Lots going on under the umbrella of Labor Day's official launch of the presidential campaigns -- The Bay's pollution by two large local businesses is compounded by local governments' insufficient moves to remedy stormwater runoff. Result: a one-two punch to the Bay's future. Students' cellphones are an up-front issue in schools throughout the state, while the effects of the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, the long-range (and expensive) plan for school improvement, is creeping into everyday life in mostly good ways (unless you are a county budget officer). Around the country, those states that still tax groceries are deciding to dump or suspend them to ease supermarket costs. And more: new Covid boosters OK'd, states struggle to overcome local resistance to renewables, and a software company is sued by DOJ for enabling rental price-fixing. It's News You Can Use.

HERE IN MARYLAND

‘Sun Bucks’ Summer Grocery Assistance Program Reached 583,000 Low-Income Kids: A new summer nutrition program that one advocate called a "game-changer" reached 586,734 children this summer, 43,000 more than state officials had expected, according to recent numbers from the Maryland Department of Human Services. But officials said there is still time to sign up for the program, and they were encouraging families to do so before the Aug. 31 deadline in order to get $120 per child for grocery assistance. Because Aug. 31 falls on a Saturday, the department said families will only have until 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 30, to submit their applications. The federally funded program is aimed at closing the so-called summer hunger gap, when schools that provide free or low-cost meals to many children are closed. Maryland Matters

Prison Staff Shortages Continue To Fester: Though Maryland’s prison system has worked to reinforce its facilities over the past two years, staffing shortages throughout the state are endangering inmates and employees, according to the correctional officers’ union. Baltimore Sun.

Blueprint For Education Changes Begin Taking Hold: Parents may barely have heard of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, but the expansive changes to public education are already shaping their children’s lives in school. Parents are seeing more spots available in public prekindergarten, putting thousands of dollars back in their pockets. Their children’s teachers are better paid. They soon may see class sizes rise or fall dramatically, depending on where their kids go to school. And their high schoolers are being held to a higher standard, but have more opportunities to take college-level classes and pursue careers. Local governments? Two years into the popular $4.4 billion-a-year plan, educators in every school district are finding their priorities reordered, sometimes in ways they hadn’t expected. Baltimore Banner. (may be paywalled)

Maryland Schools Wrestle With Limiting Student Cellphone Use: As students head back to school in Maryland, districts are wrestling with how to limit cellphone use in hopes of keeping students focused in the classroom and reducing their dependence on the devices, which experts say can negatively impact their mental health. Baltimore Sun.

Maryland Levies Fines On Perdue, Valley Proteins For Environmental Violations

Two major agricultural companies ramped up operations recently on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and the environment paid a price, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Perdue AgriBusiness, a subsidiary of poultry giant Perdue Farms, landed in hot water after state officials say the company expanded its Salisbury soybean processing facility without a permit or proper air-pollution controls. That resulted in a $12 million settlement announced in July by MDE and the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, the second-largest cash penalty ever levied by MDE. In a separate case, MDE charges that Darling Ingredients, owner of the Valley Proteins poultry rendering plant in Dorchester County, has violated its October 2022 consent decree. Under that settlement, Darling Ingredients agreed to pay $540,000 to the state while fixing wastewater and stormwater problems at the troubled plant. "I would say this facility is in no better shape than it was in 2021 when we filed the lawsuit,” said Matt Pluta, the Choptank Riverkeeper. Bay Journal

Appeals Court Upholds State Gun Licensing Law: A federal appeals court upheld Maryland’s decade-old handgun licensing law Friday, saying that since it requires that the government issue a license to any law-abiding person, it does not infringe on the Second Amendment. The majority of the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments from gun-rights groups that the state’s handgun qualification license law, or HQL statute, infringes on the Second Amendment because it delays a person’s right to get a gun. Maryland Matters.

Maryland, Other States Join FTC Antitrust Suit to Block Grocery Merger: A federal trial begins today in a challenge to plans by the grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons to merge. The companies planning the largest supermarket merger in history are battling a Federal Trade Commission request to block the merger. Attorneys general in Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Wyoming and the District of Columbia have joined the FTC’s suit. (Associated Press) via Pluribus

Maryland Cases Shed Light On Parent Accountability In Gun Crimes: There have been multimillion-dollar lawsuits against gun manufacturers and marches that have drawn hundreds of thousands to Washington calling for lawmakers to take action against violence. For change, Melissa Willey looked closer to home. Her 16-year-old daughter Jaelynn was killed in 2018 in a Southern Maryland high school by a former boyfriend, 17, using his father’s gun. Willey helped pass Jaelynn’s Law last year, which penalizes gun owners who fail to secure firearms that then fall into the hands of minors. Baltimore Sun.

EPA May Crack Down on Region’s Stormwater Programs: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is warning states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that they are “significantly off track” in meeting goals to reduce stormwater pollution and that the agency may exert greater oversight of those efforts. The target, established in 2010, will be missed by a large margin, mostly because of shortfalls in the agricultural sector, the largest source of water-fouling nutrients to the Bay. But runoff from developed lands, parking and pavement, also contributes a significant amount of nutrient pollution — which includes both nitrogen and phosphorus — to the Bay and its rivers. Bay Journal

THE OTHER 49

Landlords Cry Foul As More States Seal Eviction Records

 When pandemic-era tenant protections expired, rents soared, and eviction filings surged last year more than 50% over pre-pandemic levels in some U.S. cities. Simply being named in an eviction complaint, regardless of the outcome - and in Maryland, more than 100,000 filed cases were dismissed in fiscal 2021 - can severely limit future housing options and prolong housing insecurity. That has sparked a growing debate across the country: Should eviction records be shielded from public access to offer tenants a cleaner shot at finding another home? In recent years, more states are saying, “yes — at least in some cases.” [A new Maryland law covering aspects of this issue goes into effect Oct. 1.] Maryland Matters

Utah Voters Invited to Take Away Their Own Powers: Utah’s legislature approved a proposed constitutional amendment in a brief special session on Wednesday that would allow lawmakers to amend or repeal citizen-led ballot measures, potentially overturning a state Supreme Court ruling. Voters must approve the amendment in November. (Salt Lake Tribune) via Pluribus

Just seven ballot measures have been approved since the right to an initiative was added to the state constitution in 1900.

Reproductive Rights: Abortion rights ballot initiatives will appear in nine states this year, after measures in Montana and Arizona cleared final hurdles this week. Voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Nevada and South Dakota will also decide on ballot measures. It’s the largest number of pro-abortion rights measures ever to appear on ballots in a single year. (Pluribus News, paywalled)

$1 Million For AI-Fueled Disinformation; $6 Million For the Perp: Lingo Telecom will pay $1 million under an agreement with the Federal Communications Commission after it sent deceptive calls to New Hampshire voters using artificial intelligence to mimic President Biden’s voice. The consultant who orchestrated the calls faces more: a proposed $6 million fine for his role. (Associated Press) via Pluribus

States join Live Nation suit: Attorneys general in ten states have joined 29 other states and the Justice Department in an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation. The lawsuit accuses the firms of blocking competition in the live events business. Read more at The Hill. Via Pluribus

States Ditch Grocery Taxes to Ease Price Crunch

The number of states that still tax groceries is shrinking. Voters in two states will decide in November whether to join a movement away from the sales tax. The cost of groceries has been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail as well as state-level deliberations. While inflation overall is cooling, slipping under 3% for the first time since 2021, food prices, the third-largest household expenditure after housing and transportation, are still far higher than they were pre-pandemic. In response to these high prices at the supermarket, state legislatures this session took aim at the grocery sales tax. Oklahoma (4.5%) and Illinois (1%) have put their grocery sales tax on the November ballot, and others are considering it. Maryland does not tax groceries. Route Fifty

West Virginia Credit Crunch: Gov. Jim Justice (R) and his family have reached a temporary agreement with a credit collection company that was moving ahead with plans to sell the historic Greenbrier Hotel. Justice’s family says it has secured the funding necessary to pay off the credit agency in full. (WV Metro News) via Pluribus. [Justice is the leading candidate to flip the open Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Joe Manchin, former (D), now (I)].

NATIONAL AND THE FEDS

U.S. Accuses Software Maker RealPage of Enabling Collusion on Rents

The Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against the real estate software company, accusing it of creating an illegal pricing scheme to charge tenants more. It’s the first major civil antitrust lawsuit where the role of an algorithm in pricing manipulation is central to the case, DOJ officials said. New York Times

 A Third Of The World’s Population Lacks Internet Connectivity − Airborne Communications Stations Could Change That

Network equipment riding on balloons, airships, gliders and planes could boost internet access, including in disaster zones, and improve scientific monitoring. The Conversation

FDA Greenlights New COVID Vaccine After A Summer Of Rising Numbers Of Cases -- Action comes as Maryland is reporting rising numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved an updated COVID-19 vaccine intended to address severe symptoms of the virus ahead of the cold and flu season. The new booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer follow a summer of increasing COVID-19 cases and are designed to better address the variants that are circulating now. The Center for Disease Control reports that about half of US states, including Maryland, have “very high” amounts of COVID-19 virus identified in wastewater collections, signals to health officials that viral activity is rising. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a written statement that vaccination “continues to be the cornerstone of COVID-19 prevention.” States Newsroom via Maryland Matters

Search Engineering Note: According to a computer engineering professor at the University of California Riverside, AI searches require at least ten times the energy that a Google search consumes. (Los Angeles Times)[paywalled] via Pluribus. More wonky details on AI’s power drain from The Conversation

States Moving to Overcome Local Renewables Resistance With Carrots, Sticks: Utility-scale renewables development has ground to a halt in at least 15% of U.S. counties due to a combination of bans, moratoriums, and overly strict zoning and land-use restrictions, according to a February analysis by USA Today. Lawmakers in Michigan, New York, Illinois and other states with 100% carbon-free electricity goals are pushing back with policies that centralize renewables permitting at the state level, provide financial incentives for more permissive local ordinances, or both. Utility Dive