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The City of Annapolis struck agreements with four employee unions on Monday, giving employees raises and changing their health benefits in retirement.

For the first time in 40 years, the public will be privy to negotiations between Howard County Education Association and the Board of Education.

HCEA President Paul Lemle presented the board with a draft memorandum of understanding at its meeting Thursday, Oct. 10. The draft, if agreed upon, would waive the closed meetings provision of the master agreement between the union and board, and allow for open, public meetings as the two bodies negotiate contracts.

Baltimore County sheriff's deputies are the latest group of employees to reach a three-year labor agreement with the county.

Baltimore County has reached a three-year labor agreement with AFSCME Local 921, whose members had been working without a contract for more than a year.

Anne Arundel County government employees will have to work longer to get health insurance in retirement and the county will pay for a smaller portion of the coverage, under a bill proposed by County Executive Laura Neuman.

Saying her county is "on a path to bankruptcy if it doesn't address this issue," Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman on Monday warned county government employees that significant changes to retiree health care plans must occur to repair a system she described as financially unsustainable.

Despite the ongoing public controversy about it, Harford County's $50 pay-to-play fee to participate in athletics is having little apparent impact on the players themselves.

Six weeks after taking over the U.S. Department of Labor, Marylander Thomas E. Perez is receiving praise from unions, concern from business leaders and hope from others that he will expand the agency's mission.

The retirement of a top state prison official has been announced amid calls from the union representing corrections officers that he step down in light of a string of inmate-on-officer attacks under his watch.

An inmate at a Western Maryland prison tested positive for the bacteria that causes Legionnaire's disease, prompting an investigation into the facility's water supply.

Legislators who shape criminal justice policy have joined union officials in demanding answers from the state in the violent assault on a Western Maryland corrections officer earlier this week

Baltimore County has reached an agreement to extend the contracts of firefighters and paramedics through June 2016, the county announced Wednesday.

The spate of inmate-on-guard violence at North Branch Correctional Institution, the state's newest and most secure prison, is even more serious than the corruption at the Baltimore jail.

The inmate's handwritten letter, addressed to a tier captain in the North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland, was crystal clear: Remove two specific corrections officers from the housing unit, or they would be violently attacked.

City officials have dropped more than 1,600 spouses, children and others from municipal health care coverage after workers failed to fill out forms to prove they were legitimate dependents.

Seven months into his first term, Rep. John Delaney of Maryland is charting a centrist course in a Congress bitterly divided by partisan politics. The effort, observers say, could be crucial in determining whether the Democrat will win re-election in 2014.

Two corrections officers at the troubled Baltimore City Detention Center have resigned after being charged with crimes, authorities said Friday.

The union that represents correctional officers at a maximum-security prison in Western Maryland says prison officials have not done enough to prevent a recent spike in assaults by inmates on guards, with 12 of them injured since late June.

A prison in Western Maryland is on lockdown after at least one recent assault by inmates on guards, and correctional union officials have planned a meeting with the secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services this week.

The Howard County Board of Education last week signed agreements with three bargaining units while ratification is still pending for two others. Negotiations are ongoing with the Howard County Education Association

Maryland corrections officials faced questions from state lawmakers Thursday over whether they are acting swiftly enough to investigate potential corruption among employees.

The Howard County Board of Education Thursday, June 20 announced it had reached agreements with most of its bargaining units, but negotiations with the Howard County Education Association, the teachers' union, are ongoing.

The head of security at the Baltimore jail failed a polygraph test administered after a federal indictment alleged widespread corruption on her watch, corrections secretary Gary D. Maynard told lawmakers at a hearing in Annapolis.

An audit of the Baltimore jail system shows widespread disorder.

Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to beef up the internal investigations unit at the state corrections agency and subject all prospective officers to polygraph tests, according to a summary of reforms his administration will discuss at a legislative hearing Thursday on problems at the Baltimore jail.

Corrections officials are investigating whether an inmate at the Baltimore City Detention Center has been using a contraband cellphone to post photos and updates on Facebook and Instagram online accounts.

The Baltimore City Detention Center had the second-highest rate of sexual contact between jail staff and inmates in the nation, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study released less than a month after federal prosecutors accused corrections officers at the jail of sleeping with gang members.

Restrictions on visits could harm trial preparation, attorney argues

Governor wants to 'root out corruption' and tackle gangs behind bars

Senior administrators at the detention center have been investigated in wake of federal corruption indictment

The inmates' requests often start small, former corrections officers say: a ballpoint pen, for example, or a sandwich from beyond the prison walls.

State corrections secretary Gary D. Maynard has moved his office to the Baltimore City Detention Center to directly oversee a sweeping review of the jail's leadership and staff, including polygraph tests of top administrators and integrity reviews of every employee, a department spokesman said Friday.

One of the corrections officers accused this week of helping Black Guerrilla Family members smuggle drugs into a Baltimore jail was flagged seven years ago for alleged gang ties.

Legislation forcing all Maryland teachers to pay dues isn't fair

A Baltimore County worker employed with the Property Management Division died after emergency personnel responded to a former golf course in Kingsville where he was working Monday, but officials released few details about the death.

Ernest B. Crofoot, a labor organizer who later became head of Council 67 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, died Friday from complications of cancer at his Annapolis home. He was 88.

Robert W. Cos, a crane equipment safety consultant who raised awareness in the 1980s over the unsafe car practice called "clipping," died Sunday of pancreatic cancer at Stella Maris Hospice. The longtime Canton resident was 65.

In recent weeks, nurses and other health care workers have shared their stories of being violently attacked with legislators in Annapolis with one goal in mind — reducing assaults in Maryland health care facilities.

In-patient units at Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville "have in effect become lawless environments" where serious assaults on hospital staff are common, according to a scathing new report from a consultant for the Maryland health department.

In-patient units at Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville "have in effect become lawless environments" where serious assaults on hospital staff are common, according to a scathing new report from a consultant for the Maryland health department.

Columnist fails to look at Maryland pension plan's favorable return on investment

State lawmakers from Baltimore County have asked the County Council to postpone a vote on a measure that would change the way public employees appeal county decisions on their retirement benefits, saying the bill could violate state law..

Baltimore County labor leaders plan to fight legislation by County Executive Kevin Kamenetz that would change the way public workers can appeal decisions on their retirement and disability benefits, saying it the bill would stack the deck against employees.

President Obama begins his second term with a solid series of accomplishments related to the federal workforce, but with more crucial questions facing federal employees than at any time in the past four years.

Gov. Martin O'Malley released a $37.3 billion spending plan Wednesday that for the first time in recent years contains no drastic cuts or proposed tax increases.

Anne Arundel County is planning not to revive the new emergency dispatch system that it unplugged a year ago amid an uproar by the police, firefighters and dispatchers, officials said.