Photo courtesy Dr. Candice Camille
Dr. Candice Camille, Student Imani Palmer, Dr. Laura Dorsey, and Dr. Josephine Mourning
LLD Scholars Expo Series Connects Hundreds of Students to $14.2 Million in Scholarship Opportunities
By DR. LAURA L. DORSEY
LLD Scholars
Over three days and three venues across Prince George’s County and Baltimore, the Fall 2026 LLD Scholars Expo Series yielded results that speak volumes. Three days, three venues, and one mission generated $14,299,200 in on-the-spot scholarship opportunities, 602 completed scholarship applications, and 98 career interest applications.
The Expo Series began on October 14 at Surrattsville High School in Clinton. It continued October 15 at the Outreach Worship and Education (O.W.E.) Center, in Baltimore. On October 16, the series closed at First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover. Each venue represented a distinct community, united by a shared commitment to connecting young people with the resources they need for a future beyond high school.
Forty-one colleges, universities, and post-secondary institutions participated, representing schools from Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. 26 career partners highlighted workforce development, financial services, healthcare, public safety, and the military as options other than a traditional four-year college degree.
Dr. Laura L. Dorsey, founder and President of LLD Scholars, Inc., said the series reflects years of relationship-building with institutions and community partners who believe in what our students can accomplish. LLD Scholars thanks our Board of Directors: Dr. Josephine Mourning, Dr. Candice Camille, Dr. Tashiek Hawkins, Mary Murrill, Peggy Morris, and Brandon Washington. Your guidance and belief in this work made the 2026 series a success. Let me tell you what $14 million really represents. It is the number of opportunities that were unlocked for all the students who walked through those doors.
This success would not have been possible without our community partners: Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Prince George’s County, Sisters4Sisters Network, Inc., Liberty Community Development Corp., Set The Captives Free Outreach Center, Baltimore County Public Schools, First Baptist Church of Highland Park, and Surrattsville High School. Thank you to our sponsors: Dr. Candice Camille- The Wellologist, Rescue Me Virtually, Prime Image Photography, and Krimson Achievement Foundation.
LLD Scholars, Inc. is a Maryland-based nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting pre-K through post-secondary students with college access, scholarship navigation, and career readiness resources. For more information, visit https://lldscholars.com/ or contact admin@lldscholars.com.
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Prince George’s County’s GoPGC Named Transit Fleet of the Year by Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition
By PRESS OFFICER
Prince George’s County Department of Public Works and Transportation
LARGO, Md. (Oct. 23, 2026)—The Department of Public Works and Transportation’s GoPGC has been named Transit Fleet of the Year by the Greater Washington Clean Cities Coalition (GWRCCC).
The Transit Fleet of the Year Award recognizes the work of DPW&T’s transit operations and fleet teams as the County continues to invest in the future of public transportation. Through ongoing fleet improvements, the advancement of cleaner vehicle technologies, and a broader vision for transit transformation, DPW&T continues its work to provide residents with transportation that is safe, reliable, accessible and responsive to the needs of a growing community. Since June 2025, DPW&T has introduced 26 new fixed route buses into service, including 11 battery electric buses. Additionally, five more battery electric buses are on order with expected delivery in March 2027.
“Public transportation is essential to the daily lives of our residents, and this recognition reflects our commitment to elevating our system for the people who rely on it,” said Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy. “Our investments in transit are about more than buses and infrastructure; they are about connecting residents to jobs, education, health care, and economic development opportunities while building a cleaner, more sustainable transportation system for the future. I want to congratulate DPW&T for a job well done.”
DPW&T operates GoPGC (formerly TheBus), PGC Link and +Plus, providing fixed-route and specialized transportation services throughout Prince George’s County. The Transit Fleet of the Year recognition comes as DPW&T continues the implementation of its Transit Transformation initiative, a comprehensive effort focused on creating a transit system that is equitable, safe, reliable, user-friendly, and community centered.
“This award is a reflection of the people behind our transit system who keep our fleet moving every day,” said DPW&T Acting Director Anthony Bennett. “From our operators and maintenance teams to our planning and administrative personnel, it takes a collective effort to provide service for our residents. We are proud of the progress made and remain focused on building a transit system that meets today’s needs while preparing for the future.”
The Transit Fleet of the Year award is presented by the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition, a public-private partnership that promotes clean and sustainable transportation solutions throughout the greater Washington region. GWRCCC works with public and private fleets, transportation providers, and other stakeholders to advance alternative fuels, energy-efficient mobility systems, and cleaner vehicle technologies.
The award was formally presented during GWRCCC’s 2026 Clean Energy and Transportation Annual Conference, Expo and Awards Luncheon on October 22 at Martin’s Crosswinds in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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Prince George’s County Council Approves Sphere Financing, Community Impact Fund
By SOL GARCIA-TERRAZAS
Capital News Service
The Prince George’s County Council approved financing Tuesday for the proposed Sphere entertainment venue at National Harbor, advancing the project after months of debate over public investment, worker protections, and benefits for surrounding communities.
The council voted 8-0 to authorize up to $215 million in special obligation bonds to help finance construction-related costs for the 6,000-seat venue and refinance existing National Harbor debt. Of the bond proceeds, $130 million would help finance the construction of the Sphere, a large globe theater that features immersive video and music programs. The project will cost $1.4 billion.
At a press conference, after the vote, County Executive Aisha Braveboy said the Sphere could strengthen Prince George’s County’s tax base and attract additional investment, as it grapples with the closure of Six Flags and the Washington Commanders’ planned departure.
“The decision to go after Sphere, to work to bring it to Prince George’s County, will more than triple in tax revenue we are losing with the Commanders leaving in a few years and the closure of Six Flags. This is amazing,” Braveboy said.
The county would repay the so-called tax increment financing bonds using designated National Harbor tax revenues, including property tax revenue generated by growth in assessed values.
Paul Schwalb, executive secretary-treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 25, which represents hotel, restaurant and casino workers, welcomed labor peace language supporting hospitality and services workers’ ability to organize at the Sphere. A labor peace agreement allows workers to organize without employer interference in exchange for unions agreeing not to strike or picket.
However, the union remained “deeply disappointed by the lack of a Project Labor Agreement to protect construction jobs,” Schwalb said in a statement. “Publicly financed projects have to protect all workers.”
Council members also approved a separate community impact fund to address neighborhood concerns about traffic and other issues related to the Sphere’s construction and operation. The fund would receive 15% of qualifying county revenues generated by Sphere, drawn from admissions and amusement taxes and a share of the real estate taxes not already pledged for the tax increment bonds.
The council resolution didn’t specify the size of the community impact fund, and messages to county staff were not immediately returned. Half of the money would support community programs and services, and the other half would fund infrastructure and capital improvements. Neighborhoods within six miles of the venue would qualify for the funding.
In the project’s tax increment financing proposal, Sphere Entertainment Co. argued that county assistance was necessary to secure the venue’s location against competing jurisdictions. Council members agreed to send a letter to county executive Braveboy setting goals for small and county-based minority businesses in the Sphere construction.
The plan calls for Sphere Entertainment Co. to direct at least 50% of eligible construction spending to county-based small businesses or locally owned and operated businesses. It also sets best-effort goals to direct 40% of that spending to county-based minority businesses and 45% of eligible construction work hours to county residents.
Some residents opposed the project. Christopher Goins, a county resident, criticized an economic analysis report by the accounting firm Ernst & Young that touted construction employment.
“Before the council votes to create this future tax burden, we need to go behind the sales pitch and examine the balance sheet,” Goins said.
Dan Smith, a Cheverly resident, questioned why the council would prioritize National Harbor over unfinished infrastructure elsewhere in the county.
“National Harbor is already a successful regional destination, built with substantial public support,” Smith said.
Councilmember Jolene Ivey has supported the Sphere as a way to diversify the county’s tax base and reduce its reliance on residential property taxes. In an interview after Tuesday’s vote, Ivey pointed to successful technology businesses around the University of Maryland as another opportunity for diversification.
“Diversification is helpful because if one area suffers, you're not completely dependent on it,” Ivey said. “You can still bring in tax dollars from someplace else. It’s like diversifying your portfolio as a household.
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Maryland Police License Plate Cameras Logged 4.8 Billion Scans in 2025. Locals Want to Know Where the Data Is Going
By SAMMY LIU and JAKE TIGER
Capital News Service
Thousands of automated license plate reading cameras installed on poles and patrol vehicles throughout Maryland are photographing every car that passes by. The photos are converted to data—plate number, date, time, location and vehicle model—and stored in rapidly growing databases, which totaled at least 4.8 billion scans across 26 Maryland law enforcement agencies in 2025, according to a Capital News Service analysis of state reports. As more agencies have deployed automated license plate readers, known as ALPRs, to help with daily tasks, the annual number of scans has more than tripled since 2022.
Databases are swelling as agencies add cameras to Maryland’s traffic hotspots. From 2022 to 2025, Montgomery County Police expanded its network from 30 cameras to 860, Harford County Sheriff’s Office from 18 to 274 and Anne Arundel County Police from 94 to 314.
In Maryland, how long the data is kept and what it takes for other agencies to obtain it depend largely on each agency’s own policies, which vary widely according to reports from the Maryland Department of State Police.
The CNS analysis is based on annual License Plate Reader Program reports that every Maryland agency capturing and storing ALPR data must submit under the state’s Public Safety Article, Section 3-509.
Police officers across the state have been using databases compiled from these cameras’ photos to help with investigations.
Anne Arundel County Police Department says the data is a source of “valuable leads” that helps officers “quickly identify and locate” vehicles and people tied to crimes, according to the department’s website.
The Baltimore Police Department has an additional 220 ALPR cameras available to use after the city approved a $153 million bundled contract this year with Axon, the Arizona-based company best known for Tasers and police body cameras. Baltimore police told CNS in an email that the technology helps achieve a nearly 70% recovery rate on stolen autos and gets investigators actionable information faster.
Salisbury Mayor Randy Taylor earlier this year called the cameras a “force multiplier” for investigations, as the city inked a $1.1 million, 40-camera contract with Atlanta-based Flock Safety this year, The Baltimore Sun reported.
But some residents feel like they’re being watched. Critics have said the cameras’ indiscriminate, nonstop data collection has crossed a line.
Nancy Meyer, who has lived in Hyattsville for 33 years, has watched cameras go up in her community. “Personally, I am not comfortable with cameras,” she said, adding that her neighbors and friends feel “apprehensive” about having their daily movements monitored.
“Folks don’t really know what the city or the vendors are doing with the information,” Meyer said.
Meyer has become involved with a group of Hyattsville residents who formed DeFlock HVL, calling for the removal of all cameras in the city. Some residents have called the network “a clear violation of their Fourth Amendment rights,” said Alex Koch, the organizer of DeFlock HVL.
The exact locations of ALPR cameras deployed are not made publicly available by law enforcement agencies. People have instead created crowdsourced maps, like DeFlock Maps, where volunteers report the locations and vendors of cameras they spot, though some cameras may be misidentified or may have been removed since they were recorded.
Maryland strengthened its data privacy laws in July as federal agencies were using the data for immigration enforcement. The new protections prevent the selling of personal data, including ALPR scans, to groups like Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Previously, private data brokers and state and local agencies could sell data—including Motor Vehicle Administration records and school enrollment data—to ICE without a warrant, according to advocacy organization We Are CASA.
State lawmakers have discussed introducing additional regulations for ALPRs during next year’s legislative session, two Maryland delegates told CNS.
The troves of location data held by law enforcement have raised public concerns about surveillance. A growing number of reported misuse cases nationwide show how the data can be abused, from officers stalking ex-partners and searching for a woman who had an abortion to data shared with federal immigration authorities without the knowledge of those being tracked.
Salisbury cited misuse cases as a reason for launching its Flock transparency portal in August, which includes a running audit of the department’s searches in the last 30 days.
Salisbury Police Chief Dave Meienschein told WMDT last month that each search in the audits would include a relevant case number, but current Salisbury Flock reports do not include this information, CNS found.
The Salisbury Police Department did not offer comment in time for publication.
Maryland has no statewide limit on how long law enforcement agencies can keep ALPR data that isn’t connected to a crime. Depending on the agency, some delete it after 30 days; others keep it for 90 days to a year. And some agencies with short retention periods transfer partial or complete datasets to agencies that keep the data for up to a year, according to a CNS analysis of Maryland Department of State Police reports on ALPR usage and policies from individual police departments posted on their websites.
One such agency is the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a state fusion center that pools data from municipal and county police to analyze crime and alert police when a plate on a watch list is spotted.
In August, Flock updated its data-retention recommendation from 30 days to seven days citing misuse by law enforcement, but the recommendation is just that. Local police departments would have to amend their policies to incorporate the new recommendation, according to Flock. Salisbury and Anne Arundel County, for example, still hold data for 30 days, according to their transparency portals.
Although state law requires a “legitimate law enforcement purpose” to share ALPR data with outside agencies, it sets no standard for what requesting agencies must provide to prove it and agencies have taken different approaches.
Some agencies, such as Baltimore and Frederick police departments, according to the state report, do not accept law enforcement requests for license plate data. Prince George’s County police, by contrast, released data in response to all 123 out-of-state and 312 federal requests they received from 2022 through 2025, according to the state reports.
Prince George’s Police replied in an email that its system requires a case number or justification before searching license plates, including those from out-of-state and federal agencies. The department did not respond by publication time to follow-up questions about how it audits these requests.
Opponents of the technology argue that collecting data on all people—regardless of their relevance to an active investigation— is effectively a police search without a warrant, violating Fourth Amendment protections. That’s the position of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research foundation based in Washington that has wrestled with the cameras for years.
Maria Villegas Bravo, a lawyer for EPIC, told CNS, “Your location data is some of the most sensitive information about you. It can tell people whether you’re going to church, whether you’re going to a doctor’s office.”
Questions about the technology’s place in law enforcement have even bubbled up within the industry. Charles Degliomini, an executive vice president at Columbia-based ALPR company Rekor Systems has called for regulation that limits who police can track.
“Every day you read about a police officer being arrested or fired or both for misusing the system,” he said in an interview with CNS. “That’s what we think needs to change.”
As a Marylander himself, Degliomini has seen the new cameras spring up on his commute from Baltimore to Columbia. It’s something many others in the state have experienced over the last few years, as familiar highways and back roads have been dotted with solar-powered cameras.
Maryland Del. Sarah Wolek, D-Montgomery, who co-sponsored the state’s anti-ICE data privacy bill earlier this year, told CNS she will be bringing forward a bill in the upcoming legislative session that regulates ALPR technology. When asked if she would consider a seven-day legal limit on data retention that aligns with Flock’s recommendation, she said she was “looking at everything.”
“Having advancements in technology doesn’t mean that we are making progress as a society and that we need to be really thoughtful about how we’re incorporating those advancements into governance,” Wolek said.
Another co-sponsor of state privacy protections, Del. Lorig Charkoudian, D-Montgomery, similarly said, “There’s conversations that are happening” on ALPR regulation for Maryland.
In speaking with her constituents, Wolek believes Marylanders are OK with cameras that have clearly defined purposes that make their communities safer, like speeding and red-light cameras. Marylanders have taken issue with ALPRs because they see them increasingly often—whether it be on their morning commute or a trip to the movies—but it’s unclear where the information is going and how it’s being used.
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