By otakuyassine3@gmail.com 
The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.
David Rubenstein didn’t get into the baseball business to make money, but to “make a great baseball team,” the 75-year-old owner of the Baltimore Orioles said Tuesday.
Rubenstein was speaking at iMPACT Maryland, a regional thought leadership conference hosted by The Baltimore Banner. Rubenstein was interviewed by The Baltimore Banner’s Editor-in-Chief Kimi Yoshino. When asked about his plans for the team — which his group purchased earlier this year — he did not want to get into detail.
“I don’t feel I should be announcing anything today,” he said.
To that end, Rubenstein deflected when asked whether he would commit to long-term contracts for the team’s young stars or increasing the team’s payroll, saying he could not negotiate from the stage.
“But we’re in the business of trying to win baseball games,” he said, and recognized that meant they “probably have to spend some money.”
Rubenstein also said he’s not yet received plans for what a multiyear renovation at Camden Yards will look like. But, Rubenstein said, he imagines it will include seats closer to the field, better clubhouse amenities for the players, an improved scoreboard and “better food situations.”
The renovation work will be done in the offseason, Rubenstein said, and it will take about three years for the work to get done. He said the team anticipates receiving the plans for the stadium in 2025.
Hosted in partnership with Defender One and presented by Whiting-Turner, iMPACT Maryland brings the region’s visionary leaders together to discuss innovative ideas and creative solutions to pressing issues.
Topics will include the shortage of health care workers, artificial intelligence, the crisis in teen mental health, the opioid epidemic and how the state will recover from the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.
Other speakers scheduled for the event include Gov. Wes Moore.
Here’s what else happened at the event:
Alsobrooks jabs Hogan
In a conversation with Banner reporter Pamela Wood, Angela Alsobrooks — the Prince George’s County executive and a candidate for U.S. Senate — went after her Republican opponent former Gov. Larry Hogan’s record on reproductive rights.
“Let’s not talk about what he said, let’s talk about what he did,” she said, citing Hogan’s veto of an abortion access law in 2022 and the Republican’s praise of Donald Trump’s appointment of U.S. Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Hogan has said that as a senator he would vote to codify a woman’s right to reproductive care.
“I stand with women,” Alsobrooks said, adding if the Republicans in Congress hold the majority there “will be no vote on Roe.”
Hogan did not accept an invitation to participate in iMPACT Maryland.
Future of the port
Six months after the Key Bridge collapsed, Gov. Wes Moore’s administration remains optimistic that a replacement bridge will be fully funded by the federal government. Transportation Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld and Shaina Hernandez, deputy chief of staff to Moore, both said they were “very optimistic” that funding would be coming.
Wiedefeld also said he wants community input on the design of the replacement bridge, adding that it should be “a hallmark for the state of Maryland and the city of Baltimore.”
He said the state’s timeline to have a replacement bridge open by the fall of 2028 is an “aggressive schedule” that officials are committed to.
“It is our primary focus,” he said.
In the more immediate future, Baltimore and other ports up and down the East Coast are facing a labor strike from dockworkers.
Brian Hammock, director of state relations from CSX Transportation, said he hopes it’s a short labor stoppage that doesn’t create wider ripple effects for the supply chain.
“If it’s a longer outage, then we’ll start to see it on the shelves,” Hammock said.
Comptroller not looking for other jobs
Comptroller Brooke Lierman, in conversation with Rubenstein, said she’s not thought about running for another statewide office.
“Right now, my team and I are very focused on reimagining how we can create an advocate, in the comptroller’s office, for the people of Maryland,” she said.
Lierman, the first woman to hold the office, said she’s focused on making government work better.
A student of history
Rubenstein is a collector of historic artifacts, including copies of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. When Yoshino asked him if there was a “white whale” that he hopes to collect one day, his answer was simple: a World Series pennant.
Rubenstein said he collected those kinds of artifacts because he wants to see more people in the U.S. understand the country’s history.
“I’m afraid that our citizenry is not as informed as it should be. I’m trying to remind people of it by preserving these things,” he said.
Teen mental health and health care work
A panel addressing teen mental health said kids need a combination of professional help and support at home, school and other places they spend their time.
Dr. Harsh Trivedi, president and CEO of Sheppard Pratt, said the health system would be looking for ways to get services to the 47,000 Maryland teens who suffer from depression and 1 in 4 with suicidal thoughts. Maryland first lady Dawn Flythe Moore said she would convene a wellness day in Annapolis to talk about the different needs of the state’s diverse families.
Nursing may be a calling, but it’s also a job. Since the pandemic, making sure health care workers have work-life balance will go a long way to retaining and attracting more to the workforce, said a panel addressing the dire shortage of health care workers.
Barb Clapp, CEO of Dwyer Workforce Development, said more resources are needed to help people get certified nursing assistant training to launch people into the workforce. Sarah Szanton, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, said training and job opportunities need to be tailored to individual needs and wants.
‘AI is not magic’
Artificial intelligence and large language models are here — but are they making a difference? Panelists at iMPACT Maryland had mixed thoughts.
Therese Canares, a physician and founder of AI screening tool Curie Dx, said an AI tool once helped her realize a patient was at risk for sepsis before that patient began declining.
But artificial intelligence “is not magic,” said AI expert Balaji Padmanabhan. He said many companies he’s talked with are not “profitably” using artificial intelligence.
After the panel’s moderator, Banner data editor Ryan Little, asked if T. Rowe Price was making more money by using AI tools, Iro Tasitsiomi, head of AI and data science at the company, jokingly said “no comment” before expanding on ways the company was using AI tools to improve efficiency.
‘Far from over’
Baltimore Banner photographer Jessica Gallagher understood the impact of the news organization’s reporting on the city’s opioid epidemic was valuable when she went to get a copy of The New York Times that published the investigation. The cashier spoke about her fiancé’s overdose.
“That’s when I realized our work was far from over,” Gallagher said, as she introduced a panel discussion about the investigation.
Banner journalists Alissa Zhu and Nick Thieme described how their reporting started with a question: How does Baltimore’s opioid epidemic compare to other cities? How bad is it here?
Their reporting uncovered that Baltimore’s overdoses and deaths vastly outpace other large cities.
Zhu and Thieme were joined by Donna Bruce and Robby Stempler, who work in the field of recovery and peer support.
Bruce said the city’s drug problem is driven in part by poor accountability on the part of city leaders.
Bruce, who lost a son to overdose, said she sees little done about open-air drug areas in the city. “I see the police officers walking around but they’re never doing anything,” she said.
The panelists were asked by moderator Dean Baquet from The New York Times about how the city should spend hundreds of millions of dollars that are coming from settlements with drug companies.
All agreed that city leaders should listen to the community’s needs, pursue data-driven programs and most of all, be transparent with how the money is spent.
Rethinking education
Maryland has six years to find 30,000 apprenticeships for high school students who don’t plan to attend college.
How the state will get there and what has to change before it does were part of panel discussion on rethinking secondary education.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the 2020 master plan adopted for improving the state’s public schools, requires that 45% of high school students who have no plans for college earn a professional credential or complete a registered apprenticeship to graduate starting in 2030.
“It’s a huge lift for education,” said Richard Kincaid, senior executive director of career and college pathways for the Maryland State Department of Education. “And it’s an even bigger lift for our employers across the state.”
Getting there will require additional investment in education. The blueprint already is projected to cost billions of dollars.
Calling Baltimore
Call JPMorganChase’s toll-free number for help, and your call might get answered by a work-from-home employee in Baltimore. The firm has trained more than two dozen local residents and set them up with the equipment to work from a “virtual call center” from home.
JPMorganChase did this first in Detroit, where the company has made a concentrated effort to work with city leaders to boost the city through its business investments and through philanthropy.
Tim Berry, JPMorganChase’s global head of corporate responsibility and chairman of the Mid-Atlantic region, said the virtual call center was so successful that they expanded the idea to Baltimore. Now there are plans to train a second group of virtual call center employees here.
Potential workers might have issues that prevent them from physically going to a job, making these types of workers “an amazing pool of talent that often goes untapped,” Berry said.
The company has pledged to invest $20 million in community needs in Baltimore by 2027.
HyeSook Chung, president of the Baltimore Civic Fund, noted that unfortunately Baltimore has “stigmas” that make some reluctant to invest in the city. But there are opportunities for valuable partnerships between businesses and the community, she said.
“When businesses choose to invest holistically and not just invest halfway in, that is much more powerful,” Chung said.
This story will update throughout the day with more from iMPACT Maryland.
The Baltimore Banner’s Meredith Cohn, Brenda Wintrode, Pamela Wood and Rick Hutzell contributed to this story.
Share this content: