What It Cost Dolly Parton to Say No to Elvis’s Manager

Dolly Parton died today at 80. Most of what’s being written right now is about her music, her warmth, her decades as one of the few universally liked figures in American public life. Fair enough. But there’s a story in her catalog that belongs here more than in a tribute piece, because it’s actually about leverage, and about a young woman refusing to hand it over to a much more powerful man.

The setup

In 1973, Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” and had it out as a number one country single by 1974. Elvis Presley heard it and wanted to record his own version. This was Elvis at the height of his cultural weight, and Parton has said she was thrilled at the idea, excited enough that a session was arranged and she planned to be there for it.

The night before the recording, Presley’s longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker, called her. Parker told her that Elvis didn’t record material unless his side owned at least half the publishing rights. It wasn’t a negotiation. It was presented as the rule, the cost of doing business with the King.

The refusal

Parton said no.

Her stated reasoning was direct: she’d already had a number one hit with the song under her own publishing, and she wasn’t giving up half of something that valuable, even for Elvis Presley. Parker’s response was that Elvis wouldn’t record it without the deal, so the session never happened. Parton has said she cried that night. She’s talked about it in multiple interviews over the years, including to BBC Radio and to CMT, and the account has stayed consistent: she wanted Elvis to sing it, she said no anyway, and it cost her something in the moment to do it.

What’s worth sitting with here isn’t the sentimentality of missing out on an Elvis cover. It’s the position she was in. She was a rising country artist. He was arguably the biggest recording star in the world, represented by a manager known for extracting exactly this kind of deal from artists who wanted access to Presley’s audience. The easy move, the move most people in her position would have made, was to take the exposure and give up the percentage. She didn’t.

“The easy move was to take the exposure and give up the percentage. She didn’t.”

The payoff, and why it matters

“Parton owned all of the publishing.”

Nineteen years later, in 1992, Whitney Houston recorded “I Will Always Love You” for The Bodyguard. It became one of the best-selling singles in recorded music history. Parton owned all of the publishing. None of it had to be split with a manager who’d tried to take half of it off a phone call the night before a session that never happened.

“She wasn’t betting on a future payout. She was making a call about what she thought the song was worth right then.”

That outcome gets told as a nice irony, a “guess it worked out” anecdote. It’s worth being less cute about it than that. Parton had no way of knowing in 1973 that Whitney Houston would exist as a commercial force two decades later, or that a Kevin Costner movie would turn her song into a cultural fixture. She wasn’t betting on a future payout. She was making a call about what she thought the song was worth right then, against pressure from someone with vastly more leverage than she had, and she held the line without knowing whether it would ever pay off at all.

“Most people who refuse a bad deal from someone more powerful than them don’t get a Whitney Houston movie moment nineteen years later to justify it.”

That’s a story about what it costs to say no to power when you can’t see the ending yet, and about how rarely that instinct gets rewarded on any visible timeline. Most people who refuse a bad deal from someone more powerful than them don’t get a Whitney Houston movie moment nineteen years later to justify it. They just have to live with having said no.

Sourcing note: details on Parton’s death come from reporting by TODAY, ABC News and Variety, published August 25, 2026. The account of the Elvis Presley recording session and Colonel Tom Parker’s publishing demand is drawn from Parton’s own retellings over the years, including interviews with BBC Radio, CMT and a 2020 cover story in W magazine, in which the details of the phone call and her reasoning stayed consistent. The commercial performance of Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover for The Bodyguard is well documented and not in dispute.

BALTIMORE, Md. — Baltimore’s housing market landed near the bottom of a new national ranking this week. Out of 300 U.S. cities studied, the city came in 299th, trailing nearly every major metro in the country, including coastal markets the same report dinged for being too expensive.

The personal finance site WalletHub released its “Best Real Estate Markets in 2026” report Wednesday, grading 300 cities across 17 categories that go well beyond sticker price. The study weighed home price appreciation, job growth, foreclosure activity, and mortgage delinquency alongside more familiar affordability measures. Baltimore finished ahead of only one city: New Orleans, which took last place.

The city’s individual category scores were consistently weak:

• 258th out of 300 in median home price appreciation

• 263rd in job growth rate

• 280th in foreclosure rate

• 285th in the share of homeowners with delinquent mortgages

“Baltimore finished ahead of only one city: New Orleans.”

By comparison, three of the country’s most notoriously expensive housing markets, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, still finished dozens of spots higher, at 231st, 237th, and 273rd respectively. Frisco, Texas, took the top overall spot, followed by McKinney, Texas, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Durham, North Carolina, and Denton, Texas, a top five dominated by Sun Belt cities with newer housing stock and faster job growth.

“Even some of the country’s most notoriously expensive housing markets finished dozens of spots higher.”

WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said the results are worth taking seriously, even if a further slide isn’t guaranteed. “These rankings are a reason to be cautious,” Lupo told Fox Business, noting that cities with weak underlying numbers tend to see slower price growth and thinner buyer demand, which makes it tougher for owners to sell or build value in their homes.

It’s worth noting that WalletHub’s ranking is one methodology, not the final word on Baltimore’s market. The study leans heavily on job growth, foreclosure activity, and mortgage health rather than price movement alone, which is a big part of why a city can land near the bottom of this particular list without a dramatic price collapse showing up in the headlines.

“A city can land near the bottom of this particular list without a dramatic price collapse showing up in the headlines.”

Still, the report lands at an awkward moment for the city. MDBayNews has reported this year on other soft spots in Baltimore’s economic picture, including layoffs at longtime anchor employer T. Rowe Price. Taken individually, none of these data points proves a single narrative. Taken together, they add up to a harder question for city and state leaders: whether the fundamentals underneath Baltimore’s housing market, jobs, new construction, and foreclosure risk, are improving fast enough to change how the city scores on studies like this one next year.

“Taken together, they add up to a harder question: are Baltimore’s economic fundamentals improving fast enough?”

WalletHub’s full report and city-by-city breakdown is available at wallethub.com.

Sources: WalletHub, “Best Real Estate Markets in 2026,” released Aug. 19, 2026, comparing 300 U.S. cities across 17 metrics; Fox Business, “Sun Belt cities dominate 2026 best housing markets, Texas leads list,” Aug. 19, 2026, including comments from WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo; NottinghamMD.com and Baltimore Post-Examiner, both Aug. 19, 2026, corroborating Baltimore’s category-level rankings.

Three industries. One earnings call logic. A national look at how AI is being used to justify job cuts in newsrooms, streaming platforms, and freelance writing — and what the companies aren’t saying about why.

On Wednesday night, Kelly Swoope didn’t show up for the 7 p.m. broadcast. That’s not a scandal. Swoope, an anchor at Baltimore’s WMAR-2 since 2003, is fine. She just wasn’t on air, because WMAR isn’t running live anchors for that slot anymore. In their place: a weather hit, a roll of prerecorded packages, and centralized filler piped in from a regional hub. Viewers got graphics where a person used to be, and a few seconds of dead air before the ads.

WMAR is Maryland’s oldest television station, broadcasting since 1947. It’s also the test case for a company-wide pivot at its owner, E.W. Scripps, toward what the company calls a 24/7, AI-driven streaming model — a shift Scripps is rolling out across roughly a dozen smaller markets before deciding whether to push it company-wide. The rollout followed layoffs at WMAR, inside a broader restructuring in which Scripps has been cutting broadcast staff while redirecting budget toward automation and streaming infrastructure.

Cover that as a local story, and you miss what it actually is. The same week WMAR went anchorless, Deezer disclosed that 44% of the tracks uploaded to its platform daily are now fully AI-generated — up from roughly 10% about fifteen months earlier. And Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the firm that has tracked U.S. layoffs since the 1980s, reported that AI has become the single most-cited reason employers give for job cuts, responsible for roughly 40% of announced reductions in a single month this year — the first time in the report’s history that any stated cause has outranked “economic conditions.”

“This is a national labor story wearing a local-news costume.”

Three industries. Same month. Same underlying arithmetic. This is a national labor story wearing a local-news costume, and it’s worth tracing where the money actually goes.

The paper trail in each vertical

Broadcast news. Local television is the most visible casualty because the disruption is the most legible — a viewer can watch an anchor disappear in real time. Press Gazette’s rolling tracker documents more than 2,300 confirmed U.S. and U.K. newsroom job losses in the first half of this year alone, already on pace to exceed all of 2025. The Washington Post, Politico, Vox Media, the BBC, and the Associated Press have each cut staff in 2026, citing a mix of AI-driven cost pressure and the collapse of search-referral traffic — Google’s AI-generated search summaries now measurably keep readers from clicking through to the original reporting at all. Scripps frames its streaming pivot as a way to serve audiences on their own schedule. What the framing omits is that the same pivot lets the company run a station with a fraction of the people previously required to staff one.

“A viewer can watch an anchor disappear in real time.”

Music. The mechanism is different, but the money moves the same way. Streaming royalties are paid out of a shared, finite pool: every play — human-made or synthetic — draws from that same pot, which mechanically dilutes the per-stream payout owed to everyone else. Generative platforms like Suno and Udio can now produce broadcast-quality, multi-stem tracks from a text prompt, and Deezer’s 44% figure shows an industry being flooded from the supply side, even as listener sentiment moves in the opposite direction. Luminate’s 2026 research found consumer comfort with AI music has been declining, not growing — net sentiment dropped from -13% to -20% in under a year. Listeners don’t have to want the AI content. The industry group CISAC projects human artists stand to lose close to a quarter of their streaming revenue — an estimated $4.64 billion annually — by 2028, on volume dilution alone. The preference of the audience is not what’s setting the payout.

“Listeners don’t have to want the AI content.”

Writing. This is the vertical without a single dramatic on-air moment, which is precisely why it’s under-covered. AI is now the leading cited cause of layoffs across the U.S. economy broadly, not confined to media, and freelance and staff writing roles have been quietly folded into “content operations” budgets without the kind of standalone announcement that draws a headline. The visible cases — CNET and the Sports Illustrated publisher both caught running AI-generated copy under fabricated bylines — got treated as one-off scandals. The less visible and more consequential pattern is companies simply declining to backfill writing roles as they open, because a much smaller staff paired with generative tools can now match the old output volume.

Following the money

Meta’s 2026 workforce reductions track closely against the company’s own capital expenditure guidance — $115 to $145 billion earmarked substantially for AI infrastructure. That’s the pattern worth sitting with: in most of these cases, the AI tool itself is not what’s doing a laid-off employee’s job feature for feature. What’s changed is what the company is now willing to fund. The salary line becomes a funding source for the buildout, and the AI narrative becomes the explanation offered to employees, shareholders, and reporters for a decision that was, underneath the framing, about capital allocation.

That distinction matters for accountability reporting. When a company attributes a layoff to “AI,” it’s citing a cause that sounds inevitable — a force of nature, not a choice. Challenger’s own analysts caution against taking those attributions at face value; a company can say AI is why it’s cutting jobs without that being independently verifiable as the actual driver. Some of what gets filed under “AI-related workforce reduction” is efficiency. Some of it is a company redirecting the same money toward a different bet and reaching for the more palatable public explanation.

“When a company attributes a layoff to ‘AI,’ it’s citing a cause that sounds inevitable — a force of nature, not a choice.”

WMAR’s viewers were told the shift serves them better. Scripps’ shareholders were told it controls cost. Both things can be true. What’s missing from either version is an accounting of where the eliminated payroll actually went — and whether “AI” is doing the explanatory work of a decision that was really made in a budget meeting, not a boardroom about journalism.

“Follow the money: not whether AI is capable of the work, but who decided the savings were worth more than the jobs.”

That’s the story still to be reported, market by market: not whether AI is capable of the work, but who decided the savings were worth more than the jobs, and whether anyone outside the C-suite got a vote.

Reporting on WMAR's anchorless format draws from The Baltimore Banner, NewscastStudio, and DCRTV coverage of the Scripps rollout and staff departures. Music-industry figures come from Deezer's own upload-tracking disclosures (via NPR's May 2026 coverage of the Luminate consumer-sentiment report) and industry royalty-dilution projections attributed to CISAC. Layoff and labor-market data is drawn from Challenger, Gray & Christmas's monthly job-cut reports (March through July 2026 releases), which track AI as a stated cause of U.S. layoffs. Newsroom-specific job-loss figures come from Press Gazette's rolling 2026 journalism layoffs tracker. Meta's capital-expenditure-versus-headcount pattern is sourced to the company's own 2026 guidance as reported by CNBC and aggregated in Founder Reports' AI-layoffs tracker. The CNET and Sports Illustrated AI-bylines incidents are drawn from widely reported 2023 coverage of those publishers.

A Republican in Texas beat two Democratic governors to the punch on data center restrictions. The convergence says this was never really a partisan fight, and it makes Maryland’s slower approach harder to defend.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro stood in Harrisburg on Tuesday and told data center developers they would not be allowed to bully their way into Pennsylvania communities. He signed an executive order requiring them to pay for their own power, submit to local approval before the state will even look at their paperwork, and drop the nondisclosure agreements some have used to keep neighbors in the dark. He called the worst of them “predatory” and said Pennsylvania now has the strictest data center rules in the country.

He’s not entirely right about that. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, got there first and arguably went further.

On Aug. 3, Abbott directed Texas regulators to freeze new grid connections for data centers until an audit is complete, building on guardrails he’d already established in June requiring developers to prove they aren’t straining local water supplies, taking power the grid needs elsewhere, raising electricity costs or disrupting neighborhoods. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas told reporters the directive “effectively pauses” roughly 1,800 pending data center projects statewide, more than any single action either Democratic governor has taken.

Three governors, three states, three different party labels, and within the span of about six weeks, all of them arrived at nearly the same conclusion: developers don’t get to write their own rules anymore. That convergence is worth sitting with, because it undercuts the easy version of this story where data center pushback is just another front in a partisan fight. It isn’t. It’s a bipartisan reaction to the same set of problems, arriving in different states on different timelines, and Maryland’s version of it has moved noticeably slower than the other two.

“Three governors, three states, three different party labels, and within the span of about six weeks, all of them arrived at nearly the same conclusion: developers don’t get to write their own rules anymore.”

What Each Governor Actually Did

• Texas: Abbott’s June directive set four standards data centers must meet: they cannot take water or power that local communities and the grid need, they must help lower electricity costs rather than raise them, and they cannot disrupt neighborhoods. His Aug. 3 follow-up turned that into an enforcement mechanism, ordering the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit every project in the interconnection queue, covering financing, water and power sourcing, and community impact, before any of them can move forward. ERCOT immediately postponed its Batch Zero transmission study to comply. Several major developers, including Core Scientific, Vantage Data Centers and QTS, have since announced they’ll comply with the standards.

• Pennsylvania: Shapiro’s Aug. 18 executive order made his previously voluntary GRID standards legally binding, requiring developers to bring their own power, secure local approval first, submit to strict transparency rules and give up fast-track permitting eligibility. He acted unilaterally after, in his telling, Senate Republicans refused to bring his standards up for a vote. Shapiro said more than 100 data center proposals are under discussion in Pennsylvania, though only five projects statewide currently hold the permits needed to begin operating.

• Maryland: Gov. Wes Moore has landed on a similar message: that developers should pay their own way and stop dictating terms, but through a slower legislative path. He initially vetoed a 2025 bill that would have funded a state study of data centers’ grid, water, and economic impact, and the General Assembly had to override that veto before the study moved forward. By April 2026, Moore was fully behind the Utility RELIEF Act, which requires large-load customers like data centers to cover their own grid infrastructure costs. But unlike Abbott or Shapiro, Moore has not used his own executive authority to impose anything close to a statewide pause or audit.

“Unlike Abbott or Shapiro, Moore has not used his own executive authority to impose anything close to a statewide pause or audit.”

Same Election-Year Math

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Abbott is running for reelection this fall against Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, and a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll from June found 56% of Texas voters oppose data center construction in their own communities. Shapiro is up for reelection too, and is frequently mentioned as a potential 2028 presidential contender facing a Republican challenger who has called for an outright pause. Moore is seeking a second term this November in a state where county-level revolts against data centers have already toppled multiple sitting officials.

“The politicians responding to those concerns are doing so with one eye on the calendar.”

Whatever the substance of these policies, the timing lines up with the same electoral pressure in three different states. That doesn’t make the concerns residents have raised, about water usage, grid strain and diesel generators, any less real. It just means the politicians responding to those concerns are doing so with one eye on the calendar.

What None of Them Are Actually Doing

It’s worth being precise about what these announcements are not. None of the three governors has imposed an outright ban on data center construction. Abbott’s audit is a pause on new grid connections, not existing projects, and Texas officials have not said how long it will last. Shapiro’s order explicitly stops short of a moratorium. Maryland’s Utility RELIEF Act is a cost-allocation and transparency law, not a construction freeze.

“None of the three governors has imposed an outright ban on data center construction.”

The actual moratoriums, the closest thing to real construction bans, have come from local governments, not governors. Calvert County’s commissioners passed a six-month freeze on new applications the same day Shapiro signed his order. Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater signed her own pause on new data center permitting through the end of the year, effective July 1. Worcester County has had a 12-month moratorium in place since late July. Maryland Matters reported this month that 13 of Maryland’s counties have now enacted some form of data center moratorium, and Harford County has gone further, banning the facilities outright. None of it was ordered from Annapolis.

“The actual moratoriums, the closest thing to real construction bans, have come from local governments, not governors.”

What to Watch

• Whether Abbott’s audit, which Texas officials say could take “several months,” produces real standards or just delays projects until after his November reelection.

• Whether energy consultant Beth Garza, a former independent watchdog for Texas grid operators who has questioned the legal enforceability of Abbott’s directive since Texas has no statute backing it, turns out to be right, and whether Abbott ends up calling a special legislative session to codify it.

• Whether Shapiro’s order survives a legal challenge from developers who argue GRID standards were never passed into law.

• Whether Moore, facing his own reelection this year, follows Abbott and Shapiro toward unilateral executive action rather than continuing to rely on the General Assembly.

Sources: Governor Greg Abbott’s June 10 and Aug. 3, 2026, directives and public statements, Office of the Texas Governor; Texas Tribune, Houston Public Media, Utility Dive and E&E News/POLITICO reporting on the Texas data center audit, Aug. 3-14, 2026; NPR reporting on the political context of Abbott’s directive, Aug. 10, 2026; University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll, June 2026, as cited by Reason; Governor Josh Shapiro’s remarks at the Aug. 18, 2026, executive order signing ceremony and Executive Order 2026-05, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; NBC10 Philadelphia and WHYY reporting on the Pennsylvania order, Aug. 18-19, 2026; Governor Wes Moore’s remarks on the Utility RELIEF Act, as reported by Capital News Service and Maryland Matters, April 2026; Maryland General Assembly override of HB 270 veto, reported by The BayNet and Technical.ly, Dec. 16, 2025; Calvert County Government press release and Fox 5 DC, Aug. 18, 2026; Maryland Matters’ Aug. 10, 2026, county-by-county roundup of data center moratoriums; WGMD and 47ABC/WMDT reporting on Worcester County’s Resolution No. 26-18, July 21, 2026.

A single adult in Maryland now needs an annual pre-tax income of $107,910 to live comfortably, and a family of four needs $257,837, according to a new nationwide study from SmartAsset. That puts Maryland 10th highest in the country for what it costs a single person to get by, and among the priciest states in the nation for raising a family.

The numbers come from SmartAsset’s 2026 “salary needed to live comfortably” study, published August 13 and built on data from the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Analysts took each state’s baseline living wage and ran it through the standard 50/30/20 budgeting formula: half of income for necessities like housing and utilities, 30 percent for discretionary spending, and 20 percent for savings and emergencies. What comes out the other end is the income a household actually needs to stop just surviving and start getting ahead.

Maryland was one of only six states nationwide where the number for single adults actually dropped from last year, down 0.9 percent. That is a rare bit of good news buried in an otherwise familiar story: Maryland remains one of the most expensive states in America to live in, no matter which way the year-over-year arrow points.

“A single adult in Maryland now needs an annual pre-tax income of $107,910 to live comfortably, and a family of four needs $257,837.”

How Maryland stacks up

“Forty states. Not blue states or red states. Forty states, period.”

• Single adult: $107,910 a year, 10th highest in the nation

• Family of four (two working parents, two kids): $257,837 a year

• Virginia, for comparison: $106,995 for a single adult and $242,944 for a family of four

• Most expensive states overall: Massachusetts ($329,555 for a family of four) and Hawaii ($129,002 for a single adult)

• Least expensive states: Mississippi ($187,533 for a family of four) and West Virginia ($81,245 for a single adult)

Nationally, the study found that a family of four now needs at least $200,000 a year to live comfortably in 40 states, a threshold that didn’t exist in most of the country a decade ago. Forty states. Not blue states or red states. Forty states, period.

Why it matters in Annapolis

This is not the first time in recent months that Maryland’s cost of living has landed in the headlines. A separate analysis published this spring found that a $100,000 household income in Maryland now qualifies as “lower-middle class” under standard economic definitions, one of just a dozen states where six figures no longer buys much breathing room. MDBayNews covered that finding as part of its ongoing look at the state’s affordability crunch. The new SmartAsset numbers add another data point to the same trend line: Maryland families are working harder for a lifestyle that used to come easier.

“Maryland families are working harder for a lifestyle that used to come easier.”

Governor Wes Moore’s administration has leaned on utility rebates, workforce programs and one-time budget fixes to blunt the pressure, while ruling out broad tax increases heading into the 2026 session. Critics, including Republican legislators and outside economists, argue those measures treat the symptoms rather than the underlying causes: high housing costs, a structural state deficit that could grow to $3 billion to $4 billion by the end of the decade, and a regulatory and tax environment that continues to lose residents to lower-cost states like Virginia and North Carolina, according to the Comptroller’s Office.

Maryland’s dip in the single-adult figure is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. It suggests some of the state’s cost pressures may be easing at the margins, even as the overall burden stays among the heaviest in the country. Whether that trend holds through the 2026 election season, when affordability is shaping up to be a central issue in both the governor’s race and down-ballot contests, remains to be seen.

“Maryland’s dip in the single-adult figure is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.”

What to watch

• Whether Maryland’s modest year-over-year improvement continues into 2027 or proves to be a one-year blip

• How affordability messaging plays in the Moore-Cox gubernatorial matchup this fall

• Whether lawmakers revisit tax and housing policy in the 2027 legislative session given the state’s structural deficit

MDBayNews will continue tracking cost-of-living data and its political fallout through the November election.

Sources: This article is based on SmartAsset’s “Here’s the Salary It Takes to Live Comfortably in Each U.S. State in 2026” study, published August 13, 2026, and drawing on MIT Living Wage Calculator data updated in February 2026. Maryland-specific figures were cross-referenced against reporting by Fox 5 DC (Amanda Hurley, August 18, 2026). Additional context on Maryland’s structural budget deficit is drawn from prior MDBayNews coverage of the state’s fiscal 2027 budget and the Maryland General Assembly’s 2026 session.

Gov. Wes Moore used his personal X account Monday to tell Maryland families that back-to-school season shouldn’t push them further into debt. The timing is awkward. The state’s own back-to-school tax break had already closed up shop two days earlier.

“Back-to-school shouldn’t mean families going deeper into debt,” Moore wrote on his @iamwesmoore account, which is authorized by his reelection campaign, Moore for Maryland. The post included a short video of the governor and credited the state’s investments in schools, teachers, and the SUN Bucks summer food program for helping families through rising costs.

What the post didn’t mention is that Maryland’s own back-to-school tax break, Shop Maryland Tax-Free Week, ran from Aug. 9 through Aug. 15 and never covered most of what’s actually on a school supply list.

What’s exempt, and what isn’t

During the seven-day holiday, the state waived its 6% sales tax on qualifying clothing and footwear priced at $100 or less, plus the first $40 of any backpack or bookbag purchase. That’s it. Everything else parents buy to get a kid ready for the first day, the state still taxes at the full rate.

“Everything else parents buy to get a kid ready for the first day, the state still taxes at the full rate.”

Items that stayed fully taxable during Tax-Free Week include:

• Notebooks, folders and binders

• Pens, pencils and other basic supplies

• Calculators

• Backpack charges above the first $40

• Laptops, tablets and other electronics

• Lunchboxes and most other school gear

Maryland is one of a number of states that limits its sales tax holiday to clothing and footwear. Some states with similar holidays exempt classroom supplies outright. Maryland does not.

“The one mechanism Maryland specifically markets around back-to-school shopping skips the supply list almost entirely.”

The governor’s message framed affordability as something Maryland is actively delivering on. But the one mechanism his own administration runs specifically for back-to-school costs skips the supply list entirely and caps its backpack help at the first $40.

The SUN Bucks piece checks out

Moore’s SUN Bucks claim holds up better under scrutiny. Maryland SUN Bucks is a federally funded Summer EBT program, administered by the Maryland Department of Human Services, that puts money directly on the EBT cards of children who already qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, SNAP, or Temporary Cash Assistance. Eligible families received $40 per child per month for June, July, and August this year, for a total of $120 per child, according to the governor’s own June announcement.

“SUN Bucks helps buy groceries. It does not make notebooks, binders or calculators cheaper at the register.”

That program is real, and the dollar amount lines up. But SUN Bucks is a summer grocery benefit for lower-income families who already qualify for other assistance. It isn’t a tool that offsets the sales tax on notebooks and backpacks for the broader population of Maryland parents the tax-free week is marketed to.

The bigger education number is real too, but it’s a different argument

The governor’s team has also pointed to the state’s FY2027 budget, which includes roughly $10.2 billion for K-12 education, an increase of about $374 million over the prior year. That figure is accurate. It’s also not the same claim as making the family’s actual shopping cart cheaper at checkout. Spending more on school system funding and reducing what a parent pays at the register in August are two different policy levers, and the tweet blurred them together.

“Spending more on the school system and reducing what a parent pays at the register are two different policy levers.”

Why it matters

This isn’t a case of a false statement. Every individual claim in Moore’s post traces back to a real program or a real number. The problem is what the post implies by omission: that Maryland is stepping up to ease the specific financial strain of back-to-school shopping, when the state’s own signature back-to-school tax break was written narrowly enough to exclude nearly everything on a supply list.

“The individual claims may be true. The affordability message is still broader than the policy underneath it.”

MDBayNews would apply the same standard to any officeholder, regardless of party. A governor telling families not to go into debt over school costs, while the state collects full sales tax on the notebooks, binders, and calculators driving much of that cost, is a gap between messaging and policy. It’s worth pointing out plainly.

Sources: Gov. Wes Moore’s Aug. 2026 post on his personal X account, @iamwesmoore. Maryland Comptroller’s Office 2026 Shop Maryland Tax-Free Week guidance and participating retailer materials. Coverage of the 2026 tax holiday from the Southern Maryland Chronicle, The Daily Record, WBOC, and Patch. Office of Governor Wes Moore, “Governor Moore Announces Maryland SUN Bucks Launch for 2026,” June 2026 press release. Maryland Department of Human Services SUN Bucks program information. Office of Governor Wes Moore FY2027 budget signing announcement.

As City Dock construction reshapes Annapolis’ waterfront, Bitty & Beau’s is the latest storefront to go dark — and its workers may have fewer places to turn next.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. Bitty & Beau’s Coffee will pour its last cup on Dock Street next month, and the way the closure is unfolding says almost as much as the closure itself.

Eye On Annapolis first reported this week, citing information from employees at the shop, that the popular coffee house at 124 Dock Street would shut down September 13. A company spokesperson then confirmed the closure to CBS News Baltimore, but gave a slightly different last day, September 14, and a different reason: the shop’s seven-year lease is running out. The company’s statement did not mention the years of construction that have reshaped the block outside its front door.

That distinction matters, and MDBayNews isn’t going to blur it. It also doesn’t erase what’s happening on this specific block, where two neighboring businesses have already gone dark since spring.

A block emptying out one storefront at a time

Here is what has happened on this one block of Dock Street since the spring:

• Annapolis Marine Art Gallery, at 110 Dock Street since 1978, announced in May it will close its physical storefront by the end of 2026 and move to an online-only business. Co-owner Samantha Wilkerson has said revenue is down more than 70 percent from pre-construction levels.

• Blowfish Poké Hawaiian Grill, which opened next door to Bitty & Beau’s at 122 Dock Street in 2024, cut its hours because of slow traffic earlier this year and later suspended operations with no announced reopening date.

• Bitty & Beau’s Coffee, at 124 Dock Street, is now set to close in September, citing the end of its lease.

“Not every business points to the same cause, and MDBayNews isn’t going to pretend they do.”

Not every business points to the same cause, and MDBayNews isn’t going to pretend they do. All three of these storefronts, though, sit within about 15 doors of each other, on a block that has been fenced off and short on street parking since the city’s construction schedule moved into its current phase. Storm Bros. Ice Cream Factory, also on this stretch, hasn’t closed, but its owner, Sveinn Storm, says the shop lost roughly $98,000 in sales during the first year of the current construction project and was already another $98,000 behind that reduced pace by the middle of this July.

It’s also worth separating this from a different story that got folded into some of the same coverage. O’Leary’s Seafood Restaurant, a longtime Eastport institution across Spa Creek from City Dock, also closed this summer, and its owner cited a lost lease. O’Leary’s is not on Dock Street and has no apparent connection to the construction project. It shows up in some recent Annapolis closure roundups anyway, which is a reminder to read pattern stories carefully rather than assume every closure downtown shares one cause.

The project behind the fencing

The City Dock Resiliency and Revitalization Project is an estimated $88 million to $90 million effort to rebuild the waterfront so it can withstand rising water, with the figure climbing slightly between the city’s November 2025 groundbreaking and more recent reporting. City officials say the case for doing it is not close. Annapolis recorded 120 flood events in 2024 alone, double the previous record, according to a city press release announcing $35.5 million in FEMA hazard mitigation funding this March. Tropical Storm Debby pushed water 4.4 feet above normal levels in 2024, and downtown has flooded on a near-routine basis in the years since.

Construction officially broke ground on November 3, 2025, following years of planning, though the city says preliminary site work began that fall. The current phase, running from January 2026 through May 2027, closes lower Dock Street between Craig Street and Susan Campbell Park and partially closes upper Dock Street between Craig and Randall Streets. A second phase would close the rest of upper Dock Street from May 2027 through March 2028, when the project is currently scheduled to wrap.

The city says it has tried to soften the blow. It added 165 parking spaces at the nearby Mills-Hillman Garage, bringing that garage to 590 total spaces. It extended its free Magenta Shuttle route to Dock Street this year. It has put up banners and signage and paid for transit and social media ads pointing people toward businesses hidden behind the fencing.

“These changes will absolutely be inconvenient, but they are necessary,” Mayor Jared Littmann told the City Council in January.

Business owners along the block don’t dispute the flooding problem. Several, including Wilkerson, initially supported the project. What they dispute is whether the city’s mitigation for them has matched the disruption it created.

“Small businesses can’t afford to lose so much foot traffic and parking,” Wilkerson told The Baltimore Banner earlier this month.

A lawsuit from the preservation nonprofit Historic Annapolis, along with a separate suit from an anonymous plaintiff, sought to slow the project down. A judge dismissed the Historic Annapolis case in September 2025, though the group said at the time it might appeal. A separate lawsuit came from a restaurant owner who accused the city of creating a construction-related nuisance.

Why this closure is different

Bitty & Beau’s is not a typical coffee shop, and that’s the part of this story that shouldn’t get lost in a list of storefronts. The chain was founded in 2016 in Wilmington, North Carolina, by Amy and Ben Wright, who named it after their two youngest children, both of whom have Down syndrome. The company’s stated philosophy is that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are fully capable employees who simply haven’t been given the chance: “everyone is employable, everyone is capable,” according to the founders.

Nationally, Bitty & Beau’s says it employs more than 450 people with disabilities across its locations. The Annapolis shop opened in February 2020 as one of the chain’s earliest sites and has served customers on Dock Street for more than six years.

That kind of job is harder to replace than a typical retail or food-service position, and the numbers explain why.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent annual report, released in March, only 22.8 percent of people with disabilities were employed in 2025, compared with 65.2 percent of people without disabilities. The unemployment rate for people with a disability was 8.3 percent, roughly double the 4.1 percent rate for people without one. Separate monthly tracking from the Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire found the labor force participation rate for working-age people with disabilities sitting at 41.8 percent in June, versus 78.2 percent for people without disabilities.

A few other patterns from the BLS data help explain why a shop like Bitty & Beau’s matters disproportionately to that population:

• Workers with disabilities are far more likely to work part time than workers without a disability, about 30 percent compared with 17 percent.

• People with disabilities are more likely than people without one to work in service occupations, 20 percent compared with 16.5 percent, and in sales and office jobs, 21 percent compared with 18.6 percent.

• People with disabilities are more likely to be self-employed, 9.1 percent compared with 5.9 percent, a pattern advocates often link to a shortage of traditional employers willing to hire and accommodate them.

“The exact kind of small, mission-driven storefront business that has been hit hardest by construction fencing and lost foot traffic is also the kind of workplace that disproportionately employs a population with the fewest other doors open to them.”

In other words, the exact kind of small, mission-driven storefront business that has been hit hardest by construction fencing and lost foot traffic is also the kind of workplace that disproportionately employs a population with the fewest other doors open to them. That isn’t a criticism of the flood project itself, which addresses a documented and worsening problem. It’s a reminder that the costs of a well-intentioned infrastructure project don’t land evenly, and the city’s messaging campaign of banners and shuttle routes hasn’t been enough to keep three businesses on one short block in business.

“The costs of a well-intentioned infrastructure project don’t land evenly.”

What happens now

The City Dock project is not going away, nor should it, given the flood data behind it. City officials maintain that Dock Street businesses remain open, that pedestrian access is being maintained, and that the disruption is temporary and necessary. Business owners who have already closed or announced plans to close say the disruption arrived faster than the mitigation did.

“Business owners who have already closed or announced plans to close say the disruption arrived faster than the mitigation did.”

Bitty & Beau’s has not said whether it plans to reopen elsewhere in Annapolis. Its statement to CBS Baltimore thanked the community for the past seven years without addressing what comes next for its Dock Street staff or whether any of them will be offered positions at other locations.

Sources: Eye On Annapolis reporting on the Bitty & Beau’s, Annapolis Marine Art Gallery and Storm Bros. Ice Cream Factory situations; CBS News Baltimore reporting on the Bitty & Beau’s closure and recent Annapolis-area business closures; The Baltimore Banner’s reporting on City Dock parking restrictions and business impacts; WMAR-2 News reporting on the Annapolis Marine Art Gallery closure; Chesapeake Bay Magazine and the Maryland Daily Record on the project’s November 2025 groundbreaking; City of Annapolis press releases on the groundbreaking, the FEMA hazard mitigation grant and the construction schedule; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “People with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics, 2025” (March 2026); Kessler Foundation and University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability, National Trends in Disability Employment report (July 2026); Bitty & Beau’s Coffee company materials.