Balog

Baltimore taxpayers will pay an additional $83,221 - for a total of $1 million - in a federal civil case involving former Public Works Director George G. Balog and two top aides accused of retaliating against two whistle-blowers. The city Board of Estimates unanimously approved yesterday the payment to cover the final legal fees for three outside attorneys who defended Balog, Solid Waste Bureau Chief Leonard H. Addison and Bureau of General Services Chief Robert F. Guston, who was eventually dropped from the case.

Baltimore taxpayers face paying another $327,500 as a result of the recent federal court award against former city Public Works Director George G. Balog. A federal judge awarded the money in legal fees and expenses yesterday to Howard J. Schulman, the Baltimore attorney who successfully sued Balog and the city on behalf of two former public works managers. An eight-member federal jury awarded Jeanne Robinson and David Marc a combined $192,000 in damages last month after determining that Balog retaliated against them for criticizing a city landfill repair project.

A manager with a sword circling an employee. Aromatic candles burning in a supervisor's darkened office. Documents being fed into a shredder. Spying bodyguards. And a key witness missing. This was the picture of the Baltimore Department of Public Works painted by witnesses in the weeklong federal civil case against the agency's former director, George G. Balog, and his top aides. The testimony and a half-dozen boxes of documents accumulated during the four years leading up to the trial provided jurors with a unique glimpse into the department during the waning years of former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's administration.

GEORGE G. BALOG is not the first or last bureaucrat whose bullying was tolerated because he produced results. But his 12-year reign of vindictiveness over Baltimore's public works department makes his punishment by a federal jury well-justified. Yet the finding against Mr. Balog and a top aide should be read in the narrow context of the case. They indeed "maliciously, wantonly and oppressively" retaliated against underlings who complained about contract irregularities. But a variety of allegations of corruption -- which the U.S. attorney and FBI are investigating -- remain unproven and may never result in prosecution.

A federal jury awarded two Baltimore public works employees $178,000 in combined damages yesterday after determining that former Director George G. Balog and a top aide "maliciously, wantonly and oppressively" retaliated against the whistle-blowing underlings. The eight-member civil jury took two hours and 45 minutes after the weeklong trial to return with the verdict and damages. The decision was so unexpectedly quick that Balog, the city's public works director for 12 years, was absent from the courtroom when the verdict was announced.

Describing himself to jurors as a "recovering politician," former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke returned briefly to public life yesterday as a defense witness in the federal civil case involving his former public works chief. The man who six months ago was the leader of America's 16th-largest city tended by police bodyguards and a doting staff strolled two blocks from his law office to the U.S. District Courthouse alone. A graying Schmoke, 50, greeted surprised passersby on West Lombard Street with his trademark smile and seemed visibly more relaxed than he was before he stepped down as mayor in December after 12 years.

A federal judge dismissed a former midlevel manager at Baltimore's Public Works Department yesterday from a whistle-blower lawsuit brought by two employees who claim they suffered on-the-job retaliation after publicly criticizing a city contract. Robert F. Guston was part of the department's chain of command, but evidence presented this week at the trial never directly tied him to allegations that engineers Jeanne Robinson and David Marc were punished for exercising their First Amendment rights, U.S. District Judge Frederic N. Smalkin ruled.

The former head of Baltimore's Public Works Department heaped blame on two employees who publicly questioned a city contract and would let out a "string of expletives" when he talked about their cooperation with a federal investigation, a top press aide testified yesterday. George G. Balog "blamed Jeanne Robinson and Dave [Marc] for a wide range of things, it seemed," Kurt Kocher, the department's spokesman, testified during the two employees' whistle-blower trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

After she publicly criticized a landfill repair contract and cooperated with federal investigators, Jeanne Robinson testified yesterday, a bodyguard for George G. Balog, Baltimore's public works director at the time, started trailing her. Robinson, a Public Works engineer, said she spotted the man she knew only as Rocky watching her as she left her young children with her mother before work. Robinson said she waved to him, thinking he was admiring her children. She grew concerned, she said, when she noticed him following her at lunch and after work.