City Comptroller

A former assistant city comptroller who is suing Baltimore for up to $10 million in a claim of racial discrimination has been hired as a part-time adviser to Mayor Martin O'Malley.Erwin A. Burtnick, who served for 20 years as a chief assistant to former City Comptroller Hyman A. Pressman, will be paid $26,000 by the city during the next year to counsel the new mayor on spending issues.Burtnick has a lawsuit awaiting trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. After being elected in 1991, former City Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean dismissed Burtnick, who alleged that he lost his job because he is white and Jewish.

JOAN M. PRATT, who was elected city comptroller in 1995, is The Sun's Democratic nominee for City Hall's No. 3 leadership position in the Sept. 14 primary.Her token opponent is Melvin J. Brechin, a construction superintendent who has no compelling agenda or realistic chance for an election upset.Has Ms. Pratt been a good city comptroller?That's a difficult question to answer, not because Ms. Pratt lacks substance but because she is competing with the images of the past.Unlike the late Hyman Pressman, a shameless self-promoter who created an impression as a public watchdog, she is no showboat.

AFTER the mayor, the City Council president and the comptroller are Baltimore's most powerful elected officials. They are among voting members of the day-to-day management committee known as the Board of Estimates. And they are potential contenders for the mayor's job.Democratic Councilwoman SHEILA DIXON is The Sun's choice for the next City Council president. In her three terms representing West Baltimore's Fourth District, she has shown steady growth.In Baltimore's strong-mayor form of municipal government, the City Council president chairs the Board of Estimates as well as the meetings of 18 council representatives.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused yesterday to hear a claim by a former Baltimore official, Ronald A. Brown, that Jacqueline F. McLean set out illegally to purge white men from her office after she became city comptroller in late 1991.McLean was elected comptroller in November 1991 and took office in December. Brown lost his job as administrator of city telephone facilities the next July.Brown contended in a lawsuit that he lost his job because of an affirmative action program that targeted white men. But lower federal courts rejected his claim, saying no evidence linked a reorganization of the comptroller's office -- and Brown's termination -- to the program.

Hyman Aaron Pressman's name was misspelled in a front-page article yesterday about naming a building in downtown Baltimore after the former city comptroller.The Sun regrets the errors.In his 28 years as Baltimore's financial watchdog, Hyman Aron Pressman loved igniting political controversy by exposing city waste, fraud and abuse. The colorful comptroller and poet politician enjoyed the limelight so much that he installed television lights in his City Hall office at his own expense for news conferences.

For many Baltimore voters, the most exciting thing about Tuesday's primary may be the flashy new voting system.Computerized machines -- 962 in all -- will be used for the first time at 254 polling places as voters choose from among 277 candidates vying to run in November for positions ranging from governor to clerk of the courts.But given the shortage of truly competitive statewide primary races, and the fact that the top city offices -- mayor, city comptroller and council -- are not on the ballot until next year, few voters are expected to show up to try the machines out.The city elections chief and officials of the Republican and Democratic parties are predicting that no more than one in three registered voters will bother to come to the polls.

Hyman Aaron Pressman's name was misspelled in a front-page article yesterday about naming a building in downtown Baltimore after the former city comptroller.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 3/22/98

Baltimore elections used to be predictable: Politicians ran for office, and ministers endorsed them.That timeworn process has been overturned in the 7th District congressional race, with at least five clergy members among the 28 Democratic primary candidates -- a factor that will make the campaign more divisive, some political observers say.The key reasons the clergy candidates give for running are: arrogant, inaccessible politicians, frustration with a...

"The greatest broom-pushers in all the nation/Are in the Department of Sanitation./They earn their awards without intrigue/From the Women's Civic League./Every collection crew is great/The best truck 3738./The chauffeur is Walter Whittemore/He speeds through the alleys with his foot to the floor."Hyman Aaron Pressman, June 19, 1969, presenting the city's Sanitation Department awards.Shakespearean, no?Or how about this one from Pressman, penned for a 1976 taxpayers meeting:"With unemployment and steep inflation/We just can't stand unfair taxation.

Hyman A. Pressman, the irrepressible poetaster, erstwhile civic gadfly and longtime city comptroller, described by associates as "the champion of the little guy," died yesterday of Alzheimer's disease at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital. He was 81.Mr. Pressman came out of East Baltimore talking the 14-year-old boy orator of the 1928 presidential campaign, on the stump for Al Smith. Only old age and infirmity shut him up and ended his politicking.He became the self-anointed champion of the plain folks, using the taxpayer lawsuit as his lance, tilting at bureaucratic government.

Baltimore officials awarded a demolition contract at the site of a proposed slots casino without public bidding, drawing concern from the city comptroller and the head of a contracting association. Rather than advertise the work as required for most city projects, the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's development arm, approached a handful of demolition firms and asked them to provide prices to knock down the Maryland Chemical building on Russell Street. The agency also sought estimates for a second project using the same selective method, to raze city-owned warehouses currently occupied by a nonprofit architectural salvage firm on Warner Street.

Roland Park proposal imperils zoning code There have been several thoughtful letters to The Baltimore Sun about the Keswick Multi-Care Center's proposed development for the open space along Falls Road owned by the Baltimore Country Club ("Readers speak out on Roland Park assisted-living facility," letters Dec. 23). But the point that cannot be overemphasized, and that makes this issue a concern for the entire city, is that this controversy is really about whether our city government will honor its moral and legal obligation to neighborhoods all over Baltimore by honoring the land's existing zoning designation.

Five years after Baltimore began a major effort to take control of thousands of abandoned properties, city officials are expected to announce a new program that would make it easier to sell them for redevelopment. The land bank concept, which will be unveiled today by Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration, would eliminate red tape faced when a city-owned property is put up for sale - such as the requirement for an appraisal - to speed a process that some say can hamper redevelopment. In a city where thousands of vacant homes and lots have come to define certain neighborhoods - leading to further decay and crime and falling property values - the effort could help the city bring pockets of blight back to life.

Ending speculation that she would run in the mayor's race, Comptroller Joan M. Pratt has quietly filed to run for re-election for city comptroller. Pratt, 55, a Democrat, has served as the city's comptroller since 1995. She currently faces no opponents. Pratt has expressed interest in running for mayor and formed an exploratory committee last year. "I think that I could be more effective in the mayor's position [than as comptroller]," she said last year. Pratt did not return calls for comment yesterday.

Taking his most direct shot at Mayor Sheila Dixon, City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. will propose a detailed set of reforms today that would drastically change the way the city awards contracts, including eliminating two mayoral appointees from the city's Board of Estimates. The changes also focus on companies that contribute to city campaigns and attempt to bring transparency to the often-murky links between political contributions and contracts. Mitchell said he will introduce legislation next month that would reduce the powerful five-member board that approves city contracts and spending to three members.

There he was yesterday, almighty Bruce Willis himself, standing atop a car at Calvert and Fayette streets, stripping off his brown leather jacket seconds after a dump truck rammed into a bus with helicopters whirling overhead. But all around the theatrical explosions and screeching of the Live Free or Die Hard filming outside the city's courthouses yesterday was real screeching, honking and even some screaming as gridlock seized Baltimore's streets. Police cars and ambulances struggled to get by (There was even a Mercy Medical Center detour)

Baltimore's new inspector general - a position created to root out fraud and corruption - was criticized yesterday by the city comptroller, who argued the office cannot effectively investigate City Hall as long as it answers to the mayor. In an unusual, 10-minute speech at the Board of Estimates meeting, Comptroller Joan M. Pratt said the city's office of inspector general is tied so tightly to Mayor Martin O'Malley that its objectivity and credibility are compromised. "Independence is not possible," said Pratt, who yesterday cast the sole vote against spending $320,500 to staff the office.

Richard A. Lidinsky Sr., a City Hall stalwart who served as deputy comptroller under eight Baltimore mayors, died of pulmonary failure Thursday at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 83. "Politicians ought to try and emulate Richard. He was honest, straightforward and fair -- all the good words," said Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, the former mayor and governor. "This is a real hit to the heart." Mr. Lidinsky was born in Baltimore, the ninth of 10 children, and was raised on Linwood Avenue.

A plan to save a children's museum and provide training for future workers for Baltimore's hospitality industry? Or a public boondoggle that would place a city school in a viable commercial property near bars that hold "bikini contests"? Those are the polarized views of a plan that has been developed out of the public eye to move the Port Discovery children's museum to the empty marine biology exhibit space at the Columbus Center in the Inner Harbor, and to create a new tourism high school at the current Port Discovery location.

Jacqueline F. McLean, the city's first black and first woman comptroller who was an advocate for minority business owners, died Wednesday night at Union Memorial Hospital. She was 57 and lived on North Charles Street. The cause of death was an infection, her daughter, Michelle McLean, said yesterday. "Hers was one of the real tragic stories of our community," recalled former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke yesterday from his Washington law office. In July 1994, Mrs. McLean stepped down from the city comptroller's office and admitted her role in a corruption scandal.