City Contracts

A federal judge has ruled that Baltimore must cease enforcing a minority set-aside law requiring that 20 percent of the city's public works contracts go to minority companies.The ruling by U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis this week also blocks the city -- at least temporarily -- from enforcing 3 percent female participation in city projects.Baltimore drafted the law two decades ago to give minority contractors a chance to earn a piece of the $345 million that the city government spends in contracts each year.

Baltimore taxpayers will be forced to spend up to $520,000 to defend the city Public Works Department, which is being investigated by a federal grand jury and sued by two department managers.The city Board of Estimates unanimously agreed yesterday to allocate $250,000 more in legal fees to defend against a civil lawsuit in which two managers said that they were demoted four years ago for exposing problems at a city landfill. The city contends the employees caused the problems.The city is paying three outside attorneys to defend department administrators being investigated by a federal grand jury over allegations that they steered city contracts to mayoral campaign contributors in 1995.

Three years ago, Baltimore's Board of Estimates awarded a $3 million plumbing and heating contract that looked too good to be true.It was.Temp-Air Inc. of Baltimore bid $1 million lower than five competitors to repair city schools and buildings. The key to the company's bid? A pledge to pay apprentice help $1 an hour.The city recently severed its contract with Temp-Air after auditors accused the company of overcharging taxpayers $408,000. The company never used apprentices and substituted professional laborers, paying them $20, $30 and $42 an hour, auditors said.

Affirming the city's intent to enforce its "living wage" law, Baltimore's key contracting panel ordered a bus company yesterday to give back pay totaling $5,101.50 to 17 workers who had not received the required higher-than-minimum wage for employees of firms with city contracts.But the Board of Estimates, composed of the city's top elected and appointed officials, waived a penalty of $4,800 against Eatman Bus Service Inc. recommended by the city's Wage Commission. The company's president said the added levy would put her company out of business.

THE DEFEAT of an anti-affirmative action ballot question in Houston doesn't breathe new life into such programs. Texas voters were convinced they could mend affirmative action. Their stance mirrors President Clinton's position. But no one seems to know the best way to fix it.Cities such as Baltimore -- which, like Houston, have ordinances that set goals for minority and woman participation in city contracts -- must work more aggressively to find an alternative. Houston officials promised to make changes in the program.

Baltimore's new "living wage" law, which pays city contract workers a minimum of $6.60 per hour, has not resulted in big price increases in the cost of contracts or job losses, according to a study released by a Washington public policy studies organization.The Preamble Center for Public Policy conducted a poll and an analysis of city contracts to determine what effect the living wage had on local business. Opponents, mostly business owners who would be forced to pay the higher wage, complained that it would spark the flight of businesses and result in fewer jobs.

Baltimore City school bus contractors buckled under pressure from city leaders yesterday and agreed to stop paying their employees 50 cents an hour less than city contracts mandate.But the two dozen or so contractors are balking at giving several months' back pay and paying fines, saying they simply don't have the cash."This is going to be a great financial hardship," said Maxine Hopkins, owner of M. R. Hopkins bus company.Since July, the bus contractors have been paying hundreds of school bus aides $6.10 an hour, even though the city, which hired the contractors to transport students, stipulated that they had to pay $6.60 an hour.

IT HAS BEEN 10 months since Joan M. Pratt was sworn in a city comptroller. But a number of novice mistakes have made it seem like only yesterday. That is why it is with some trepidation that the public accepts the news that Shirley A. Williams, deputy comptroller since 1992 and a longtime mainstay of that office, has resigned. Her institutional memory and dedication will be missed.Ms. Williams kept the comptroller's office going after former Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean was forced to take a leave of absence and then resign in a 1994 corruption scandal.

CITIES SUCH as Baltimore with affirmative action programs that guarantee African-American and woman-owned companies a share of city business know such plans are endangered. The U.S. Supreme Court in its last term took away a portion of the federal government's power to use affirmative action programs. And several Republican presidential contenders plan to make affirmative action a whipping boy. Given this mood, either Congress or the Supreme Court could defuse Baltimore's MBE/WBE program.

Few in Baltimore have ever gotten so privileged a glimpse of City Hall as the elite group of heavy hitters who lunched with the mayor yesterday.The six arrived early in a chauffeured limousine. The City Council president interrupted a meeting to recognize them. Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke ushered them into his inner sanctum and devoted hours of his undivided attention to talking about issues of the day.Yet none in the group is a close friend of the mayor. In fact, none ever voted for him. They can't for at least another eight years.

Boy, 17, killed in car accident in Frederick Co. UNION BRIDGE: A 17-year-old boy was killed in a three-car accident on Route 31 in Frederick County yesterday morning, state police said. A gray Nissan traveling west on Route 31 near Clemonsville Road lost control about 7:40 a.m. and began spinning on the wet road, police said. The car crossed the center line and struck a white Chevrolet head-on. The Chevrolet was then hit from behind by a gray Lincoln. The Nissan and the Lincoln skidded off the road and struck each other before stopping in a wetland area, police said.

Sheila Dixon, the mayor of Baltimore, attended the weekly meeting of the Board of Estimates, and the Board of Estimates rolled quickly through routine agenda items that included developers' agreements, reimbursement contracts, consultant agreements, grant agreements, disbursement of funds, transfer of funds, out-of-town travel expenses, contract renewals, contract extensions, pre-qualification of contractors, architects and engineers. It's the eye-glazing, complex and essential business of a municipal government with a budget of $2.94 billion.

The other defendants, hands cuffed behind their backs, filed into the courtroom and piled into the first row of benches. The same scene no doubt plays out most days of the week in the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse - young men, waiting to face a judge on criminal charges, have final conversations with lawyers who crouch next to them and crane their necks to nod at family or friends who have come to see them. But one defendant stood apart, literally, in Courtroom 226 yesterday morning: Mildred E. Boyer, poised and uncuffed at the defense table.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's former campaign chairman pleaded guilty to charges of failing to file tax returns related to his work as a computer consultant for the City Council and has agreed to cooperate in the state prosecutor's probe into no-bid contracts at City Hall. Dale G. Clark, a longtime Dixon staff member and friend, had provided computer services to City Hall over a six-year period, during which he worked mostly without a contract. As part of a plea agreement with the state prosecutor, Clark was sentenced in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court to five years of probation and a $5,000 fine for failing to file tax returns from 2002 to 2004.

Last spring, Baltimore officials pressured a local developer, threatening to blackball her from city contracts until she repaid at least some of the $1.3 million she made selling a building she promised to convert into low-income housing. But months later, Baltimore has yet to see a dime from Savannah Development Corp. President BettyJean Murphy. And it is unclear when - or if - any money will be returned to the city's ever-needy community block grant program. City officials and Murphy cannot agree on the developer's obligations to return the million-dollar profit she made by selling the property bought in 1995 with a $368,000 public grant.

LARGO -- Mayor Martin O'Malley pledged yesterday that as governor he would increase state government work awarded to minorities and criticized his Republican rival's commitment to Maryland's set-aside program for public contracts. Spokesmen for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. responded by saying the Republican incumbent has reformed the state's minority business program and that the Democratic mayor has no credibility on the issue because Baltimore's efforts have been rife with corruption. The promotion of records on minority inclusion reflects the campaigns' desires to win support among black and women voters, political observers said.

After the city reached a settlement yesterday with a local construction company that admitted it broke municipal minority contracting rules, Mayor Martin O'Malley said he believes Baltimore is doing a better job in making sure businesses comply with the law. "We try to do the very best we can to preserve the integrity of our minority business program, and I think this is evidence that we are doing that. This was a substantial recovery," O'Malley said yesterday at his morning news conference.

State investigators yesterday searched the office of Utech - a contracting firm tied to Baltimore City Council President Sheila Dixon - to execute warrants related to their probe of the company and its City Hall contracts. Officials from the Maryland state prosecutor's office also searched the Randallstown home of Mildred E. Boyer, Utech's politically connected owner, according to sources. The searches are the latest development in an investigation that began in March when state prosecutors issued subpoenas to Dixon's office, several city agencies and two city contractors that employed Utech as a minority subcontractor.

The Baltimore construction company entangled in the federal indictment against a former state senator has agreed to pay the city more than $800,000 in restitution, conceding the company used a sham minority-run firm to secure municipal contracts. The proposed agreement between Poole and Kent and the city also imposes a ban on city contracts until at least this fall. The company also pledged to increase its use of minority and women-owned firms by $1 million in three years, once the firm is eligible to bid on contracts over $25,000 in October.

The company being investigated for its ties to Baltimore City Council President Sheila Dixon lied about its abilities to fulfill certain government contracts, according to city officials, and could be stripped today of its privilege to apply for most future city work. The city's five-member Board of Estimates is set to consider revoking the "certificate of qualification" that it awarded last year to Union Technologies, or Utech, a minority subcontractor that has employed Dixon's sister.