City Employees

As city administrator, my position serves "at the pleasure of" the mayor who appointed me, Craig A. Moe. I understand my position may end next month; and I accept that. However, one of my most important duties and responsibilities is to protect the city's exceptional employees. City employees provide the services that make our city a great place to live, work and do business. I believe I must speak out for our valuable employees to share the feelings they have expressed to me and their co-workers.

Baltimore school employees would be forced to take furlough days if the district has to absorb millions of dollars in education cuts outlined in the state's "doomsday" budget, city schools CEO Andrés Alonso said Tuesday as he prepared to present the fiscal year 2013 budget. In preparation for a massive cut to public education should lawmakers fail to approve higher taxes in a special session starting Monday, the school system has developed a plan to negotiate with labor unions to have employees take four unpaid days off. Alonso said the system found that the four furlough days, which would not include instructional days, would yield enough savings to hold school budgets untouched, a guiding principle of the system's budget.

Union officials say the city is considering docking the pay of police officers, firefighters and public works employees who did not report to work during the week's historic snowstorms, a move labor leaders say would be unprecedented in recent memory. Although many city employees were on liberal leave this week, "essential personnel," including public safety officers, were required to show up for their shifts or face losing a day of pay. The policy has been on the books for at least six years but has been enforced infrequently.

Heaven forbid you fall back on your property taxes in Baltimore City and your home goes to the property tax sale! Not only will you pay 18 percent interest on the money, you will pay ever increasing legal fees, and the city will demand that you pay taxes that are not overdue. Then, to top this off, no arrangements can be made. They want all that money to redeem your property at once. There was a story not long ago about bid rigging in this process. Well, the city employees sure know these predatory lawyers pretty well.

HealthPlus Inc., an expansion-minded health maintenance organization based in Greenbelt, announced yesterday that it has signed a contract to become one of several HMO plans available to city employees.The agreement means HealthPlus, which presently serves 170,000 members in Maryland, Washington and Northern Virginia, will be exposed to 27,000 potential new customers in Baltimore. The HMO already has a contract with the Baltimore Teachers Union, which has 7,800 members."I think that we are viewing Baltimore as a very potentially strong market for us," HealthPlus Chief Operating Officer Virginia Dollard said.

Sheila Jordan, president of a city employees' labor union, died of cancer Saturday at her Catonsville home -- one day after she was elected to a third term in the job. Mrs. Jordan, 49, was unopposed in the City Union of Baltimore election. She had been president of the union representing about 5,000 municipal workers since 1997. "I had a great deal of respect for her," Mayor Martin O'Malley said yesterday. "She was a strong advocate for her members and was always decent. She made her points in a pleasant, forthright, straight-up sort of way. She never resorted to personal attacks.

Six city employees pursuing graduate degrees in business administration, criminal justice and public administration were recognized yesterday as the charter class of the University of Baltimore Fellows Program. The program, developed by the university and Mayor Martin O'Malley, offers full scholarships to help further the career and educational goals of "up-and-coming" city employees. The scholarship recipients are: Jacinta L. Brown, an accountant with the Commission on Aging and Retirement Education; Ann Elliott, citizen involvement coordinator for the Circuit Court's Community Services Division; James M. Fischer, Fire Department fiscal official; Bernita Y. Kittrell, employees retirement systems account systems analyst; Marc Riccardo Partee, Police Department detective; and Alphonso Tucker, a superintendent in the Bureau of Solid Waste.

All new city government employees would have to live in Baltimore under terms of a charter amendment introduced into the Baltimore City Council last night.The measure, introduced by Councilman Wilbur E. Cunningham, would affect city employees hired after Jan. 1, 1993.The council resolution comes a month after Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke suggested that all government workers be required to live in the city.But, while Mr. Schmoke could simply issue an executive order to impose the requirement, the charter amendment could not take effect without public hearings and approval by the voters.

A line started forming the morning after the Westminster Common Council approved a program last week to provide $3,000 toward closing costs for city employees who choose to live close to downtown.Officials hope employers such as Western Maryland College and Carroll County General Hospital will participate in the state's 2-year-old Live Near Your Work program."Obviously, this could be used as a recruiting tool," said Karen Blandford, manager of housing and community development for the city.

A day after investigators raided Mayor Sheila Dixon's home, more city employees received subpoenas in what appears to be an accelerating investigation into City Hall spending practices. Two new subpoenas went to city employees and two to non-employees yesterday, City Solicitor George Nilson said. He declined to say who received them. Those came on top of five other subpoenas to city employees Tuesday. Among those the state prosecutor's office is seeking to question is Edward Anthony, a longtime close friend of Dixon's who works in the city Housing Department, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

A government watchdog group said Thursday that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has politicized invitations to her office's Ravens skybox, and urged her to include more working-class residents. "The mayor has made the choice to turn this into a political skybox and not the people's skybox," said Susan Wichmann, the director of Common Cause Maryland. "We call on the mayor, going forward, to use the skybox to highlight good work being done by people in the city. There's no reason why she couldn't invite the firefighters and the police officers and the good students and the teachers.

Mike McGuire, one of the organizers of the Occupy Baltimore protests, left a city-sponsored public budget workshop Saturday morning feeling about as disappointed as a grass-roots activist can feel. The 39-year-old Hampden resident had spent weeks trying to rally a large turnout for the event at the Cylburn Arboretum. He'd gone to the trouble of obtaining the worksheet for the forum in advance and had spent long hours poring over line items with other members of the movement. He'd researched minute details of the city's $2.7 billion budget.

If city workers and union officials think busting up a party in which municipal employees were drinking and gambling on the job is overzealous, then Baltimore could use a lot more zeal. The fact that the city inspector general's 2011 raid on a Department of Transportation facility has resulted in only one criminal conviction should not be taken as an indication that this was much ado about nothing or that the workers involved were somehow unfairly persecuted. City residents pay a lot of taxes to fund those workers' salaries, and they deserve to know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.

A former District of Columbia and Richmond, Va., finance official will be named Baltimore's new director of finance on Monday, city officials said. Harry E. Black, a Baltimore native who wrote a guide to economic development for cities, will replace Edward Gallagher, who is retiring after 29 years, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's office announced. "We are excited to welcome Mr. Harry Black to City Hall as we work on the budget for the next fiscal year," Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

Baltimore's Department of Public Works has announced holiday services changes for Monday, Jan. 2, observance of New Year's Day. There will be no bulk trash collection or street sweeping on Monday. All Citizen Convenience Centers, including the Quarantine Road Landfill, will be closed. All city buildings will be closed except Police Headquarters at 601 E. Fayette St. Residents will not be able to pay bills or apply for permits in person though some bills can be paid online.

Kudos and a huge tip of the hat to the mayor and city council of Hagerstown for recently voting to give each of their full-time city employees a one-time bonus of $1,000. After years of salary freezes, those city employees had previously taken 10 furlough days (a 3.8 percent decrease in salary) and had their workload increased through attrition (56 positions were left unfilled at a savings to taxpayers of $2.9 million). Accordingly, this municipal action and grateful recognition of their dedicated public service of their employees simply was the right thing to do. Larry D. Kump, Falling Waters, W. Va. The writer is a West Virginia state delegate representing Berkeley and Morgan counties.

Every Baltimore City government employee would have to make public personal financial information such as real estate holdings and second jobs under a City Council bill introduced yesterday.Fourth District Councilwoman Shiela Dixon drafted the measure in response to reports that several housing inspectors own decrepit properties. Only certain key officials now have to file financial disclosure forms."Part of this has to do with what has been going on at [the] housing [department] and with the housing inspectors," said Mrs. Dixon, referring to articles in The Sun disclosing the inspectors' properties.

A new program that gives cash bonuses to hard-working Baltimore employees is boosting productivity and morale among some of the city's 16,000 workers, Mayor Martin O'Malley said yesterday. The 3-month-old incentive program, funded by a $5,000 grant from the Abell Foundation, rewards inspectors with the Department of Housing and Community Development. Inspectors who exceed performance goals are given cash; some have been performing at levels 100 percent to 200 percent higher than their regular work load.

Baltimore officials have identified a $52 million budget shortfall next year, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration is eyeing pension costs and other benefits after years of significant cutbacks to city programs and worker salaries to close previous budget gaps. But city workers could find some good news in the coming budget year. When drafting spending projections, officials included a 2 percent raise for all city employees as well as the elimination of unpaid furlough days, a savings measure that has been in effect for three consecutive years as the city struggled to balance its budget.

As city administrator, my position serves "at the pleasure of" the mayor who appointed me, Craig A. Moe. I understand my position may end next month; and I accept that. However, one of my most important duties and responsibilities is to protect the city's exceptional employees. City employees provide the services that make our city a great place to live, work and do business. I believe I must speak out for our valuable employees to share the feelings they have expressed to me and their co-workers.