Financial Officer

Mark Smolarz, the Baltimore school system official who had become the lightning rod for criticism of the district's financial problems, resigned yesterday saying he was "worn out." The system's chief financial officer, Smolarz had assumed many responsibilities over the past three years and is considered by some to be the schools' most effective problem-solver. He said yesterday he was not asked to resign by either a board member or the interim schools Chief Executive Officer Bonnie S. Copeland.

A report released yesterday by two Baltimore business groups describes a "culture of complacency" in the financially troubled city schools that allowed key administrators to spend more money than they had in their budgets while the chief financial officer sat by powerless to curb the spending. The report, requested by Mayor Martin O'Malley in January and delivered yesterday by the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Presidents' Roundtable, makes recommendations for improving the school system's financial management that include giving the chief financial officer more authority and ensuring that the school board takes a more active role in holding administrators accountable.

Albert Keidel Jr., a retired Rouse Co. vice president and chief financial officer who was a key player in the development of Columbia, Cross Keys and a number of nationally known projects, died Sunday of heart failure at his winter home in Key Largo, Fla. He was 91. Mr. Keidel was born in Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., the son of Dr. Albert Keidel, a world-renowned medical specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Raised on Greenway in Guilford, Mr. Keidel was a 1929 graduate of St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1933.

SITEL Corp., which operates telephone customer service centers, said yesterday that it is moving its Baltimore headquarters to Omaha, Neb., where the company was founded in 1985 by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer James F. Lynch. The company also announced the resignation of its chief financial officer, James E. Stevenson Jr., effective May 23. Stevenson is to remain with the company as a consultant during the transition. SITEL has about 23,000 employees worldwide but just 12 in Baltimore, with most working in finance, marketing and sales.

In the latest shake-up of its top ranks, the Rouse Co. announced yesterday that its vice chairman and chief operating officer had retired, effective immediately. Jerome D. Smalley, 53, stepped down from the position he assumed in September after 23 years with the company. Officials at Rouse said Smalley will not be replaced and that his departure allows the Columbia company to reduce corporate overhead. "We have been looking for ways to be more cost-efficient and when Jerry wanted to retire, we decided the structure that we put in place would work OK," said David L. Tripp, Rouse vice president of investor relations and corporate communications.

Ronald R. Frederick, the chief financial officer for Taney Corp. and a Carroll County cattle breeder, died Tuesday of a stroke at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The Westminster resident was 58. Born in Baltimore and raised on Wilhelm Street, Mr. Frederick was a 1962 graduate of Calvert Hall College High School. He earned his bachelor's degree in accounting in 1969 from the Baltimore College of Commerce, now part of the University of Baltimore, and in 1978 earned a master's degree in finance from Loyola College.

OCEAN CITY - The college financial aid administrators of Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia conclude their annual convention here today. Some 250 of them have been cooped up in a hotel since Monday, discussing such subjects as FERPA regulations, the management rules of Perkins loans and why EFC formulas and loan verifications go hand in hand. I know almost nothing about the business, but as a "convention spouse" I've been attending the regional meeting of the Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators for several years.

Rouse Co. said yesterday that it has elevated eight vice presidents to senior vice presidents and merged two divisions in the latest transition in the company's top-level management. In the past two months, the Columbia-based real estate investment trust has announced the retirement of two top officers - Chief Operating Officer Douglas A. McGregor and Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey H. Donahue - and hired investment banker Thomas J. DeRosa, 44, from Deutsche Bank AG to be chief financial officer and vice chairman.

Jeffrey H. Donahue, a 30-year veteran and a top-tier manager of the Rouse Co., will retire at the end of the month and hand over a rare opening in the hierarchy of the Columbia-based company to an outsider. Thomas J. DeRosa, a Deutsche Bank AG executive and former Baltimore resident with ties to Rouse, will take over as chief financial officer and also become vice chairman - positions that could make the 44-year-old a potential candidate for the chief executive position. No clear successor to Anthony W. Deering, chairman and chief executive officer, has emerged.

NEW YORK - Two former executives of the telecommunications giant WorldCom Inc. were charged yesterday with orchestrating a multibillion-dollar accounting fraud that disguised growing losses and that helped drive it into bankruptcy. The executives - Scott D. Sullivan, WorldCom's former chief financial officer, and David F. Myers, its former controller - surrendered at 7 a.m. at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's field office in Lower Manhattan. They were later publicly escorted in handcuffs to the federal courthouse for a brief hearing.