Housing Commissioner

In nominating developer Daniel P. Henson to be the city's new housing commissioner, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has opted for a man who has built a solid reputation for getting things done. That's good. But all good things come with a price. In Mr. Henson's case that price is a nightmarish collection of conflict-of-interest situations which must be resolved before he can be confirmed by the City Council.We hope these legal complications -- which suggest no improprieties -- can be successfully ironed out. In many demonstrable ways, Mr. Henson is the type of leader the city's housing department and its twin bureaucracy, the Housing Authority, need.

The Housing Authority of Baltimore City's strategy to spend millions on outside lawyers to avoid liability for lead paint poisoning its tenants suffered, and then to refuse to pay judgments in the cases it loses, is an utter disgrace. The fact that a government agency is so brazenly defying the courts, and that it has made no effort for years to find a way to fairly compensate the victims of its past negligence, represents a long-term failure of leadership at the authority, one that has been abetted by indifference from City Hall.

Days after the rape of a girl at the Lexington Terrace public housing development, the girl's family marched into the office of Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III with a letter asking for a transfer out of their building.Still fuming from a surprise interview with a television news crew, Mr. Henson took one look at the letter and turned to the tenant activist who led the family into the meeting. The letter bore the signature of Council President Mary Pat Clarke, a political rival of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.

Paul T. Graziano looked for all the world like a short-timer. Just weeks into his new job as Baltimore's housing commissioner, he was arrested at a Fells Point bar after a drunken tirade laced with anti-gay slurs. That was more than 10 years ago. He's still in the job. Now on his third mayor, he has outlasted three police commissioners and numerous agency heads to become the city's longest-serving housing chief. It's a powerful perch. He oversees not only public housing, but everything from the rebirth of onetime slums such as the Uplands apartments in West Baltimore to code enforcement complaints in wealthy areas like Roland Park.

Peel back the layers of water-stained wallboard and loose floor tiles, get down to the odorous core of the city's public housing scandal -- can we now officially call it that? -- and we find, if not corruption, at least incompetence. The mayor says the fast-track, no-bid process for granting repair contracts in shabby, city-owned houses was justified by an emergency in Baltimore's housing needs. "The housing situation [was] a public health threat to communities," the mayor said.Well, how did it get that way?

Touching on several issues, members of the Baltimore City Council tried yesterday to rescue displaced nuns, summon the housing commissioner to appear before the body and repeal a medical waste bill that it enacted earlier this year.Weeks after insurance giant USF&G Corp. evicted a group of nuns from a house the company owned to make way for expansion, the council introduced a resolution yesterday that seeks to make the Northwest Baltimore structure a historic landmark as a way to restrict USF&G from easily selling or changing it.The resolution prompted a fiery speech about suspected greedy business practices from Council President Lawrence A. Bell III, who introduced the measure a year after USF&G negotiated a deal with the council to expand in Mount Washington.

ONE OF the problems in this society is that expressions of bigotry are too often tolerated. Or excuses are made for those responsible. "She's a really nice person." "He didn't mean it." "He was drunk." The last, of course, is the explanation offered for the homophobic remarks made by the city's new housing commissioner, Paul T. Graziano, at a Fells Point bar last week. Mr. Graziano was arrested after patrons complained, he was asked to leave and he refused. During his encounter with officers, he said he would call Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris.

Former Mayor Clarence H. Du Burns, saying the Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development is badly mismanaged, has called for the firing of Housing Commissioner Robert W. Hearn."

Baltimore housing officials hired a man as a housing inspector and promoted him to a supervisory position although he had been fired by the state Department of Corrections for forging sick leave forms and convicted of more than a dozen counts of theft, according to a report released Tuesday by the city's inspector general. Algie C. Epps worked for the city Department of Housing and Community Development for five years after he was fired by the corrections department. He was promoted to assistant superintendent of code enforcement in spite of his criminal record, according to the report by city Inspector General David McClintock.

John R. Burleigh 2d., a civil rights activist who had been chairman of the employment committee of the Congress of Racial Equality and retired from the city housing authority, died July 9 of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The longtime Hunting Ridge resident was 86. The son of a foundryman and a homemaker, Mr. Burleigh was born in Baltimore and raised in Dorsey. He was a 1943 graduate of Wiley H. Bates High School in Annapolis, and attended Howard University in Washington.

The chairman of a City Council committee says he will ask federal officials to push Baltimore's public housing agency to pay a six-figure judgment for lead-paint poisoning, saying the agency had effectively stuck its tongue out by refusing to budge on the issue. The dispute is the latest development in a story that came to light in April, when housing authority executive director Paul T. Graziano said the cash-strapped agency could not, and would not, pay nearly $12 million in court-ordered lead poisoning judgments against it. Councilman James B. Kraft said Thursday that he was "very dissatisfied" with Graziano's refusal to seek federal approval to pay one judgment in particular — a $200,000 consent judgment involving a former public housing resident named Daron E. Goods.

The chairman of a City Council committee told Baltimore's housing authority Tuesday to take immediate steps toward paying a former public housing resident who suffered lead poisoning — just one in a looming tidal wave of legal claims that the authority warns could eventually total hundreds of millions of dollars. "You're just lying to them," Councilman James B. Kraft said to housing authority chief Paul T. Graziano after hearing how the authority has refused to pay a $200,000 settlement it reached with Daron Goods.

Former city planning director Otis Rolley said he plans to formally file Wednesday as a candidate for mayor. "I know the next five months are going to be the toughest five months of my life, until I get elected, and then they'll all be tough," Rolley said Tuesday at his campaign headquarters in Hampden. Rolley's schedule is packed with community meetings, church visits, small gatherings at homes and fundraisers. He declined to say how much money he has raised, but said he was undaunted by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's substantial fundraising lead.

Three state lawmakers from Baltimore are calling on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to find a way for the city's housing authority to pay nearly $12 million in lead-poisoning judgments against it, disputing her claim that "it is not possible" to pay and suggesting the agency could borrow the money if necessary. In a stern letter to the mayor, the legislators criticize the Housing Authority of Baltimore City for using "frivolous and delaying legal tactics" to avoid paying the judgments — even in cases where the authority agreed to the amount.

Baltimore housing officials hired a man as a housing inspector and promoted him to a supervisory position although he had been fired by the state Department of Corrections for forging sick leave forms and convicted of more than a dozen counts of theft, according to a report released Tuesday by the city's inspector general. Algie C. Epps worked for the city Department of Housing and Community Development for five years after he was fired by the corrections department. He was promoted to assistant superintendent of code enforcement in spite of his criminal record, according to the report by city Inspector General David McClintock.