Information Technology

Baltimore elected officials said Friday they were outraged by an inspector general's report that found the Mayor's Office of Information Technology and a former deputy mayor withheld information from and misled city officials about a controversial project to install nearly $675,000 in phone and computer equipment. "I am extremely concerned if it happens to be the case that the administration is engaged in misleading top city officials," said Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke. "If it proves to be the case, I will say that I am deeply concerned about this approach to government and to life.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates approved spending $4.5 million Wednesday to extend contracts with two information technology firms that provide workers to the city. The board voted to extend for six months contracts with Telecommunication Systems Inc. of Annapolis and the Rockville office of Digicon Corp., with the possibility of an additional six-month extension. Telecommunication Systems will provide 36 people to work as programmers, database administrators and in similar positions, while Digicon will provide another 37. City Comptroller Joan M. Pratt has criticized purchases the Mayor's Office of Information Technology made under a different Digicon contract.

More than two dozen people working as consultants in the Mayor's Office of Information Technology are employees of Rockville-based Digicon Corp. - the company from which the office bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of phone-related equipment under a no-bid deal, city documents show. City Comptroller Joan M. Pratt said Wednesday the purchases raise concerns given the large number of Digicon employees working for the technology office. The office bought more than $650,000 in equipment from Digicon last year as Pratt was seeking bids on a multimillion-dollar contract to convert the city's phones to a digital system.

As a financial matter, perhaps it's no big deal that MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blakehas a $562.39 telephone sitting on her desk. It and the five other touch screen, video phones the city bought recently amount to 0.0001 percent of Baltimore's $2.8 billion budget. Their cost wouldn't be enough to keep open a fire company or a recreation center or to roll back city property taxes. But as a symbol, the phone is a problem for City Hall. It contributes to residents' suspicions that their tax dollars are being squandered, and it makes the mayor look extravagantly out of touch with the concerns of most of her constituents.

Angry phone calls began pouring into The Sun a few months ago, describing renovations that were taking shape in the Baltimore City school system's information technology department as fit for the executive of a private corporation. Meanwhile, city school officials and advocacy organizations were in the heart of the Maryland General Assembly, passionately pushing a borrowing proposal that would leverage millions for school construction and renovation of the system's decrepit facilities.

Your article on the "elite" of the Baltimore City school system spending lavishly on their offices at headquarters is really not news ("As school facilities crumble, executive suites get remodeled," April 26). After spending decades as a teacher in BCPSS I watched as not only North Avenue did multiple renovations but as numerous regional offices followed suit. Whenever a new principal arrived at my high school, he got a new paint job and new office furniture. The dance continues.

A new report being released today calls on the Baltimore region to rethink economic development, pointing to a worrying trend: a mounting share of low-wage jobs shutting more and more residents out of the middle class. The number of jobs in largely low-paying industries such as retail and food service grew more than 60 percent in the region between 1980 and 2007, while jobs increased 36 percent in middle-wage fields and just under 10 percent in high-wage fields, according to the Brookings Institution study.

New furniture, a flat-screen television, decorative light fixtures, interactive white boards - these are among amenities the city school system bought during $500,000 in renovations to the central office, even as administrators decried the state of crumbling school buildings and sought funding to fix them. The biggest project was a $250,000 face lift of an executive suite for the district's chief of information technology, who said the remodeling work was done in part to impress job candidates and repair unsafe conditions.

Steve Poynot , Senior Vice President and Team Leader for Howard Bank, has been selected for the Next Leaders in Banking inaugural roster by the Maryland Bankers Association. Poynot will be honored at the Next Leaders in Banking Awards Breakfast on Oct. 6. The 16 honorees were selected for "demonstrating that they are rising stars in the profession, and whose work helps to put all bankers in a good light. " Lisa Kawata , of Laurel, has joined The Arc of Howard County as Volunteer Coordinator in the Resource Development department.

When Alfred "Freddy" Garner Jr. was growing up, h's father taught him to be the bigger man and walk away from confrontations. That's what relatives and police say the information technology professional from Washington was doing early Sunday when he was followed from a Northeast Baltimore bar and fatally stabbed. "He was getting into his vehicle so he could call his friend, who was still inside," said his sister, Tina Jordan, 45. Garner was one of two people mortally wounded in separate incidents Sunday and pronounced dead Monday, ending a stretch of relative calm in the city, in which only two homicides were recorded over a span of 18 days.