Inspector General

Baltimore Inspector General has released his final report on last year's gambling raid at a Department of Transportation yard. Nearly a dozen workers were arrested, but prosecutors got just one conviction, prompting critics to say the operation was overblown. I interviewed David DeCarlo in January who said he was not involved in the gambling but was caught up as a bystander ( read story here ). He was fighting to get his job back. The IG, David N. McClintock, defended the raid to me in January: If gambling "was going on and it's not anymore, then it was worth it. ... The day everybody is happy with what we're doing is the day we're not doing something right.

The federal agency overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed to stop abuses by the mortgage giants' network of foreclosure attorneys for years before problems surfaced in news accounts, according to a report released Tuesday. The inspector general for the Federal Housing Finance Agency looked into the agency's oversight of foreclosure attorneys for the mortgage financiers after Rep. Elijah E. Cummings in February sought an investigation of alleged abuses. The mortgage companies, which buy loans and mortgage securities, are regulated by the FHFA.

In a city that's perpetually looking to cut costs rather than add them, Baltimore Inspector General David McClintock is making a strong case for himself. The independent city watchdog reports that his office detected $1.6 million in waste, fraud and abuse during the 12 months that ended Aug. 20. That's a savings of three times his office's annual budget. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who hired Mr. McClintock, already authorized two new employees for the office this year, and given its track record, she should add more.

Investigations into charges of fraud, waste and unethical behavior saved Baltimore nearly $1.6 million over the last year, the city's inspector general said in a report issued Monday. That's nearly three times the $538,615 annual budget of the six-employee office, which was created in 2005 to root out corruption in government and help city agencies cut costs, Inspector General David McClintock said in the annual report. It is also a record in savings since the office was established, McClintock said, and more than eight times the figure of $187,000 the office reported saving taxpayers in 2009-2010.

President Barack Obama has nominated Baltimore native Roslyn A. Mazer to be inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the White House announced Thursday. The former Western High School student is currently the inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, for which she oversees inspections and audits. From 1993 to 2009 she served in senior positions at the Department of Justice. "During her tenure here, Roslyn has been instrumental in ensuring the highest standards of accountability," Stephanie O'Sullivan, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said in a statement.

A Baltimore public works employee bilked the city of $55,000 in wages by altering electronic time sheets over four years, according to a report released Wednesday by the city inspector general. The employee, who was not named, was fired after an investigation, the report said. The employee was working as an office supervisor in 2007 when she began fudging compensatory leave time and overtime in the computer payroll system, according to the report from City Inspector General David McClintock.

Baltimore police removed $12,000 worth of city-owned security equipment from former Mayor Sheila Dixon's home last fall after several attempts to reclaim the gear, the city's inspector general announced Wednesday. Inspector General David McClintock said he received an anonymous tip in September that the security cameras — routinely installed on the homes of sitting mayors — remained at Dixon's house in the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood of Hunting Ridge. McClintock said police had attempted to remove the equipment before his office learned of it, but he did not have more specific information about the attempts.

Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III took office this year pledging to clean up the county's reputation for government corruption and a "pay-to-play" culture that, if federal indictments are accurate, forced companies to offer officials bribes as a cost of doing business there. Among Mr. Baker's first acts was to appoint a task force charged with recommending steps the county needed to take in order to restore its tarnished image and the public's trust in government.

Baltimore's new inspector general clearly has his work cut out for him. David McClintock, who was hired by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake about a year ago, reported this week that an assistant superintendent of housing inspections had been convicted of multiple counts of theft in his previous job with the state Department of Corrections and, when he submitted himself to a background check 18 months after taking his job with the city, he lied on the...

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.