Inspectors

Maybe it's me, but I find it amazing that 39 Maryland Department of the Environment inspectors made only 2,213 visits to more than 12,000 active construction sites ("Audit questions agency's practices," Dec. 2). Each inspector, if working a 40 hour week, has the potential to work 2,080 hours a year. If 2,213 sites were visited, and 81,120 man-hours were available, this would mean each inspector made one visit to a construction site every 36.6 work hours or essentially, one visit a week.

A federal judge in Baltimore has awarded $462,500 to a low-level merchant marine officer who alerted Coast Guard inspectors that his cargo ship was intentionally polluting the high seas. In his ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis also left open the possibility of giving Salvador Lopez, a former ship's engineer from the Philippines, an additional $462,500 in reward money, depending on the outcome of another portion of the case. Lopez gave Coast Guard inspectors in Baltimore a handwritten note tipping them off to the illegal dumping of oily waste and garbage during the M/V Aquarosa's first visit to the port of Baltimore in February 2011.

The American Society of Home Inspectors has a new Internet tool to help consumers find a qualified inspector to check out a home they may buy. Searches can be run with a variety of criteria including ZIP codes or area codes, neighborhood or an inspector's last name. The site provides information on how to contact licensed inspectors. The trade group maintains that buyers should choose inspectors who have been trained and have satisfied the organization's standards and ethics code. The group said potential buyers should interview inspectors, asking questions such as what the inspection will cover, if the inspector is specifically experienced in residential inspections and whether the inspector encourages the client to attend the inspection.

Carolyn Elizabeth Cates, a retired quality-control inspector and mixed-media artist, died of complications from cancer March 24 at Seasons Hospice in Randallstown. The Columbia resident was 75. Born Carolyn Edwards in Baltimore and raised in Dundalk, she was a 1954 graduate of Sollers Point High School. She earned a bachelor's degree at what is now Morgan State University. Ms. Cates worked at Westinghouse, later Northrop Grumman, as a quality-control inspector. She retired in 2002.

Postal inspectors are examining documents and mail seized from a Reisterstown sweepstakes marketing company after thousands of people complained they had been bilked in buying memberships.A temporary injunction issued by the Federal Trade Commission also was delivered to Quality Marketing Inc. when the U.S. Postal Investigation Service raided the company at 6 a.m. Tuesday, in a mail-fraud investigation begun in 1992, authorities said."The materials will be studied and taken before a grand jury," said Paul J. Trimbur, a U.S. postal inspector leading the investigation.

WASHINGTON - The U.N. inspectors in Iraq have begun their investigation of various Iraqi factories and military sites. Pay no attention. They will find nothing. The key to this whole inspection gambit - indeed, the key to whether we end up in a war with Iraq - will come down not to where the inspectors look inside Iraq, but to whom they decide to interview outside Iraq, and whether that person has the courage to talk. The fate of Iraq will all come down to the least-noticed paragraph in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441: Point 5. The framers of this resolution had learned their lessons from previous Iraqi inspections.

State regulators who promised to sharpen oversight of public boiler systems after a severe accident in the Baltimore schools last year are proposing to weaken hiring criteria for inspectors, making Maryland's standards among the lowest in the country.In a Sept. 22 internal memo, a top official with the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said the agency could hasten hiring of inspectors by eliminating a key requirement: certification by the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors.

A week after the Baltimore liquor board imposed a mandatory eight-hour workday for liquor inspectors, five members of the inspection staff have filed for leave from their jobs because of stress or illness. Chief liquor inspector Samuel T. Daniels Jr. confirmed yesterday that several inspectors had requested leave, but he would not identify them. He said the requests started coming in several days after he imposed the new eight-hour workday policy, which went into effect Sept. 12. The new policy was introduced in an effort to ensure that inspectors were putting in 40 hours a week.

A year after a boiler accident that severely burned a city elementary school pupil, a state regulatory panel yesterday took the first steps to improve oversight of heating and hot water systems in public buildings.A task force of people who inspect, repair and maintain such systems will be created this summer to review the issue.In addition, Commissioner John P. O'Connor of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said he will suggest increasing his inspection staff by about 50 percent in a report to the governor Monday.

THERE IS NO good reason for inspectors to have delayed reporting safety problems discovered in furnaces and boilers at Baltimore City schools. Perhaps the inspectors thought they were doing the schools a favor by giving them time to correct the problems. But the possibility that a disabling, even fatal, accident could occur while they waited for repairs to be made should have been paramount.Yet a Sun investigation has turned up at least 21 instances where serious safety violations at 16 schools over a two-year period were not reported to the state as required.

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 city's fire marshal and four city inspectors were deputized to act as special assistant state fire marshals for 2012. Fire Marshal David Cope, and city inspectors Richard Blankenship, John Chenault, Patrick Walsh and Melanie Wieringa, were deputized by state Fire Marshal William Barnard. Laurel Mayor Craig Moe had requested the special designation from the state to help the city carryout permitting and inspections.

Maybe it's me, but I find it amazing that 39 Maryland Department of the Environment inspectors made only 2,213 visits to more than 12,000 active construction sites ("Audit questions agency's practices," Dec. 2). Each inspector, if working a 40 hour week, has the potential to work 2,080 hours a year. If 2,213 sites were visited, and 81,120 man-hours were available, this would mean each inspector made one visit to a construction site every 36.6 work hours or essentially, one visit a week.

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.

It looked like high times ahead for the home inspection business.The new state property disclosure law was about to go into effect -- on Jan. 1 -- requiring sellers of single-family homes to fill out a disclosure form describing the condition of their property, or sign a disclaimer. Home inspectors expected a big windfall, as sellers sought help from a professional in filling out the disclosure form.But the good times never rolled.Only a handful of sellers have opted for inspections. Many others are filling out the disclaimer -- instead of the disclosure form -- and have no need for a pre-listing inspection.

Maryland has about 300 earthen dams monitored by state inspectors. Like the 65-foot-high Need-ville Dam in Rockville, where torrential rain forced the evacuation of local residents this week - some of them are pretty large. They include the 99-foot-high Little Seneca Lake Dam in Montgomery County and 118-foot-high Druid Hill Lake Dam, according to state and federal Web sites. But an earthen dam can be just as safe as a concrete structure, experts say. "If you've got a good site with a good foundation, earthen dams are a good way to go," said Larry Roth, a civil engineer who has designed dams and is deputy executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Four days after Port Deposit was evacuated because of a flooding Susquehanna River, public officials on Sunday began letting some residents move back into their homes but delayed the return for others whose properties suffered the most damage. By Sunday evening, about two-thirds of the town's population of 800 had been cleared for re-entry, according to state Sen. Nancy Jacobs. She said officials hoped to clear the rest to move by Tuesday. Residents of the south side of town, which generally received less damage than the north side, were the first to be approved for re-entry.

Even as they discovered new scars from Tuesday's earthquake - a collapsed roof in Annapolis, broken glass at Baltimore's Port Discovery , a crumbled chimney in Catonsville - officials were most concerned about the unseen damage as they prepared to reopen Maryland buildings to the public Wednesday. Teams of inspectors were deployed throughout the state to assess the structural safety of everything from the airport to the sports stadiums, authorities said. Helicopter pilots conducted aerial surveys, structural engineers searched for fresh foundation cracks and transportation examiners pored over each county's weaker bridges.